[2] It is extensively exposed in the mountains and other uplifts bordering the Rio Grande Rift, with a thickness of 280 meters (920 feet) at the type section.

The feldspar is locally albitized, possibly by brines in evaporite basins or due to high heat flow in the crust.

[6] Deposition took place on a low-gradient, broad, well-oxidized alluvial plain in which rivers flowed to the Hueco seaway in southern New Mexico.

[7] Paleontological data and regional correlations suggest that the age of the Abo Formation is middle Wolfcampian to early Leonardian.

[2] The Cañon de Espinoso Member is 170 meters (560 feet) thick at the type section, of which 70% is mudstone, 21% is thin ledges of laminated climbing-rippled sandstone, and 9% is siltstone beds.

[9] Tracks are also found in the Lucero uplift in the Cañon de Espinoso Member that include Amphisauropus, Ichniotherium, Hyloidichnus, and Dromopus.

[10] The formation has also produced plant, bivalve, conchostracan and vertebrate fossils[2] in locations such as the Spanish Queen mine near Jemez Springs,[11] which date it to the Wolfcampian (lower Permian period).

[2] One green shale site in the Caballo Mountains, interpreted as an estuarine facies of the Abo Formation, contains gastropods and diverse bivalves, including euryhaline pectins and myalinids.

The Scholle Member yields most of the vertebrate fossils of the Abo Formation, typically a pelycosaur-dominated assemblage that includes lungfishes, palaeoniscoids, temnospondyl and lepospondyl amphibians, and diadectomorphs.

This is not actually a product of living organisms, but is an unusual sedimentary structure formed by outgassing from sediments bound together by microbial mats.

Isotope studies suggest the carbon dioxide originated in the Earth's mantle and the Abo Formation is merely a reservoir rock.

Bates defined a type section that excluded the basal marine limestone beds, and, finding that the unit was more shale than sandstone, redesignated it the Abo Formation.