The formation crops out over a narrow belt from the southern Tusas Mountains[1] to upper Coyote Creek.

The distinctive red color is found penetrating joints in the underlying quartzite to depths of several meters.

Paleocurrents and conglomerate clast provenance show that the source region was the Brazos uplift to the north and northeast.

The formation was deposited in an asymmetrical basin formed in response to tectonic compression of the Laramide orogeny,[3] truncated to the west along the Canones fault zone.

Detrital zircon geochronology suggests that the Diamond Tail and Galisteo Formations were deposited first, and only after the southern part of the basin was filled with sediments did sediments begin to accumulate in the northern El Rito portion of the basin.