It was named for Chinle Valley in Apache County, Arizona by Herbert E. Gregory in 1917 without officially designating it as the formation's name until two years later and without a specified type locality.
It contains a single species, Stenomyti huangae, which is known from a skull, postcranial skeleton and other referred material from the Late Triassic Chinle Formation, Eagle Basin of Colorado, USA.
formation | Command (military formation) | Elliot Formation | Chinle, Arizona | Lance Formation | Crato Formation | Chinle Formation | Two Medicine Formation | Tamayama Formation | Missing Man Formation (band) | Missing Man Formation | Marcellus Formation | Kirkwood Formation | Gettysburg Formation | Clarens Formation | Whitby Mudstone Formation | Tunbridge Wells Sand Formation | Santana Formation | Phalanx formation | phalanx formation | Mahantango Formation | Leduc Formation | Identity formation | Hanson Formation | Formation (stratigraphy) | formation (stratigraphy) | Formation | Centre International de Formation Européenne | Bakken formation | Yixian Formation |
It is known from a partial skeleton found from the Petrified Forest Member of the Chinle Formation near Fort Wingate, New Mexico, which is now lost.
Among many other achievements, he was the fist to name and describe the Upper Triassic Chinle Formation, which is famous for preserving extensive fossil evidence of Late Triassic terrestrial ecosystems, including fossilized logs.
Ghost Ranch was once part of the Chinle Formation, and the New Blood episode of Walking with Dinosaurs was set there, although the filming location was New Caledonia.