by MarkBour » Sun Feb 02, 2014 8:17 am
dmiladinovich wrote:Anyone know why would a butte form the hard caprock in the first place? Why is it that there is enough caprock to keep such a large formation standing while everything else erodes away around it?
I probably should let a geologist give an expert answer, but ...
When you see those large structures standing alone like that, it seems surprising and unlikely. But if you explore the surrounding area, it eventually makes sense. I view it as the way probability distribution always works as one moves from one type of landscape into another. The same thing happens between the land and the oceans. At one point you have all land. Then, there are peninsulas, finally, there are islands. A fun thing to do is to look at Google maps (R) in satellite view of Monument valley. There you will see the surrounding larger escarpment that fades into Monument Valley, and the monuments, though still awe-inspiring, are seen to be the sensible, even inevitable edge of a huge formation.
[quote="dmiladinovich"]Anyone know why would a butte form the hard caprock in the first place? Why is it that there is enough caprock to keep such a large formation standing while everything else erodes away around it?[/quote]
I probably should let a geologist give an expert answer, but ...
When you see those large structures standing alone like that, it seems surprising and unlikely. But if you explore the surrounding area, it eventually makes sense. I view it as the way probability distribution always works as one moves from one type of landscape into another. The same thing happens between the land and the oceans. At one point you have all land. Then, there are peninsulas, finally, there are islands. A fun thing to do is to look at Google maps (R) in satellite view of Monument valley. There you will see the surrounding larger escarpment that fades into Monument Valley, and the monuments, though still awe-inspiring, are seen to be the sensible, even inevitable edge of a huge formation.