The Jaw Dropping Geology of Grand Canyon
Water is the greatest force at work on the Grand Canyon. Water seeps into the stone crevices alternately freezing and thawing, the cracks appear and eventually the rocks split. This alternate expansion takes places in the sun’s heat and the contraction takes place on a cool night which helps to crumble the stones. Gravitation works incessantly on the canyon walls. Water and rain sweep tons of material towards the river and out to the sea. These ordinary processes of nature account for the Grand Canyon great sites. The layers of shale, limestone, and sandstone that make up the strata of the canyon walls are called the formations. Each has certain characteristics that distinguish it from the strata above and below; their story is depositing the layer upon layer of sediments by water and wind. The mountain building and tearing down the mountains; nature perform this work gradually but irresistibly, never taking a day off to rest.
Vishnu Basement Rocks:
Descending into the Grand Canyon depths, time falls away into one vertical mile down the inner walls of the gorge. The earth reveals its geological soul here in the place called Vishnu Basement Rocks; traveler journey through two billion years in the past. The oldest rocks found in this V-shaped granite gorge were originally sediments deposited by the sea and then uplifted into mountains. The great forces of pressure and high temperatures change the sedimentary rocks into metamorphic types called the Mylonite and Schist. The older rocks subsided and again powered by the sea.
Evidence of Wealth of Life Forms in Grand Canyon:
The fossils of algae and fungi captured eons ago are evidence of early plant life in the region. The second major era of the earth’s history began about five hundred and seventy million years ago and endured about three hundred and fifty million years. The Layers of sandstone, Shale, and limestone were formed by the deposit of an advancing sea. This period had witnessed a wealth of life forms in the world’s oceans. Life forms that were never repeated in our planet’s evolution. Within these three rock layers, we can see the very beginning of invertebrate life on earth. We can also discover the traces of the creatures with backbones such as the various species of fish. One of the most prominent cliff form in the canyon is the Red Wall of Limestone formed by the remnants of marine life in the sea, it’s true color is gray and the red coloring is from rock layers higher up in the Grand Canyon. In a climate of becoming relatively arid, the Grand Canyon remained in a marine environment. River sediments and sandstones containing the imprints of ferns and fossilized the amphibian tracks is overlaid by hermit shale and then the vertical cliff of Coconino Sandstones. Sand deposited when the region became a desert, seas inundated the land not once but twice.
