Earth > If Rocks Could Talk > Three Types of Rock
- Igneous rocks are formed from melted rock deep inside the Earth.
- Sedimentary rocks are formed from layers of sand, silt, dead plants, and animal skeletons.
- Metamorphic rocks formed from other rocks that are changed by heat and pressure underground.
Uluru, a.k.a. Ayers Rock (Australia)Located in the Northern Territory (Central Australia), this sacred sandstone rock formation is one of the world's largest monoliths, having a height of more than 318 metres (or nearly 1,000 feet).
Sedimentary rocks can be organized into two categories. These rocks are often called clastic sedimentary rocks. One of the best-known clastic sedimentary rocks is sandstone. Sandstone is formed from layers of sandy sediment that is compacted and lithified.
Tactical formations include:
- Column.
- Line.
- Square.
- Wedge and inverted wedge.
- Echelon.
- V formation.
- Staggered column.
- Coil.
- Goblin Valley State Park, Utah.
- Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah.
- Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada.
- Chimney Rock National Historic Site, Nebraska.
- Makoshika State Park, Montana.
- Turnip Rock, Michigan.
- Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming.
- Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Top 10 Unique Rock Formations
- Marble Canyons, Taroko National Park, Taiwan.
- Antelope Canyon, Arizona, USA.
- Hobgoblin's Playground, Nevada, USA.
- Zabriskie Point, California, USA.
- Moeraki Boulders, Otago, South Island, New Zealand.
- Giant's Causeway, County Antrim, Ireland.
- Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park, Madagascar.
For the most part, these rocks are exposed along the Rio Grande rift in the center of New Mexico, except in the Zuni Mountains and Burro Mountains. The total relief of Precambrian rocks is 11 kilometers.
The Land. The state consists of four land regions – the Great Plains, the Colorado Plateau, the Rocky Mountains, and the Basin and Range region. The eastern third of New Mexico is covered by the Great Plains. The Great Plains run from a high plateau in the north to the Pecos River in the south .
Utah is known for its amazing rock formations, including spires, pinnacles, hoodoos, natural bridges, and arches, as well as buttes and canyons. Some of the most spectacular can be seen at Zion, Bryce Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Natural Bridges, Cathedral Valley, and Monument Valley.
Where is Alien Throne? Alien Throne stands in the Valley of Dreams, a remote field of hoodoos on Navajo Nation land in the northwestern New Mexico badlands. It's filled with petrified wood — even petrified trunks and branches — and is rich with fossils.
Mesas are formed by erosion, when water washes smaller and softer types of rocks away from the top of a hill. The strong, durable rock that remains on top of a mesa is called caprock.
New Mexico Art Tells its HistoryThe lava from a volcano can also spread through the cracks in the earth's crust, creating an expanse of uplifted flat lands. Plateaus can also be formed by the erosion of glaciers on the mountains, leaving areas of flatlands between the mountain ridges.
The Rio Grande Rift began forming between 35 and 29 million years ago when Earth's lithosphere began to spread apart, triggering volcanism (volcanic activity) in the region. It stretches from the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, to at least Leadville, Colorado (and probably continues further north).
1. Monument Valley. The valley is in both Arizona and Utah and is a famous and iconic landscape. Featured in movies and advertisements, Monument Valley is a stark, red desert landscape that is interrupted only by huge, towering monolithic red rocks or “monuments†that jut upright throughout the valley.
Arroyo Penasco Group in Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Sierra Nacimiento, San Pedro Mountain, and Sandia Mountains; Lake Valley Limestone in south-central New Mexico.
These red cliffs are more than 200 million years old and date back to the dinosaur era. Grab your hiking shoes and explore these ancient hills on one of the two main hikes in the park: Church Rock Trail or Red Rocks at Pyramid Rock.
The Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness area covers 45,000 acres of badlands just south of Farmington, New Mexico. This high desert wilderness features a vast landscape containing some of the most unique rock formations on this planet.
The rocks were formed about 290-296 million years ago when the Ancestral Rocky Mountains were eroded during the Pennsylvanian epoch. Later, uplift during the Laramide orogeny tilted the rocks to the angle at which they sit today. An Army expedition led by Stephen Long discovered present-day Red Rocks in 1820.
