Flood by Design (Design Series)

Author:Mike Oard
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science, SCIENCE / Earth Science / Geology, RELIGION / Religion &#38
ISBN: 9781614581659
Publisher: Master Books
Published: 2008-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 5.11. Sugarloaf Mountain, the tallest of several inselbergs and a little right of center, situated in the Rio De Janeiro harbor, Brazil. It is 1,300 feet (396 m) high.

Figure 5.12. Stone Mountain, Georgia (courtesy of Carl Froede).

Many inselbergs are erosional remnants of granitic-type rocks. Ayers Rock in central Australia is a famous non-granitic inselberg composed of vertically tilted beds of sandstone (Ollier and Tuddenham, 1962; Twidale, 1978a). It stands 1,150 feet (350 m) above the surrounding flat desert floor (see figure 1.6). However, a buried pediment lies on its east and north edges (see chapter 6 on the subject of pediments). Ayers Rock is the surface erosional remnant of a huge sandstone body 20,000 feet (6,100 m) thick that continues into the subsurface! The origin of Ayers Rock (as well as other inselbergs) remains a mystery within uniformitarian geomorphology, since its survival was not due to the type of rock (Twidale, 1978a, p. 194):

The early geomorphological history and the fundamental reasons for Ayers Rock remain obscure, though various possibilities have been suggested (Twidale, 1978a, p. 203).

Inselbergs in Limestone Terrain

Another distinctive group of inselbergs is called tower karst. Tower karst is composed of unusually high rock pinnacles in karst areas. Karst is generally limestone terrain with caves, sinkholes, and underground drainage (Ford and Williams, 1989, p. 1). Tower karst generally ranges from 130 to 1,000 feet (40 to 300 m) tall (McDonald, 1979, p. 36; Thomas, 1994, p. 347). For example, towers nearly 1,000 feet (300 m) above the surrounding plains (Jennings, 1976, p. 93) and elsewhere in lines up to 1,180 feet (360 m) high (Jennings, 1972, p. 340) have been reported in Malaysia. The best examples of tower karst are found in the tropics; the most famous examples are those of southwest China (Daoxian, 1987; Tang and Day, 2000) (figure 5.13). Tower karst also occurs in Vietnam, Malaysia, Sarawak, other parts of Southeast Asia, in northwest Australia, Central America, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and other Caribbean islands (Trenhaile, 1998, p. 278). But tower karst is by no means restricted to the tropics (Twidale, 2003, p. 1,164). Isolated tower karst has been found in the Mackenzie Mountains in northern Canada (Brook and Ford, 1978). So tower karst is not necessarily related to climate, although it is mostly found in the tropics (Jennings, 1976; Ahnert, 1998, p. 257).

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