Jul 26
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Germany
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Jordan
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from Malaysia
seen from Norway
seen from China
seen from Yemen
seen from Norway
seen from Türkiye
seen from Brazil
seen from Russia
-Gondwanaland, by Tony DiTerlizzi. Written for Guys Write for Guys Read, published 2006.
It's sort of a shame DiTerlizzi has never invited other people to Gondwanaland in the years since he wrote this. Maybe he thought it was too personal, or maybe he thought people wouldn't like it. It's a damn shame, because Gondwanaland sounds like a really interesting place, and I would have liked to see more of it beyond this fleeting glimpse. When you have a place as good as this, you should at least try to share it with the world. (Also, strength in numbers against that nasty Captain Bassolf.)
😔✌️
Eduard Suess – Scientist of the Day
Eduard Suess, an Austrian geologist working in Vienna, was born Aug. 20, 1831.
read more...
Rainforest at Mount Warning, New South Wales, Australia, by igomak
Zhangjiajie Pillars
These epic columns of sandstone in Zhangjiajie forest park in China were the inspiration for the floating mountains in the movie “Avatar”.
The rocks started their life in the Devonian, time of the evolution of the first land plants, as part of blocks of crust on the edge of Gondwanaland. Tens of meters of cross-bedded sandstones were deposited and buried by later marine limestones, forming the stratigraphy of the park. Despite China being formed by several collisions between these blocks of continental crust, these rocks remained mostly flat lying. A few vertical fractures called joints formed after the sediments were lithified into sandstone and brought to the surface. Those fractures allowed water to flow in and erode downwards along the edge of the cracks, leaving only the thin pillars up to 50 meters high remaining.
Based on the current erosion rates in the area, forming columns of sandstone tens of meters high would have required erosion to start all the way back around the start of the Pleistocene, about 2 million years ago.
-JBB
Image credit: David Berger http://bit.ly/2tL2rii References: http://bit.ly/2GmPSwe http://bit.ly/2FybSXC https://www.atlasobscura.com/pla…/avatar-hallelujah-mountain http://www.globalgeopark.org/aboutGGN/list/China/6421.htm
Schabrackentapir
April 2017