Sandstone 1
The cliffs of Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa, are made of several hundred metres of clean white sandstones, mostly laid down as sand-bars near the…
Sandstone 2
The "Maltese Cross", a well-known landmark in the Cedarberg Mountains, Western Cape Province, South Africa. These hard sandstones have been sculpted into tall…
Sandstone (arkose)
Precambrian red-brown sandstones, laid down by river systems 1000 million years ago, make up the bulk of the mountain Quinag, Assynt district, Sutherland,…
Sandstone, folded
Some mountain ranges are made of folded sedimentary rocks. This mountain peak, near Swellendam in the Western Cape Province, South Africa, is made up of…
Sandstone 3
In this outcrop you see a sequence of sandstone layers. Each bed of sandstone, 15 cm to 1 m thick, was probably laid down in a fairly short space of time.…
Sandstone, with ripple marks
This view looks down onto the top of a layer of sandstone. The sandstone was laid down in water, possibly in a shallow lake. Water currents or wave action made…
Siltstone, with filled cracks
This layer of fine-grained sediment was deposited in water, but must have dried out soon afterwards, forming a pattern of cracks. The cracks then filled up with…
Mudstone
The "Finger of God", also known as Mukorob, a rock pillar in southern Namibia, photographed in 1979. A 34-metre column of sandstone rests on softer mudstone,…
Sandstone, coarse, with channels
These purplish-brown gritty sandstones were laid down by rivers 1000 million years ago. In close-up view you can see that many of the sedimentary layers are…
Conglomerate
This coarse-grained conglomerate is made up of pebbles and small boulders of quartzite eroded from nearby mountains. You can see some layering in the outcrop,…
Breccia
The blue-grey rock is a fine sandstone that has been broken into angular pieces in a zone of faulting, and then re-cemented in a rock that would be called a…
