@rockdocdan: Does it hurt the continents? . These sandstones are knicked, forming these breathtaking, criss-crossing blocks and slot canyons. . They start as just a little crack, but this rock is pretty weak. The elements easily turns the sandstone back onto sand, and that process starts at these cracks. Its easy to walk around the park here and see the cracks at various stages of progression towards widening. . The really spectacular question comes when we consider what made the cracks in the first place. If you look at the landscape from satellite you can see their orientation isn't random, it's a grid. . All of eastern South America was put under extensional stress when the Pangea began to rift open and the Atlantic formed. The orientation of those stresses, still visible in the shape of the Atlantic Ocean, also contributed to the fracture system from which the sandstone towers at Vila Velha originated. . Thus, the orientation of the crack at buttcrack rock is an expression of the forces that birthed the Atlantic Ocean.

Daniel Babin

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Thursday 16 October 2025 21:40:32 GMT