Original paper
Scarps and Tablelands v
King, Lester
Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie Volume 12 Issue 1 (1968), p. 114 - 115
published: Apr 13, 1968
ArtNo. ESP022001201009, Price: 29.00 €
Abstract
Endemic in geological literature is a statement that mesas and similar land features are due to a hard cap rock which has preserved them from erosion. Now this blanket statement is often patently false, for the summit of many a mesa is not constructed of the hard, scarp-forming, so-called cap material, but of the very much weaker formations which overlie. The following series of sketch-sections shows a number of different instances observed in the field. In some where the hard formation is indeed scores or even hundreds of feet thick it passes through the mesa far below the highest point. Soft overlying strata indeed make the whole of the tableland and the hard rock crops out only in the scarps around the margin. It cannot possibly, therefore, be responsible for the upper surface of the tableland as such.
Keywords
scarp;tableland