Lion's Head. 테이블마운틴(Table Mountain). 케이프타운(Cape Town)

Lion's Head. 테이블마운틴(Table Mountain).

케이프타운(Cape Town). 남아프리카 공화국(South Africa)

 

The Lion

Compare the upper ramparts of Table Mountain and Lion's Head and you will note similar rock layers - the remnants of strata pushed up 280-220 million years ago and concertina-ed into a massive range. It once stood thousands of metres high, connecting the Peninsula to the Hottentots Holland Mountains (to the east) and covering the present-day Cape Towns and False Bay. Massive erosion has reduced this range to what you now see.

 

Table Mountain, however, unlike other parts of these Cape Fold Mountains, was not severely twisted and buckled as it was forced up with fewer faults and cracks, its sandstone strata have therefore eroded more slowly

 

The oldest rocks of the Peninsula, on which Table Mountain rests, are a mixture of ancient Malmesbury Shales and younger Cape Granite. They met 540 million years ago when the granite was in a molten state. The contact zone between these two formations can be seen at Sea Point (the shore visible between Lion's Head and Signal Hill). Visiting this site in 1836, Charles Darwin recognised it as evidence of a world far older than most would have imagined or dared to propose at the time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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