Klippe
Appearance

A klippe (German for cliff or crag; plural klippen or klippes[1]) is a geological feature of thrust fault terrains. The klippe is the remnant portion of a nappe after erosion has removed connecting portions of the nappe. This process results in an outlier of exotic, often nearly horizontally translated strata overlying autochthonous strata.[2]
Examples
[edit]- Chief Mountain, Montana
- Mount Yamnuska, Alberta
- The Rock of Gibraltar
- Acropolis of Athens, Greece
- Bac Grillera, Catalonia, Spain. The nappe of which this klippe once formed part had its root in the northern part of the Pyrenees mountain range.[3][4]
Klippes may also be found in the Pre-Alps of Switzerland and some of the isolated mountains in Assynt, Sutherland, in NW Scotland.[5]
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Beckov Castle, Slovakia, perched on a limestone klippe
References
[edit]- ^ Plašienka, D. (2018). "The Carpathian Klippen Belt and types of its klippen – an attempt at a genetic classification". Mineralia Slovaca. 50: 1–24. eISSN 1338-3523.
- ^ DiPietro, Joseph A. (December 21, 2012). Landscape Evolution in the United States: An Introduction to the Geography, Geology, and Natural History. Newnes. p. 343. ISBN 9780123978066. Retrieved 10 February 2016.
- ^ Marc Calvet, Yanni Gunnell, Bernard Laumonier. Denudation history and palaeogeography of the Pyrenees and their peripheral basins: an 84-million-year geomorphological perspective. Earth Science Reviews, 2021. See map, page 195. Online at insu.hal.science.
- ^ Estevez, A. (1968). Tectónica de las unidades alóctonas del Castell de Bac Grillera (Pirineo oriental, España). Acta Geológica Hispànica, t. III, núm. 5, p. 138-141. Online at revistes.ub.edu.
- ^ Whittow, John (1984). Dictionary of Physical Geography. London: Penguin, 1984, p. 294. ISBN 0-14-051094-X.