what is the geology of gibraltar/how was it formed anong with the rest of the coast/maroccan mountains?
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The territory covers 2.53 square miles (6.543 km²). It shares a three-quarter of a mile (1.2 km) land border with Spain and has 7½ miles (12 km) of shoreline. There are two coasts (sides) of Gibraltar – the East Side which contains the settlements of Sandy Bay and Catalan Bay, and the West Side where the vast majority of the population lives.\n\nThe climate is Mediterranean with mild winters and warm summers. Its terrain is a narrow coastal lowland bordering the 1,397.6 foot (426 m) high Rock of Gibraltar.\n\nIt has negligible natural resources and limited natural freshwater resources, until recently using large concrete or natural rock water catchments to collect rain water. It now has a desalination plant using reverse osmosis which is built into the rock itself.\n\nGibraltar is one of the most densely populated territories in the world, with approximately 11,154 people per square mile (4,290/km²). The growing demand for space is being increasingly met by land reclamation, which comprises approximately one tenth of the territory's total area.\n\nThe Rock itself is made of limestone and is 1,396 feet (426 m) high. It contains many miles of roads, most of which are closed to the public. Most of its area is covered by a nature reserve, which is home to around 250 Barbary Apes, the only wild monkeys in Europe. Superstition holds that if ever the Apes leave, so will the British; so they are well looked after by the government (a situation rather analogous to the ravens of the Tower of London).\n\nThe Rock of Gibraltar is a monolithic Jurassic limestone promontory. The geological formation was created when the African tectonic plate collided tightly with Europe about 55 million years ago. The Mediterranean became a lake that, in the course of time, dried up. About five million years ago the Atlantic Ocean broke through the Strait of Gibraltar, and the resultant flooding created the Mediterranean Sea. This spectacular rock monolith covers a land area of about six square kilometres and overlooks the African coast.
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try the Idiot's Guide to Geology and Minig...
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Gneiss is formed deep underground in geologically active areas. It is most commonly formed from granite but there are many rocks that make really nice gneiss. The granite is subjected to huge amounts of pressure and almost enough heat to melt it for a very, very long time. Situations like this are found at the edges of tectonic plates. In this metamorphic process, the minerals in the granite migrate into bands that are perpendicular to the direction of pressure. The bands are made of layers of light minerals (quartz and feldspar) and dark minerals (hornblende and biotite mica). These bands may be quite straight and uniform or, if the granite approaches its melting point, they can become quite contorted.
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OK, first geography is NOT geology *sigh*\n\nLook up carbon dating; you can either tell by the degradation of carbon or by basic layering (what's on the bottom is older than what's on the top).
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Mountains... I currently live in southern Colorado and it seldolm rains.  I am studying to be a geologist and find the physics required to create these moutain belts fascinating.
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Igneous rock becomes sedimentary rock by weathering and erosion which makes sediments. The sediments then is deposited and is cemented together to cause sedimentary rock.
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The Rockies were formed in the Mesozoic and Early Cenozoic eras during the Cordilleran orogeny. They are geologically complex, with remnants of an ancestral Rocky Mt. system and evidence that uplift, which involved almost all mountain-building processes, occurred as a series of pulses over millions of years. The mountains have since been eroded to expose ancient crystalline cores flanked by thick upturned layers of sedimentary rocks. Glaciers and snowfields, which cover portions of the northern ranges and the high peaks of the south, were at one time more extensive; throughout the system the erosional features of alpine glaciation are apparent.\n\n:)\nPeace!
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The Atlantic Ocean is 150-135 million years old.\n\n~~~~~\n~180 Million Years Ago~\nThe supercontinent Pangea began to break up into two continents, Laurasia and Gondwanaland. Laurasia was made of the present day continents of North America (Greenland), Europe, and Asia. Gondwanaland was made of the present day continents of Antarctica, Australia, South America.\n\nScientists believe that Pangea broke apart for the same reason that the plates are moving today. The movement is caused by the convection currents that roll over in the upper zone of the mantle. This movement in the mantle causes the plates to move slowly across the surface of the Earth.\n\nThe huge world-ocean called Panthalassa remained but the Atlantic Ocean was going to be born soon with the splitting of North America from the Eurasian Plate. \n\n~150-135 Million Years Ago~\n150 to 135 million years ago Laurasia was on the move, and as it moved it broke up into the continents of North America, Europe and Asia (Eurasian plate). \n\nGondwanaland was spread apart, too, and it broke up into the continents of Africa, Antarctica, Australia, South America, and the subcontinent of India. \n\nArabia started to separate from Africa as the Red Sea opened up.\n\nThe Atlantic, Indian, Arctic, and Pacific Oceans were beginning to take shape as the continents move toward their present positions. \n\n\n~The Atlantic Ocean~\nThe Atlantic began to form about 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic period, when a rift opened up in the supercontinent of Gondwanaland, resulting in the separation of South America and Africa. \n\nThe separation continues today at the rate of several centimeters a year along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Part of the midoceanic ridge system that girdles the world, it is a submarine ridge extending north to south in a sinuous path midway between the continents. \n\nRoughly 930 miles wide, the ridge has a more rugged topography than any mountain range on land, and is a frequent site of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. The ridge ranges from 1/2 to 2 miles above the ocean bottom.\n\nThe Atlantic Ocean is the second youngest of the world's oceans, after the Southern Ocean.
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Question 1. \nExample 1-Navajo Sandstone Formation, Jurassic, covers large areas of the Colorado Plateau-including Zion National Park). The most characteristic feature of this formation is that it has thick deposits of well-sorted quartz sandstone with big cross beds(sedimentary structures)--indicating that the sand was deposited by wind as dunes, in a giant sand sea (think Sahara).\nhttp://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/nov03/NN_navajo.htm\nExample 2: \nRadiolarian chert of the Franciscan Complex, California. Jurassic and Cretaceous. Good outcrops in the Marin Headlands, north side of Golden Gate bridge, in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Thinly bedded maroon to pale green alternating layers of chert and siliceous mudstone.  The chert is chock-full of pin-head size radiolarian fossils--radiolarians are open-ocean marine plankton--but has no shallow marine fossils or calcareous plankton These sediments were deposited in deep water in the open ocean. Since they sit on basalt, it has been inferred that they were deposited on ocean crust. \nExample 3: \nFossiliferous Permian limestone, Texas, Capitan Reef in Guadalupe Mountains National Park\n"Over millions of years, calcareous sponges and algae combined with other lime-secreting marine organisms and vast quantities of lime that precipitated directly from the seawater to form the 400-mile-long, horseshoe-shaped Capitan Reef." --http://www2.nature.nps.gov/geology/parks/gumo/\nCompare to warm, shallow Great Barrier Reef of Australia.\nExample 4: \nCretaceous Cedar Mountain Formation in Dinosaur National Park.  A 2002 study of rocks types, textures, and sedimentary features lead a group of researchers to conclude that the paleoenvironment was generally arid to semi-arid terrestrial with occasional flashy, extreme rainfall events. \nhttp://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2002AM/finalprogram/abstract_46144.htm\nExample 5: \nMoraine deposits all over the Great Lakes area are evidence for continental glaciers during the Ice Ages.\n\nQuestion 2: \nNumerical Age dating\nhttp://www.gpc.edu/~pgore/geology/geo102/radio.htm\nhttp://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/radiometric.html\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating \nQuestion 3:\nAs for "what kind of information is given by a rock?" --partly answered here already.  A rock may give information useful for determing one or more of  the following: Age, tectonic setting and history of formation, paleoenvironment, climate information, biological history of life info (if fossiliferous), paleolatitude, etc.
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G: The rock cycle.  See source.
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you can spend years here....zorathustrn granite,mica schists..various volcanics  in  canyons bottem  are  evidence trhat  an old mountain range...some say  as  high as  todays  rockies...[by base measurments]  was  eroded away  by  ice flows.....oceans came  and  left.....on  ariving  plant and  animal life  contribute  fossil remains and  calcite[the  making of limestone]mud stones and shales....the  various  banding  give us  ideas to the duration  andlife  of the times.....basically  the  areas  above the  river  are  sandstones  shales  and  mudstone....but there is  marble and dolomites....explore....thers  gotta  b   pics  on  net  somewhere
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The rocks cycle describes how rocks are formed or change over time.\n\nAll rocks start as magma and cool into igneous rocks.  These are typically eroded into sediments and form sedimentary rocks with cementation and compaction.  These can then be heated and defomed so that minerals change, and these changes form metamorphic rocks.  Metamorphic rocks that are heated so much are eventually turned into magma again so the cycle continues.\n\nThis was only one path on the cycle.  Each part of the cycle is interchangable, and each rock follows its own unique path.  An igneous rock can directly become metamorphic, like in a granitic gneiss, many sedimentary rocks are cycled and recycled dozens of times (e. g. quartzite).  The possibilities are endless.
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Rocks can be divided into three key different groups, which you will need to know for chemistry and geography exams.\n\nThey are:\n- igneous\ne.g. volcanic rocks\n\n- sedimentary\ne.g. those laid down by the action of water, like limestone\n\n- metamorphic\ne.g. those that have been subject to many different processes within the earth and been changed as a result
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Igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks all have the potential to become one of each of the other types of rock through the rock cycle. Igneous and metamorphic rocks can be broken down into rock fragments and cemented to form a sedimentary rock. Sedimentary or igneous rocks can undergo changes in temperature and pressure to form metamorphic rocks. And all three types can be melted and reformed as igneous rocks.
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You've been given exhaustive lists, copied directly from websites without giving proper citation I imagine. \n\nHere is how to think about this question so that you can recall and understand the answer, without just memorizing a bunch of rock names.\n\nUse the rock cycle. Igneous rocks are of two groups, those formed within the earth and those formed by volcanism.  The volcanic rocks will show signs of that volcanism and will be things like black columnar basalt found in massive flows. Obsidian (volcanic glass) that flowed as liquid, scoria and pumice which are like foam because the dissolved gases expanded and made them bubble as they hardened. The other igneous group formed under the earth's surface, and includes things like granite where you can see the crystals that formed as it cooled and solidified. \n\nSedimentary rocks are also in two major informal groups (and a minor third). The first group of sedimentary rocks is clastics. These are formed by weathering, transport and deposition. Weatherings breaks down rocks like igneous, metamorphic and even sedimentary rocks and transport by wind, water, or gravity deposits these rocks as accumulations of clasts, (thus clastics). They become sandstone, shale, and conglomerate. The other major sedimentary group is carbonates. These rocks are 'born' because they are formed by living things. Ocean environments (and lakes too) have many organisms that make shells, corals that make reefs, and algae that make fine carbonate sediments (known as carbonate mud). Even bacteria get into the act helping to precipitate carbonates in many ocean environments. The third group of sedimentary rocks is those that are dissolved by water and deposited by evaporation or precipitation. These include gypsum, halite, sylvite, and many more. \n\nMetamorphic rocks all start life as one of the previous groups. You can metamorphose a granite into a granitic gneiss by burial, pressure and heat. You can metamorphose a basalt into an amphibolite. You can make limestone into marble. Sandstone turns into quartzite.\n\nRemember the rock cycle, associate the rocks as they move through it, and you won't have trouble remembering examples of rock types. Also don’t get tripped up by the difference between a mineral and a rock. Geologists sometimes use the two terms identically, but there is a formal difference between a rock (which is an impure mixture) and a mineral that is chemically consistent.
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Sedimentary rock forms relatively flat. Youngest always on top of the oldest. Just like a stack of newspapers if you were to accumulate them everyday.\n\nFolding from compressional stress is one. Rock is literally pushed together creating anticlines & synclines, upward folding & downward folding arches respectively.\n\nFaults can also do this. This can be accomplished through compressional (pushed together) or tensional (pulled apart) stresses.\n\nI am not too sure about this one but isostatic adjustment could possibly tilt rocks.\n\nHope this helps.\n\n:)
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Yes it did exist. The Mediterranean actually dried up around the end of the Miocene, about 5-6 million years ago. This was known as the Messinian Event. \n\nThere are large thick deposits of evaporite minerals like gypsum and halite (salt) that underlie much of the Mediterranean. These deposits were formed when the water in the Mediterranean dried up. Other evidence exists that shows that the Nile River actually cut down to several hundred feet below present day sea level, which would have been impossible if the sea level were not lowered to that depth. At the start of the Pliocene, about 5.4 million years ago, the barrier at the Strait of Gibraltar broke and the Mediterranean was filled again. \n\nI've studied much of this first hand working around the Mediterranean basin. If you want to see some references go to:\nhttp://www.soton.ac.uk/~imw/messin.htm\nhttp://www.messinianonline.it/