Posted: 07/31/13 EDT | Updated: 08/02/13 EDT
Rainbow Mountains In China's Danxia Landform Geological Park
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The mountains are part of the Zhangye Danxia Landform Geological Park in China. Layers of different colored sandstone and minerals were pressed together over 24 million years and then buckled up by tectonic plates, according to the Telegraph.
Here's a photo showing some detail of the rich "layer cake" action going on.
There's a similar formation in British Columbia called the Rainbow Range formed from a mixture of volcanic rock and various minerals.
While the photos are certainly incredible, there could be some slight photo manipulation going on to make the colors pop a bit more than they would naturally. This Flickr photo could be a more accurate representation, but still, the mountains are amazing.
The formations were shaped into the flowing valleys after thousands of years of rain and wind, and the region has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2010.
Take a look at some more incredible photos of the range below, and tweet us @HuffPostGreen if you have any of your own!
The Danxia landform (Chinese: 丹霞地貌; pinyin: dānxiá dìmào) refers to various landscapes found in southeast and southwest China that "consist of a red bed characterized by steep cliffs".[1] It is a unique type of petrographic geomorphology found in China. Danxia landform is formed from red-coloured sandstones and conglomerates of largely Cretaceous age. The landforms look very much like karst topography that forms in areas underlain by limestones, but since the rocks that form danxia are sandstones and conglomerates, they have been called "pseudo-karst" landforms.
source : http://www.boredpanda.com/amazing-places/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danxia_landform
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/31/rainbow-mountains-china-danxia-landform_n_3683840.html
