Mountain range of Australia

Laid out in the mountain range with a wide flat valleys, gradually began to take shape ostrovopodobnye hill in the same way as happened with the Sugar Loaf in Rio - de - Janeiro. From afar you can see that parallel bell-shaped mountains are separated from the powerful skorlupovidnye cover or crust. The most extensive of them is called "Hnost kangaroo." Its thickness is about, and the length over 200 m at the foot of cover is not fitted to the slope, but separated from it by a narrow slit through which shines through the sky. In addition, the surface of the mountain is covered with countless skorlupovidnymi individually about 1 cm thick and an area of ??several decimeters. Under the more stable outer layer or coating often small niches weathering termed "tafoni" (Corsican name similar forms). At the foot of the mountain under wired more stable slopes are often formed the cave-like forms of karst, but here they are not developed in the limestone, and silicate arkoses! Perhaps some of these unusual and original microforms are seen earlier than those of current climatic conditions. H. Bremer, based on the unequal application of these forms of one another, tried to reconstruct the time sequence of changes in climate. Painted them a picture represented by the following: 1) formation of warm-humid climate (vykolokoloobraznoy mountains formed of red laterite weathering) 2) formation tafoni warm, variably - wet climate 3) the formation of small, warm, dry climate of 4) formation of semi-warm climate. The first stage should be attributed to early Tertiary time. Then the mountain Ayers - Rock, apparently, was directly in the zone of the formation of red soil that gripped wet and moist tropics and subtropics. The fourth stage is necessary for the modern period. The assumption that during the Tertiary period the climate was wetter than at present, confirmed by other data, such as a peculiar distribution of some plant and animal species is near Alice - Springs. In the Valley of the Palms "Plateau McDonnell, oddly enough, with palm trees (Livistonia mariae) and tree ferns (Encephalartos macdonnelli), whose closest relatives are found on the east coast of Queensland. This also applies to tsentralnoavstraliyskoy tree frog (Hyla gilleni). Apparently, one can assume that in the more humid periods are now so fragmented areas with fauna and flora have been some - in some way connected. In any case, these data show that Australia has acquired a feature to be the most arid continent of the globe in relatively recent times, in contrast to North African desert whose character was formed much earlier. Whatever it was, weathered face Ayers Rock - Rock chiseled chisel not centuries, and tens of millions of years.