Twenty-four million years of layers, tipped on end and cut open
Hills striped in red, orange, yellow and green as if they had been painted in bands, hundreds of metres tall and smooth as poured wax. It took about 24 million years: sandstone and mineral layers laid down one over another, then tilted on end by the same tectonic push that raised the Himalaya, then cut by wind and rain into towers, pillars and ravines that show the layering edge-on. The colours are the different minerals in each bed. It covers 322 square kilometres in Gansu, became a national geopark on 16 June 2016 and a UNESCO Global Geopark in 2019. Chinese National Geographic put it among the six most beautiful landforms in the country in 2009. Linze and Sunan Yugur, Gansu Province.
Gansu, China
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