Imagine strips of mountains painted like rainbows. Sounds almost unbelievable, right? There is a stretch of multicoloured hills in China that look like painted rainbows, in Zhangye Danxia National Geological Park.
Just like a tiered cake, the landscape of Zhangye Danxia was formed by layers called strata. Wind and water eroded these layers over time and the sediment that settled hundred over the years. Changes in climate affected the rate of erosion and the appearance of the sediment. Now, when the layers eroded, a new colour of sediment came out forming anothersheet of rock over the hill. This process happened many times, producing different sheets of different hues.
We know that mountains are formed when the Earth’s tectonic plates push against each other. Around 50 million years ago, the plate that carried India pushed against the one that carried the rest of Asia. The collision was very powerful and as a result, a large mass of colourful hills popped out of the surface of where Zhangye Danxia is today.
Picture Credit : Google