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What is unique about the Stone Forest?
Stretched across more than 180 square miles in China’s Yunnan province, the giant limestone pillars of the Shilin Stone Forest are sometimes called the “first natural wonder of the world,” carved by rain, wind and seismic activity for millions of years.
What does the Stone Forest look like?
Stone forests are vast landscapes of massive limestone rocks that almost look like giant petrified trees, giving the illusion of a forest of stone. The most famous stone forests can be found in China and Madagascar, but are seen dispersed all over the world, and each have rich cultural significance.
What is the Stone Forest made of?
The main strata in the Stone Forest area include the carbonate rocks of the Qixia Formation and Maokou Formations of Lower Permian age. These units average 505 m thick and consist of shallow sea platform facies, massive dolomites, bio-clastic limestones, calcarenites and calcilutites.
What kind of landform is the Stone Forest in China?
Stone Forest. Natural karst limestone formations create Shilin, or the Stone Forest, in Kunming, China. Karst is a landscape shaped by the erosion of limestone. The karst landscape of Shilin was formed about 270 million years ago.
Is the Stone Forest man made?
The Stone Forest is not man-made, but a fantastic natural phenomenon. Geologists theorize that the various limestone shapes were formed due to 270 million years of sedimentation, pressure, uplift, and erosion. In prehistoric times, the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau was a vast ocean.
Why is Stone Forest famous?
The Stone Forest (aka Shilin) took about 270 million years of erosion and seismic activity to create and spans a space of about 100,000 acres. In fact, the forest has been internationally acclaimed as the “Museum of Stone Forest karst” due to its diverse and plentiful karst types.
How tall is Stone Forest?
Unsurprisingly, the Stone Forest National Park is very popular amongst tourists who are keen to marvel at its unique rock formations, some of which measure up to 130ft (40m) in height.
Is the Stone Forest man made or natural?
How tall is the Stone Forest?
What animals are in the Stone Forest?
Within its confines, one can find 11 different species of lemur, more than 100 species of birds, 45 species of reptiles, several types of bats, and unique animals such as the fossa, the ring-tailed mongoose, and the leaf-tailed gecko.
What created the Stone Forest in China?
The area was long ago covered by an ancient sea that deposited thousands of meters of calciferous shells that would one day become limestone and dolomite. This deep layer was later uplifted and weathered to become the stone forest.