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Geological Formations

Canisp

Inselbergs and Crystalline Monoliths

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Canisp is an isolated mountain in the Assynt district of Sutherland, in the far northwest Highlands of Scotland, reaching 847 meters. It rises from a base of ancient Lewisian gneiss, is built mainly of Torridonian sandstone, and is capped by a band of pale Cambrian quartzite that gives its summit a distinctive light grey crown. Canisp took its present isolated shape when the softer rock around it was stripped away by glaciation, leaving the peak standing above the ice sheet as a nunatak, one of the classic inselbergs of the Assynt landscape.

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