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Geological Formations

Enchanted Rock

Inselbergs and Crystalline Monoliths

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Enchanted Rock is a large pink granite dome in central Texas, part of the Llano Uplift and one of the largest granite domes in the United States. It formed from magma that intruded and crystallized underground roughly 1.1 billion years ago, making it one of the oldest exposed rock bodies in North America, and was later exposed at the surface as hundreds of millions of years of erosion stripped away the overlying rock. The dome shows pronounced exfoliation, in which curved sheets of granite peel away from the surface as pressure is released from rock that once lay deeply buried; this ongoing process continues to shape the dome and gives it its smooth, rounded profile.

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