The Bungle Bungle Range, within Purnululu National Park in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, is famous for its cluster of striped, beehive-shaped sandstone domes. The domes are carved from a roughly 350-million-year-old Devonian-age quartz sandstone that was tectonically uplifted and then dissected by streams over about the last 20 million years. Their distinctive alternating orange and grey banding comes from differences in the porosity of individual sedimentary layers: darker grey bands are more porous and retain enough moisture to support a thin surface crust of cyanobacteria and clay, while less porous orange bands lack that crust and are instead oxidized red-orange by iron minerals within the rock. The range was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003.
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Protected StatusUNESCO World Heritage Site 1 Connections
Associated With
Devonian, Eras Source Wikipedia: Purnululu National Park, Wikipedia
Source Wikipedia: Purnululu National Park, Wikipedia
Caused By
Source Wikipedia: Purnululu National Park, Wikipedia
Source Wikipedia: Purnululu National Park, Wikipedia
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1. Wikipedia: Purnululu National Park, Wikipedia
Opening paragraph
The Purnululu National Park is a World Heritage Site in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia.
Associated With: Devonian, Article text, age Devonian
The Bungle Bungles were a plateau of Devonian sandstone, carved into a mass of beehive-shaped towers with regularly alternating, dark gray bands of cyanobacterial crust (single cell photosynthetic organisms).
Associated With: Sandstone, Article text, rock Sandstone
The Bungle Bungles were a plateau of Devonian sandstone, carved into a mass of beehive-shaped towers with regularly alternating, dark gray bands of cyanobacterial crust (single cell photosynthetic organisms).
Caused By: Erosion, Article text, process Erosion
These outstanding examples of cone karst that have eroded over a period of 20 million years are of great beauty and exceptional geological interest.
Caused By: Karstification, Article text, process Karstification
These outstanding examples of cone karst that have eroded over a period of 20 million years are of great beauty and exceptional geological interest.
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