After the upthrown block has been worn down to this level,
differential erosion produces fault scarps wherever weak rocks and
resistant rocks are brought in contact along the fault plane; and
the harder rocks, whether on the upthrow or the downthrow side,
emerge in a line of cliffs. Where a fault is so old that no abrupt
scarps appear, its general course is sometimes marked by the line
of division between highland and lowland or hill and plain. Great
faults have sometimes brought ancient crystalline rocks in contact
with weaker and younger sedimentary rocks, and long after erosion
has destroyed all fault scarps the harder crystallines rise in an
upland of rugged or mountainous country which meets the lowland
along the line of faulting.
The vast majority of faults give rise to no surface features. The
faulted region may be old enough to have been baseleveled, or the
rocks on both sides of the line of dislocation may be alike in
their resistance to erosion and therefore have been worn down to a
common slope. The fault may be entirely concealed by the mantle of
waste, and in such cases it can be inferred from abrupt changes in
the character or the strike and dip of the strata where they may
outcrop near it.
The plateau trenched by the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River
exhibits a series of magnificent fault scarps whose general course
is from north to south, marking the edges of the great crust
blocks into which the country has been broken. The highest part of
the plateau is a crust block ninety miles long and thirty-five
miles in maximum width, which has been hoisted to nine thousand
three hundred feet above, sea level. On the east it descends four
thousand feet by a monoclinal fold, which passes into a fault
towards the north. On the west it breaks down by a succession of
terraces faced by fault scarps. The throw of these faults varies
from seven hundred feet to more than a mile. The escarpments,
however, are due in a large degree to the erosion of weaker rock
on the downthrow side.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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