Astounding Geological Rock Formations

Third Part in a series on astounding geological rock formations from around the world. The geologic world we see today—from rock canyons to moqui marbles—is billions of years in the making. For time incomprehensible, magma flowed and rocks took form. Minerals aggregated. Floods cut earth to shape basins and canyons, now carved artwork of dirt and crumbling stone. Surprisingly the scenes of the rock formations look like they belong to some other planet ...

Bisti Badlands, New Mexico

A remote no-man's land administered by the Bureau of Land Management, the Bisti Badlands in central New Mexico cover about 4,000 acres of high desert. In this expanse there are hoodoos, swirled clay hills, layered stone, coal, silt, mud, shale, and other "phantasmagoric formations of earth and stone," as one guidebook puts it. Looks like Mars to me...

Nambung National Park, Australia

Nambung's famous pinnacles are eerie limestone formations built over eons from shells and other accumulated sediment of an ancient sea. Once buried in deep sand, the pinnacles now stand exposed after wind has blown the desert away grain by grain to reveal the nature sculpture art.

Atacama Desert, Chile

Among the driest places on the planet, the Atacama Desert is a plateau on South America's Pacific coast stocked with endless weird formations in salt flats, basins, planes of sand and lava flows.

Giant's Causeway, Northern Ireland

Tens of thousands of interlocking basalt columns form ocean-side displays unique enough to garner World Heritage Site status by the United Nations. The site's hexagonal posts, formed from solidified lava, represent stair steps tumbling into the foamy sea.

Devil's Marbles, Australia

Immense egg-shape boulders called Karlu Karlu sit exposed in desert air at the Devils Marbles Conservation Reserve in the Northern Territory of Australia. A complex geologic origin involves granite spheres formed by magma then later lifting to become exposed as the crust moved and sandstone eroded away.

Etretat, Seine-Maritime, Normandy, France

Etretat's chalk cliffs, famous for their natural arches and gleaming prominence above the Atlantic waves.

Hopewell Rocks, New Brunswick

Tidal erosion in the Bay of Fundy has cut these lopsided rock fins, sometimes called the Flowerpot Rocks. Sedimentary conglomerate and sandstone are no match to the ocean's persistency, which submerges the base of these formations twice a day.

Perce Rock, Canada

Quebec's iconic Perce Rock, included among the "Seven Wonders of Canada" by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, is an island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence that boasts a gigantic natural rock arch. Visitors can kayak around the limestone formation, which is more than 1,000-feet-long and almost 300-feet-tall, or walk to the rock on a spit of land that emerges in low tide.

Wave Rock, Australia

This outcrop in Western Australia curls like a wave that's about to crash. It is actually a 50-foot-tall formation of granite that eroded underground before becoming exposed to air and weathering smooth. It's one of several similar "wave rocks" near the town of Hyden. Really awesome! Like giant waves frozen in time...

Reference: Forbes Traveler