Roter Sandstein

Discover the fascinating world of red sandstones! red sandstones, a truly unique chapter of our earth, tell a story of weathering and formations found on every continent. this book takes you on a journey to the south-west of Germany and the north-east of France, where the transition from coarse boulder rubble to coarse sandstone and further downstream to finer sandstone and clays becomes visible at the edge of a former mountain range. Learn how briefly flowing rivers transported mountain debris into inland depressions and towards the sea, how sandstorms spread fine sand and dust over large areas, and how winds piled up sand in dunes and plains. In this process, rock fragments were chipped off rocks, rounded into grains, sorted and deposited in different ways. The diversity of the formation of these sandstones is reflected in the layers and formations. The red colour gives them a common, distinctive feature. Each occurrence of red sandstone is unique with its own site-specific characteristics. These fascinating rocks are mostly hidden, so that when hiking in the low mountain ranges we only get to see topsoil above the surface layers. These layers consist largely of the weathering product of the red sandstones, and they too deserve a closer look: the sand and dust that builds up the red sandstones has emerged from other rocks weathered into red earth and was deposited partly as a formation of similar sandstones and partly as sandstone layers with varying properties. As the earth's surface sank to greater depths, several hundred to over a thousand metres of sandstone were accumulated during the geological epochs. As rock formation processes changed, these sandstones were lifted out again and exposed to weathering on the surface. Here we see them in various forms.