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Some friends took us to see these incredible structures in the desert east of Kanab, Utah. What are they, and how did they form?

Answer:

This one was a hard one, and it took quite a bit of research for me to solve it. These are injectities, formed when tremendous vibrations in the earth shake a sand layer to the point that it turns to quicksand. A lower, white layer of sand was shaken by a meteorite imact (Uplift dome in Canyonlands) to the point that it became fluid like quicksand. The weight of the overlying sediment forced it up through the red layer of sand, forming sand geysers or sand blows. The white sand was then cemented by calcite, which is more resistant to weathering than the surrounding red sandstone, which is cemented with iron.

There are similar structures in the sediments of southern Missouri, formed during the New Madrid earthquake of 1812.

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