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Bedding plane on weathered limestone cliff
Bedding plane on a weathered cliff. Running diagonally (at centre) is a tilted bedding plane, with a climber seen ascending it. The bedding plane was exposed by weathering because the rock at this level is particularly hard (due to a bed of the normal Carboniferous limestone being turned to harder dolomitic limestone). Weathering has caused the cliff to break up into blocks or steps at left and right. The whole rock succession is steeply dipping. The original horizontal bedding planes (which represent successive seabeds during the Lower Carboniferous, 350 million years ago), have been tilted by Earth movements. Photographed at Burrington Combe in the Mendips, Avon, England.
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