Earth before Pangaea; Our Ever Changing Earth; Special Editions; by Ian W. D. Dalziel; 8 Page(s)

The little airplane banked to the right. From my seat on the port side I could see its shadow crossing the ice. The skis made it look rather like a duck coming in to land on water, webbed feet out stretched. As the pilot leveled the aircraft, a huge cliff came into view, the dark brown of its rocks contrasting sharply with the pristine whiteness of ice and snow that faded into the horizon.

The steeply inclined layers of this Precambrian sandstone were distorted by concertinalike folds. I took several photographs. As we rounded the cliff, another came into view. Resting on top of the sandstone was a thin capping of rock almost as white as the background: Cambrian limestone. "Fascinating," I thought as I raised my camera again. "The basic geology here is very similar to that of western North America."