Multistage landform development, with particular reference to a cratonic bornhardt

Abstract

The multistage concept is explained and illustrated, with particular reference to a bornhardt from the southern Yilgarn Block of southwestern Western Australia. Hyden Rock is a complex inselberg developed on Archaean granite. It probably developed through fracture-controlled differential subsurface weathering in the Cretaceous, followed in the Eocene by erosion of the lateritic regolith and exposure of the massive compartment as an inselberg. But the variations in fracture density to which Hyden Rock owes its origin developed long before the Cretaceous, probably in the latest Archaean or earliest Proterozoic. The relief amplitude of the residual has increased through the Cainozoic. A rich assemblage of minor forms (basins, runnels, tafoni, pitting, displaced slabs, A-tents) is developed on the bornhardt and, though their mode of development varies, the origin of many can be traced back to magmatic and tectonic events of Late Archaean and earliest Proterozoic times. Others were initiated at the weathering front during the later Mesozoic, and many have developed since exposure, beginning in the Eocene. A few are related to tectonism during the later Quaternary. The residual is a multistage form. Its development as a major landform can be traced back some 120 million years, and the structures to which the outlines of the bornhardt, and those related to several minor features, originated in later Archaean times. The geomorphological evolution of landforms of the shield lands and cratons extends over vast ages and cannot be regarded as a geologically recent phenomenon.