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devil's marble
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Devils Marbles The Devils Marbles, a group bizarre rock formation located on both sides of Stuart Highway, south of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory. The Devils Marbles are a collection of enormous rounded granite boulders, which are balanced on top of one another. These spectacular boulders are up to 7 metres in diameter. Aboriginal legend refers to these precariously balanced boulders as the eggs of the rainbow Serpent, which was laid there during the dreamtime. The Devils Marbles have been formed by spheroidal weathering. The combination of mechanical weathering (which cracked the rocks) and the chemical weathering (which flaked the surface) formed the remarkable formation. One of the sign explains the process: ¡®These boulders were originally part of a solid mass of coarse grained granite which formed deep within the earth¡¯s surface about 1640 million years ago. Erosion has since stripped away the overlying material and weathering processes have shaped the forms you see here today. As the molten magma cooled and hardened to form granite the mass shrank and cracked and these cracks known as joints effectively split the granite body into a series of tight fitting blocks.¡¯ Because of the annual temperature ranges in the harsh desert from subzero temperatures at night and 40 degrees during the day the corrosion continues to work.
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