3
READING COMPREHENSION
Name: _______________________________________________
Course: _____ Date: _______
The rock of ages
PHOTOCOPIABLE MATERIAL
/ © Oxford University Press España, S. A.
Geology 1.º ESO
Millions of years in the making, Vermilion Cliffs National Monument remains a little-known wonder.
(V
ERLYN
K
LINKENBORG
, National Geographic, February 2012).
Buckskin Gulch is famous for its deep canyon, but before I walked into the canyon I encountered a hillside
of red sand that was so smooth, so perfect in form and texture that it reminded me of the sand on a beach
when a wave is going out – it seemed that every grain of sand knew its place.
This was sandstone in the making, still to be solidified and awaiting diagenesis, i.e. the chemical
transformation that will eventually convert it to rock. It was quite simple to distinguish the
stratigraphy
of
the stone on the cliff; but there was another stratigraphy: that of life and biological forms, and an even
more recent stratigraphy that revealed the traces of human beings.
Thousands of years ago, this landscape belonged to indigenous hunter-gatherers, who would have
crossed it innumerable times, and after them different Indian settlements would have inhabited the terrain.
Birds, known today as California condors, lived in higher areas of the cliffs and watched all these
nomadic
or settled humans from above. Generation after generation of these birds have been flying over this
wilderness
for at least 20,000 years, perhaps even longer.
In this area, the Paria River cuts an ever-deeper gorge through the plateau of the same name. On this
plateau, running alongside the canyon, we find the so-called Honeymoon Trail (Highway 89A) parts of
which coincide with the route followed by the eighteenth-century Franciscan explorers as well as the
Mormons who passed through here on their way to Utah to get married.
Activities
1.
Find the meanings of the words in bold.
2.
Circle five key words in the passage that could summarise the information.
