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Grand Canyon Essay Outline

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Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is one of the greatest natural creations our planet has to offer. Have you ever been mesmerized by the giant cliffs, massive ridges, or the wide array of beautiful colors? If you answered yes, this paper is just for you! After reading this, you will be well educated about the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon is in the northwest corner of Arizona, bordering Utah and Nevada. Did you know that more than five million people visit Grand Canyon National Park per year? The Grand Canyon is roughly 280 miles long, 18 miles wide, and in some places more than 1 mile deep! The volume of this enormous park is estimated to be over 5.5 trillion cubic yards, now that is impressive! While the Colorado River carved this …show more content…

Next, these rocks undergo erosion, which is the process of moving sediments from one place to another. Then, these sediments are deposited all at one place and over time they start to converge and cement as layers which are also known as strata. As time keeps going, new sediments deposit and cement together over old ones forming new layers. This is a repetitive process that eventually build up layers to make up a Sedimentary rock. Approximately 40 major sedimentary rock layers exposed in the Grand Canyon National Park area range in age from about 200 million to nearly 2 billion years old. As you can see, sedimentary rock formation takes an excessive amount of time. So you now know how sedimentary rocks are formed and how the Colorado River majorly eroded all the rock creating canyons. But here comes the million dollar question: where did all the rocks come from? The answer to that question is The Continental Drift. The Earth's continents are not fixed in place, but rather float on a sea of molten rock, meaning that they move around quite a bit. Over 250 million years, that “quite a bit” can turn into land masses moving thousands of miles. Moreover, the Earth is made up of 20 Tectonic plates. Seven of these plates are very large and consist of entire continents or sea floors. The plate that the Grand Canyon is located on is called “The North American Plate”. At one time, this plate was considerably further south and consequently had a very different climate than

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