the.com/outcrop
bedrock breaking through soil's polite cover to show the planet's raw bones underfoot.
means An outcrop is a section of bedrock or rock formation that pokes up through the soil or vegetation to become visible at the earth's surface.
from A transparent English compound of "out" plus "crop" — built from the same family of "crop" meaning to appear, sprout, or come to the surface (as in "crop up"). It surfaced as a geological term in the 19th century, when miners and surveyors needed a word for where a vein or seam "cropped out" of the ground; the noun simply froze that phrase into a single thing.
- geologist's gold
- reveals deep rock without anyone digging a hole
- time machine
- a single face can span millions of years
- climber's friend
- weathered grit makes ideal handholds and footholds
- hidden iceberg
- surface stone hints at vast buried formations below
giant's causeway — 40,000 hexagonal basalt columns exposed on northern ireland coast, formed 60 million years ago
moab fins — parallel ridges of navajo sandstone jutting 300-400 feet above utah desert near arches national park
shiprock — 1,583-foot igneous plug exposed in new mexico, sacred to navajo people, visible 100 miles away