From the middle school geography class, we know that China has four major basins, of which the largest Tarim Basin and the second largest Jungar Basin are in Xinjiang, and the Tianshan Mountains almost divide Xinjiang into two, it is also the watershed of the two major basins, the entire southern Xinjiang region is occupied by the Tarim Basin, China's largest desert - the Taklamakan Desert is in the Tarim Basin, the area of this desert is 330,000 square kilometers, larger than the North China Plain (about 310,000 square kilometers), we all know that here is a vast sand sea, deserted There seems to be nothing else but the desert, but in fact there is a mountain range hundreds of miles long in the western part of this desert, but most friends are unaware of its existence.
This mountain is the Red and White Mountains, also known as Mazatag Mountain, located at the western end of the Taklamakan Desert, west of the Hotan River, in an east-west direction, meandering through the middle of the Great Desert, dividing the desert into two, with a total length of about 229 kilometers, the reason why it is called Red and White Mountain, because the exposed mountain mainly shows red and white, the red part is mudstone and sandstone, and the white part is gypsum and other limestone.
The exposed part of the mountain range is 1300-1570 meters above sea level, and the main peak at the highest point is 1570 meters above sea level, but because the elevation of the western tarim basin has reached 1000 to 1300 meters, the relative height of this mountain is not high, and its highest point is less than 500 meters above the ground, most of which are below 300 meters.
The "sacred mountain" in this sea of sand is inconspicuous on the map, mainly because it is surrounded by yellow sand blown up over the years, and the desert is piled up very high on the side of the mountain, so that some mountain ranges are hidden under the yellow sand, which also makes the mountain body divided into three parts, from east to west, which are red and white mountains, antique mountains, and Roster mountains, but in general, they are often called red and white mountains.
Many friends have not heard of this mountain range, but the ancients have long discovered it, the Tang Dynasty called it "Sacred Mountain", but at that time Tubo called it "Salary Mountain", the Song Dynasty also called it "Tongsheng Mountain", Uyghur language called this mountain "Tomb Mountain", because in ancient times there was a woman named Maljiang Khan who died in the local war and died here.
The remains of an ancient castle built in the Eastern Han Dynasty
So why is there such a mountain range in this vast desert? In fact, it is formed by the collision with the Indian Ocean plate and the Eurasian plate, which is an appendage of the uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and we all know that there are many east-west mountain ranges on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, such as the Himalayas, Tanggula Mountains, Ganges Mountain, Kunlun Mountain, etc. In fact, even the Tianshan Mountains belong to the orogeny of the collision of the two major plates.
These mountains are all in the earth's internal lava activity caused by the activity of the earth's crust squeezing, faults, folds of the earth, the Red and White Mountains are also a small fold, is the Tarim Basin in the east-west appearance of the crustal squeeze uplift, geologists investigate that it was formed in the Cenozoic Eocene, that is, the Himalayan uplift movement that began 50 million years ago, the Tarim Basin uplift zone fissure appeared resurrection uplift activity, thus forming such a mountain range.
Hongbai Mountain is a north-south wing confrontational anticline structure, its presence effectively blocks the sandy soil west of the Hotan River to the south, and due to the abnormal drought here, the weathering of the mountain is very serious, and its red and white mountain color is actually formed by weathering, because before the uplift, it was part of the Guttis Sea, so there are many marine paleontological fossils in the sedimentary rocks of the mountain, in addition to the development of an agate stone ore layer, is a famous agate production area in southern Xinjiang, do you want to pick up a point?
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