The Colored Canyon

Intense iron-oxide staining of Cambrian sandstones (485–540 million years old) of the Umm Ishrin Formation, exposed in the Colored Canyon of southern Jordan. These sandstones are also exposed at the façade of Al-Khazneh in Petra, along the cliffs of Wadi Rum, and in the narrow and spectacular canyon of the Arnon River. In Israel, the Umm Ishrin Formation is laterally equivalent to the Shkhoret and Netafim formations, which are exposed, for example, in the Red Canyon of Nahal Shani near Eilat.

The Umm Ishrin Formation is part of an exceptionally thick sandstone succession that covers vast areas of North Africa and Arabia. This succession accumulated along the margins of the Gondwana supercontinent after the continental collisions that led to the assembly of Gondwana had ended, and the mountain belts formed during those collisions underwent prolonged erosion. These erosional processes produced an extremely low-relief, truncated landscape (the Precambrian peneplain) extending over thousands of kilometers, which served as the basement for the accumulation of thick sandstone sequences and weathering products.