An inlier is an area of older

rocks In geology, rock (or stone) is any naturally occurring solid mass or aggregate of minerals or mineraloid matter. It is categorized by the minerals included, its chemical composition, and the way in which it is formed. Rocks form the Earth's ...

surrounded by younger rocks. Inliers are typically formed by the erosion of overlying younger rocks to reveal a limited exposure of the older underlying rocks. Faulting or folding may also contribute to the observed outcrop pattern. A classic example from Great Britain is that of the inlier of folded Ordovician and

Silurian The Silurian ( ) is a geologic period and system spanning 24.6 million years from the end of the Ordovician Period, at million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Devonian Period, Mya. The Silurian is the shortest period of the Paleozo ...

rocks at Horton in Ribblesdale in North Yorkshire which are surrounded by the younger flat-lying Carboniferous Limestone. The location has long been visited by geology students and experts. Another example from

South Wales South Wales ( cy, De Cymru) is a loosely defined region of Wales bordered by England to the east and mid Wales to the north. Generally considered to include the historic counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, south Wales extends westwards ...

is the

Usk Inlier The Usk Inlier is a domed outcrop of rock strata of Silurian age in Monmouthshire in south-eastern Wales. It is located in the countryside between the towns of Caerleon and Pontypool and the village of Raglan. The longer axis of the dome or ' pe ...

Monmouthshire Monmouthshire ( cy, Sir Fynwy) is a county in the south-east of Wales. The name derives from the historic county of the same name; the modern county covers the eastern three-fifths of the historic county. The largest town is Abergavenny, with ...

where Silurian age rocks are upfolded amidst Old Red Sandstone rocks of

Devonian The Devonian ( ) is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic era, spanning 60.3 million years from the end of the Silurian, million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Carboniferous, Mya. It is named after Devon, England, whe ...

age. A similar outcrop pattern which results from movement on a thrust fault followed by erosion may be termed a window. Conversely an outlier is an area of younger rock surrounded by older rocks. An outlier is typically formed when sufficient erosion of surrounding rocks has taken place to sever the younger rock's original continuity with a larger mass of the same younger rocks nearby. One example from Great Britain is the mass of Triassic sandstone around the

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...

town of

Leek The leek is a vegetable, a cultivar of ''Allium ampeloprasum'', the broadleaf wild leek ( syn. ''Allium porrum''). The edible part of the plant is a bundle of leaf sheaths that is sometimes erroneously called a stem or stalk. The genus ''Alli ...

. This is isolated from the very much larger area of Triassic rocks which characterise the English Midlands and Cheshire Basin, to the south and west respectively, by the surrounding

Carboniferous The Carboniferous ( ) is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic that spans 60 million years from the end of the Devonian Period million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Permian Period, million years ago. The name ''Carbonifero ...

sandstones and

mudstone Mudstone, a type of mudrock, is a fine-grained sedimentary rock whose original constituents were clays or muds. Mudstone is distinguished from '' shale'' by its lack of fissility (parallel layering).Blatt, H., and R.J. Tracy, 1996, ''Petrology. ...

s. Similarly in the Black Mountains of South Wales, the summit area of Pen Cerrig-calch is composed from a suite of Carboniferous age sandstones and limestone. This outcrop is isolated from the main extent of these rocks (which form the South Wales Coalfield and its margins some miles to the south) by the

Old Red Sandstone on which it rests by and by which it is surrounded. Grenvillian inliers located within the Appalachian orogeny include the Pine Mountain Belt in Georgia, the

French Broad The French Broad River is a river in the U.S. states of North Carolina and Tennessee. It flows from near the town of Rosman in Transylvania County, North Carolina, into Tennessee, where its confluence with the Holston River at Knoxville forms ...

Massif along the Tennessee and North Carolina border, Sauratown Mountain Massif in North Carolina, the Shenandoah Massif in Virginia, the Baltimore Gneiss Domes in Maryland, the Honey Brook Upland in Pennsylvania, and the

Reading Prong The Reading Prong is a physiographic subprovince of the New England Uplands section of the New England province of the Appalachian Highlands. The prong consists of mountains made up of crystalline metamorphic rock. Location The Reading Prong st ...

, which extends from Pennsylvania into New York. Other inliers include the Berkshire Massif, which extends from Massachusetts into Vermont, and the Green Mountain Massif in Vermont. Associated Canadian inliers include the Blair River Inlier on

Cape Breton Island Cape Breton Island (french: link=no, île du Cap-Breton, formerly '; gd, Ceap Breatainn or '; mic, Unamaꞌki) is an island on the Atlantic coast of North America and part of the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. The island accounts for 18. ...

, Nova Scotia, the Steel Mountain Terrane on Newfoundland, and the Long Range Inlier on Newfoundland. In West Africa, the Kenieba inlier borders southwestern Mali and eastern Senegal, and associated Birimian gold is found in Kalana and Sabodala respectively. A similar isolated arrangement of rocks produced for example by movement on a thrust fault followed by erosion may be termed a klippe. Whitten D.G.A. & Brooks J.R.V. 1972, ''The Penguin Dictionary of Geology'', London, England

References

{{reflist Petrology Rock formations