Anyone who has ever visited the Cap de Formentor is well aware of the beauty of its landscape, with tall vertical cliffs that plunge into the Mediterranean Sea.
From a geological point of view, it is a splendid spot for observing very clearly how the Serra de Tramuntana was formed.
The special characteristics of this part of Mallorca are easy to appreciate from three viewpoints located along the road leading to the cape: Es Colomer, Punta d’en Tomàs and the Lighthouse of the Cap de Formentor.
Cliffs seen from the viewpoint of Es Colomer (left) and from the Punta d’en Tomàs (right).
Like the great majority of the massifs in the region, the material which composes the cliffs of the Cap de Formentor corresponds to massive limestones of the Lower Jurassic (200 - 175 Ma), rocks with a special hardness and consistency.
During the Lower Miocene (25 - 15 Ma), these rocks, along with other formations present here, folded and piled up within a geological process known as the Alpine Orogeny. As a consequence, Mallorca has remained structured into a series of elevated zones (horst) and depressions (graben). The highest of the horsts is obviously that of the Serra de Tramuntana, where the tectonic forces acted most intensely.
The most recurrent and characteristic structure of these reliefs is the fault
<div class="ql-editor"><p class="ql-align-justify">Inverse fault in which the stratification plane.</p><p><br></p></div>">dip of the fault plane is at a low angle (generally less than 45<sup> o</sup>). It tends to refer to large-scale (regional) structures.</p><p><br></p></div>">thrust fault, which consists in the piling-up of large masses of rock by means of a type of fracture called an inverse fault.When several thrust faults pile up on top of each other like the tiles of a roof (a very common case in this Serra), they are called imbricated thrust faults. Their arrangement is marked by the direction of the thrust of the tectonic forces and they are the causal factors of the form of the reliefs.
Formation of imbricated thrust faults due to compression forces. Note the shortening of the terrestrial crust.
As a result of the thrust faults, the north-west side of the range is vertical while the south-east side presents gentle slopes
The northern part of the Serra de Tramuntana seen from the Lighthouse of the Cap de Formentor.
