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Despeñaperros (literally, ''(where ) dogs plunge'') is a gorge or canyon carved out by the Despeñaperros River. It is located in the municipality of Santa Elena in the northern portion of the province of Jaén, Spain. The area was declared a natural park by the Andalusian Autonomous Government, primarily for its geology and landscape, but also for its notable flora and fauna. The gorge has steep walls, some more than in height. It has historically been much used by humans as a natural pass through the Sierra Morena, constituting a principal path of connection between Andalusia and the Meseta Central, Castile-La Mancha, and the rest of Spain. Today the Despeñaperros is the route of the Autovía A-4 and of one of Andalusia's most important railway connections to the rest of Spain. Until the 1992 construction of the high-speed Puertollano–Córdoba route ( to the west), this rail route was second in importance only to the Mérida–Seville line in terms of connecting from Andalusia to the rest of Spain. ==Geology== Despeñaperros is located at the eastern limit of the Sierra Morena. The mountain range is oriented east-west, but is crossed by some rivers oriented north-south, so that some zones of the Meseta Central drain south to the Guadalquivir and thence to the Atlantic Ocean, crossing the theoretical natural barrier of the range. One of these is the Despeñaperros River, but the Guarrizas also crosses to the east, forming the beautiful Cimbarra Falls, protected as a ''paraje natural''. The Despeñaperros flows into the Guarrizas about south of the gorge. The vertical walls of the gorge expose geological layers that reveal the history of the surrounding land. The walls are composte of extremely hard vertical walls composed of "Armorican" quartzite, formed in the ocean 500 million years ago in the Paleozoic, which were later covered by more recent materials. In the Carboniferous these were elevated and exposed to erosion, finally to be discovered here and at Cimbarra Falls. According to the prevailing theory, it took some 320 million years of the Variscan orogeny for the continental collision of Laurasia and Gondwana to crush the Armorican continent. In the strata of "Armorican" quartzite some spectacular ripples or crinkles are visible, fossil effects of waves, similar to those that can be observed in any deep, sandy sea, which reveals their origin. Also, fossil traces remain of organisms that left their mark in the sandy sediments some 500 years ago. Among the formations visible in Despeñaperros are several that have been given names of their own: ''El Salto del Fraile'' ("Friar's Leap"), ''Las Correderas'' ("The Slides"), or ''Los Órganos'' ("The Organs"). In this last, the quartzite had been folded until it stood in vertical strata, which erosion then gave the forms of pointed tubes, evoking the musical instrument, the organ. ''Los Órganos'' has status as a natural monument in its own right. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Despeñaperros」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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