Well known example of the Tessellated Pavement at Eaglehawk Neck on the Tasman Peninsula of Tasmania. This picture, one of my better ones from the recent shoots, highlights the ‘Pan‘ formation.
A tessellated pavement is a rare erosional feature formed in flat-lying sedimentary rock formations that occurs on some ocean shores. It is so named because the rock has fractured into regular rectangular blocks that appear like tiles, or tessellations. The cracks (or joints) were formed when the rock fractured through the action of stress on the Earth’s crust and were subsequently modified by sand and wave action.
The pan formation is a series of concave depressions in the rock, and typically forms further away from the seashore. As a result, this part of the pavement dries out more at low tide, and allows salt crystals to develop further, resulting in salt forming on the surface, and eroding the surface more quickly than at the joints. As a result, the surface of the “pans” erodes more quickly, while the joints erode more slowly, resulting in the concave pan.
[Excerpt: Wikipedia]
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