GENERAL GEOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -cuesta, (Spanish: “slope”, ) also called Homoclinal Ridge, physical feature that has a steep cliff or escarpment on one side and a gentle dip or back slope on the other.

Detailed explanation-2: -A homoclinal ridge or strike ridge is a hill or ridge with a moderate, generally between 10° to 30°, sloping backslope.

Detailed explanation-3: -A cuesta (from Spanish cuesta “slope") is a hill or ridge with a gentle slope on one side, and a steep slope on the other. In geology the term is more specifically applied to a ridge where a harder sedimentary rock overlies a softer layer, the whole being tilted somewhat from the horizontal.

Detailed explanation-4: -cuestas, where the layers dip very gradually at 10° to 25° homoclinal ridges dip from 25° to 45°, for example the Magaliesberg hogsback ridges, where the dip slope is very steep, at an angle greater than 45°, for example the Hogsback, north of Alice in the Eastern Cape.

Detailed explanation-5: -Homoclinal ridges (Cotton, 1948) are an intermediate form encompassing a range of dip slopes from, say, 40° to perhaps 4 or 5°. Mesas are essentially flat and are scarp-bounded on all sides. Cuestas then loosely embrace those one-scarp plains where the dips lie between, say, 4–5° and 1/2°.