Klippe

 ( Structural Geology ) 

A klippe (German language for cliff or crag; plural klippen or klippes) is a geological feature of thrust fault terrains. The klippe is the remnant portion of a nappe after erosion has removed connecting portions of the nappe. This process results in an outlier of exotic, often nearly horizontally translated strata overlying strata.

• Chief Mountain, Montana
• Mount Yamnuska, Alberta
• The Rock of Gibraltar
• Acropolis of Athens, Greece
• Bac Grillera, Catalonia, Spain. The nappe of which this klippe once formed part had its root in the northern part of the Pyrenees mountain range.Marc Calvet, Yanni Gunnell, Bernard Laumonier. Denudation history and palaeogeography of the Pyrenees and their peripheral basins: an 84-million-year geomorphological perspective. Earth Science Reviews, 2021. See map, page 195. Online at insu.hal.science.Estevez, A. (1968). Tectónica de las unidades alóctonas del Castell de Bac Grillera (Pirineo oriental, España). Acta Geológica Hispànica, t. III, núm. 5, p. 138-141. Online at revistes.ub.edu.

Klippes may also be found in the Pre-Alps of Switzerland and some of the isolated mountains in Assynt, Sutherland, in NW Scotland.Whittow, John (1984). Dictionary of Physical Geography. London: Penguin, 1984, p. 294. .

Beckov Castle, Slovakia, from below.jpg|Beckov Castle, Slovakia, perched on a limestone klippe Serra Bac de Grillera.jpg|Serra de Bac Grillera, Catalonia, Spain (Lower Jurassic limestone resting on younger autochthonous Tertiary period formations)