The sediments that became the Roraima sandstone were deposited in the shallow waters of an ancient sea — we know this from the sedimentary structures preserved in the rock, including ripple marks and cross-bedding that indicate shallow-water deposition.

We also know that the basin in which these sediments accumulated was part of the ancient configuration of the supercontinent Gondwana — the Southern Hemisphere supercontinent that would eventually break apart to produce South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, India, and the Arabian Peninsula.

Over the approximately 1.7 to 2 billion years since their deposition, the Roraima sediments have been: buried by younger sediments; lithified (converted from loose sediment to rock) by pressure and cementation; exposed by the erosion of the overlying younger material; subjected to additional burial and exposure cycles as the region’s geological history evolved; and finally exposed at the surface in their current configuration by the long-term erosion of the surrounding landscape.

The current exposure — the fact that you can stand on two-billion-year-old sandstone on the summit of Roraima — is the result of this long, complex history.