The Miocene dark ages
Abstract The Miocene period is notable across Britain and Ireland for having left no marine geological formation, even while sea-levels were higher than today. The Miocene is Britain’s ‘geological dark ages’. Stone from all the other geological periods can be found exposed in the walls of British ch...
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| Format: | Book Part |
| Language: | English |
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Oxford University PressOxford
2024
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| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198871620.003.0008 https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/58292304/oso-9780198871620-chapter-8.pdf |
| Summary: | Abstract The Miocene period is notable across Britain and Ireland for having left no marine geological formation, even while sea-levels were higher than today. The Miocene is Britain’s ‘geological dark ages’. Stone from all the other geological periods can be found exposed in the walls of British churches, houses and barns. However, the best we can find for the Miocene is boxstones, comprising sands lithified by the dissolution of an interior fossil bone or shell. In the collection of coprolites as a source of phosphate for fertiliser on the eastern edge of Suffolk, boxstones were considered value-less waste (and used to repair some barn walls). The Miocene saw intense tectonic activity around the Mediterranean including towards the end of the Miocene the collision of the Italian promontory into western Europe, raising the Jura mountains. At the same time the underwater continental margin to the northwest of Scotland was exposed to compressional tectonics caused by an acceleration in the spreading rate in the Norwegian Sea. Between these two forcefields we have evidence of compressional tectonics raising a number of prominent NE-SW oriented reverse faults around the Irish Sea including the Snowdonia Front. Other faults likely to have been active at this period include the Wimbledon/Streatham/Greenwich Fault under southeast London and another beneath Windsor Castle. |
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