Lecture: The Making of the Mendip Hills
Speaker:
Date and Time
19:00 -
Location
Virtual Talk via Zoom
Lecture Description
A 200 million year, 6,000 km journey from the southern tropics across the equator into northern latitudes.
The Making of the Mendip Hills is focussed on the area around City of Wells, which sits in a beautiful position at junction between the Somerset Levels and the Mendip Hills, with the backdrop of Pen Hill that forms part of the Mendip AONB. In this small area rocks from four geological periods are found – Devonian, Carboniferous, Triassic and Jurassic. These rocks tell a story of a ~ 6,000 km journey from the southern tropics across the equator into northern sub tropics. The talk will also cover the controversy over a sequence of Coal Measure rocks occurring in Ebbor Gorge; the only record of a metamorphic rock in the Mendips; and an excavation to provide the first exposure of a thrust fault in the Mendip overthrust belt.