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North Pennines
The North Pennines are the northernmost section of the Pennines, a range of hills which run north–south through northern England. They run along the border between County Durham and Northumberland in the east and Cumbria in the west, and are bounded to the north by the Tyne Valley and to the south by the Stainmore Gap. Much of the region is moorland, and it contains significant industrial archaeology. The North Pennines have been designated a national landscape and a UNESCO Global Geopark. Several major rivers rise in the North Pennines, including the Tees and Wear. The part of the area in County Durham, including Teesdale and Weardale, is known as the Durham Dales. Geology The North Pennines are formed from a succession largely of sedimentary rocks laid down during the Palaeozoic era, later intruded by the Whin Sill and affected by glaciation during the Quaternary period. Mud and volcanic ash deposited during the Ordovician and Silurian periods were buried and s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cauldron Snout
Cauldron Snout is a waterfall, cascade on the upper reaches of the River Tees in Northern England, immediately below the dam of the Cow Green Reservoir. It is well upstream of the High Force waterfall, and is on the boundary between County Durham and Cumbria (historically Westmorland), England. The waterfall lies within the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and European Geopark. It is more a long cataract than a waterfall, and at long, reckoned to be the longest waterfall in England. It is impressive by the scale of the British landscape, and attracts a lot of visitors, despite the walk from the nearest car park at Cow Green Reservoir. No fee is payable . The Pennine Way takes in Cauldron Snout. The falls are caused by the upper Tees passing over dolerite steps of the Whin Sill. In art and literature An engraving of a painting of the cataract by Thomas Allom was published in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1835 with a poetical illustration thereon, Ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Durham Dales
The Durham Dales are a series of valleys in the west of County Durham, North East England. They are the Durham portion of the North Pennines, the northernmost part of the Pennine uplands. The principal valleys are Teesdale in the south and Weardale in the north, each of which has several side valleys, including Baldersdale, Lunedale, and Rook Hope. The part of Teesdale south of the Tees was historically in the North Riding of Yorkshire. Geography The Durham Dales consist primarily of a series of high exposed moorlands, hills and mountains, a number exceeding a height of 2,000 ft above sea level, along with the valleys or dales, from which the area gets its name. These valleys include Teesdale and Weardale. The area covers roughly one third of County Durham and is its least populous area. Settlements There are just a few market towns within the area—Barnard Castle, Consett, Middleton-in-Teesdale, Stanhope, Tow Law, and Wolsingham,—though some also consider th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic rock. Foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering, but instead is in planes perpendicular to the direction of metamorphic compression. The foliation in slate, called " slaty cleavage", is caused by strong compression in which fine-grained clay forms flakes to regrow in planes perpendicular to the compression. When expertly "cut" by striking parallel to the foliation with a specialized tool in the quarry, many slates display a property called fissility, forming smooth, flat sheets of stone which have long been used for roofing, floor tiles, and other purposes. Slate is frequently grey in color, especially when seen ''en masse'' covering roofs. However, slate occurs in a variety of colors even from a single locality; for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caledonian Orogeny
The Caledonian orogeny was a mountain-building cycle recorded in the northern parts of the British Isles, the Scandinavian Caledonides, Svalbard, eastern Greenland and parts of north-central Europe. The Caledonian orogeny encompasses events that occurred from the Ordovician to Early Devonian, roughly 490–390 million years ago ( Ma). It was caused by the closure of the Iapetus Ocean when the Laurentia and Baltica continents and the Avalonia microcontinent collided. The orogeny is named for Caledonia, the Latin name for Scotland. The term was first used in 1885 by Austrian geologist Eduard Suess for an episode of mountain building in northern Europe that predated the Devonian period. Geologists like Émile Haug and Hans Stille saw the Caledonian event as one of several episodic phases of mountain building that had occurred during Earth's history.McKerrow ''et al.'' (2002) Current understanding has it that the Caledonian orogeny encompasses a number of tectonic phases th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fold (geology)
In structural geology, a fold is a stack of originally planar surfaces, such as sedimentary rock, sedimentary stratum, strata, that are bent or curved (''"folded"'') during permanent deformation (engineering), deformation. Folds in rocks vary in size from microscopic crinkles to mountain-sized folds. They occur as single isolated folds or in periodic sets (known as ''fold trains''). wikt:synsedimentary, Synsedimentary folds are those formed during sedimentary deposition. Folds form under varied conditions of stress (physics), stress, pore pressure, and temperature gradient, as evidenced by their presence in soft sedimentary rock, sediments, the full spectrum of metamorphic rocks, and even as primary flow structures in some igneous rocks. A set of folds distributed on a regional scale constitutes a fold belt, a common feature of orogeny, orogenic zones. Folds are commonly formed by shortening of existing layers, but may also be formed as a result of displacement on a non-planar f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fault (geology)
In geology, a fault is a Fracture (geology), planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of Rock (geology), rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust (geology), crust result from the action of Plate tectonics, plate tectonic forces, with the largest forming the boundaries between the plates, such as the megathrust faults of subduction, subduction zones or transform faults. Energy release associated with rapid movement on active faults is the cause of most earthquakes. Faults may also displace slowly, by aseismic creep. A ''fault plane'' is the Plane (geometry), plane that represents the fracture surface of a fault. A ''fault trace'' or ''fault line'' is a place where the fault can be seen or mapped on the surface. A fault trace is also the line commonly plotted on geological maps to represent a fault. A ''fault zone'' is a cluster of parallel faults. However, the term is also used for the zone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silurian
The Silurian ( ) is a geologic period and system spanning 23.5 million years from the end of the Ordovician Period, at million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Devonian Period, Mya. The Silurian is the third and shortest period of the Paleozoic Era, and the third of twelve periods of the Phanerozoic Eon. As with other geologic periods, the rock beds that define the period's start and end are well identified, but the exact dates are uncertain by a few million years. The base of the Silurian is set at a series of major Ordovician–Silurian extinction events when up to 60% of marine genera were wiped out. One important event in this period was the initial establishment of terrestrial life in what is known as the Silurian-Devonian Terrestrial Revolution: vascular plants emerged from more primitive land plants, dikaryan fungi started expanding and diversifying along with glomeromycotan fungi, and three groups of arthropods ( myriapods, arachnids and hexapods) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ordovician
The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and System (geology), system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era (geology), Era, and the second of twelve periods of the Phanerozoic Eon (geology), Eon. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period Megaannum, Ma (million years ago) to the start of the Silurian Period Ma. The Ordovician, named after the Celtic Britons, Welsh tribe of the Ordovices, was defined by Charles Lapworth in 1879 to resolve a dispute between followers of Adam Sedgwick and Roderick Murchison, who were placing the same Rock (geology), rock beds in North Wales in the Cambrian and Silurian systems, respectively. Lapworth recognized that the fossil fauna in the disputed Stratum, strata were different from those of either the Cambrian or the Silurian systems, and placed them in a system of their own. The Ordovician received international approval in 1960 (forty years after Lapworth's death), when it was adopted as an official per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Volcanic Ash
Volcanic ash consists of fragments of rock, mineral crystals, and volcanic glass, produced during volcanic eruptions and measuring less than 2 mm (0.079 inches) in diameter. The term volcanic ash is also often loosely used to refer to all explosive eruption products (correctly referred to as '' tephra''), including particles larger than 2 mm. Volcanic ash is formed during explosive volcanic eruptions when dissolved gases in magma expand and escape violently into the atmosphere. The force of the gases shatters the magma and propels it into the atmosphere where it solidifies into fragments of volcanic rock and glass. Ash is also produced when magma comes into contact with water during phreatomagmatic eruptions, causing the water to explosively flash to steam leading to shattering of magma. Once in the air, ash is transported by wind up to thousands of kilometres away. Due to its wide dispersal, ash can have a number of impacts on society, including animal a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quaternary
The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), as well as the current and most recent of the twelve periods of the Phanerozoic eon. It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.58 million years ago to the present. The Quaternary Period is divided into two epochs: the Pleistocene (2.58 million years ago to 11.7 thousand years ago) and the Holocene (11.7 thousand years ago to today); a proposed third epoch, the Anthropocene, was rejected in 2024 by IUGS, the governing body of the ICS. The Quaternary is typically defined by the Quaternary glaciation, the cyclic growth and decay of continental ice sheets related to the Milankovitch cycles and the associated climate and environmental changes that they caused. Research history In 1759 Giovanni Arduino proposed that the geological strata of northern Italy could be divided into four succ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glaciation
A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate between glacial periods. The Last Glacial Period ended about 15,000 years ago. The Holocene is the current interglacial. A time with no glaciers on Earth is considered a greenhouse climate state. Quaternary Period Within the Quaternary, which started about 2.6 million years before present, there have been a number of glacials and interglacials. At least eight glacial cycles have occurred in the last 740,000 years alone. Changes in atmospheric and associated radiative forcing were among the primary drivers of globally cold glacial and warm interglacial climates, with changes in ocean physical circulation, biological productivity and seawater acid-base chemistry likely causing most of the recorded changes Penultimate Glacial Period The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whin Sill
The Whin Sill or Great Whin Sill is a tabular layer of the igneous rock dolerite in County Durham, Northumberland and Cumbria in the northeast of England. It lies partly in the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and partly in Northumberland National Park and stretches from Teesdale northwards towards Berwick. It is one of the key natural features of the North Pennines. A major outcrop is at the High Force waterfall in Teesdale. Bamburgh Castle, Dunstanburgh Castle, Lindisfarne Castle and stretches of Hadrian's Wall all strategically take advantage of high, rocky cliff lines formed by the sill. The Whin Sill complex is usually divided into three components: Holy Island Sill, Alnwick Sill and the Hadrian's Wall-Pennines Sill, which were created by separate magma flows, but at about the same time. The Little Whin Sill is an associated formation to the south, in Weardale. Derivation of name Much of the early study of geology began in the British Isles ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
