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The Ercall
The Ercall is a small hill in Shropshire, England, between The Wrekin and Wellington. It is an internationally important geological site, part of The Wrekin and The Ercall Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). The hill is managed by Shropshire Wildlife Trust and includes 540 million year old ripple beds and ancient pre-Cambrian lava flows in exposed quarries. Quartzite from the neighbouring Wrekin is also visible. The Ercall bears the marks of extensive quarrying, although the quarries are now disused, safe and open to the public. When the M54 motorway was constructed in 1974, the road was built through the northern end of the hill. Flora and fauna The woods of the forest are important for various butterfly species. In the summer, the Ercall Woods which line the hill are a favourite habitat for the speckled wood and during spring when the forest is laden with bluebells, the dingy skipper can arrive in great numbers. The exposed quarries are popular with other butterfly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shropshire
Shropshire (; abbreviated SalopAlso used officially as the name of the county from 1974–1980. The demonym for inhabitants of the county "Salopian" derives from this name.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England, on the England–Wales border, border with Wales. It is bordered by Cheshire to the north-east, Staffordshire to the east, Worcestershire to the south-east, Herefordshire to the south, and the Welsh principal areas of Powys and Wrexham County Borough, Wrexham to the west and north-west respectively. The largest settlement is Telford, while Shrewsbury is the county town. The county has an area of and a population of 498,073. Telford in the east and Shrewsbury in the centre are the largest towns. Shropshire is otherwise rural, and contains market towns such as Oswestry in the north-west, Market Drayton in the north-east, Bridgnorth in the south-east, and Ludlow in the south. For Local government i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heath Bedstraw
''Galium saxatile'' or heath bedstraw is a species of flowering plant in the family Rubiaceae. It is related to cleavers. ''Galium saxatile'' is a perennial mat-forming herb, found on grassland, moors, heaths and woods. It can reach a height of , and flowers in the UK from May to August. The stems are hairless and four sided. Its leaves are long, with 6–8 per whorl, and are lanceolate or obovate in shape. The mountain ringlet butterfly uses the plant for nectar. ''Galium saxatile'' avoids calcareous substrate and mainly grows on light Siliceous soil, siliceous soils and is widespread across much of northern and central Europe from Portugal and Ireland to Scandinavia, France, Germany, Poland, Ukraine and Russia. It is also reportedly sparingly naturalized in Quebec, California and the Falkland Islands. Gallery Image:Galium saxatile eF.jpg Image:galium_harcynicum.jpeg Image:galium_harcynicum_detail.jpeg References *''The Wild Flower Key British Isles – NW Europe'' by Fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Granophyre
Granophyre ( ; from ''granite'' and ''porphyry'') is a subvolcanic rock that contains quartz and alkali feldspar in characteristic angular intergrowths such as those in the accompanying image. The texture is called granophyric. The texture can be similar to micrographic texture and to the coarser graphic intergrowths of quartz and alkali feldspar common in pegmatite. These textures document simultaneous crystallization of quartz and feldspar from a silicate melt at the eutectic point, perhaps in the presence of a water-rich phase. They may also be formed by crystallization when the magma is significantly undercooled, not necessarily under eutectic conditions. Granophyres typically are intrusive rocks that crystallized at shallow depths, and many have compositions similar to those of granites. A common occurrence of granophyre is within layered igneous intrusions dominated by rocks with compositions like that of gabbro. In such occurrences, the granophyre may form as an end pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cambrian
The Cambrian ( ) is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 51.95 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran period 538.8 Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the Ordovician Period 486.85 Ma. Most of the continents lay in the southern hemisphere surrounded by the vast Panthalassa Ocean. The assembly of Gondwana during the Ediacaran and early Cambrian led to the development of new convergent plate boundaries and continental-margin arc magmatism along its margins that helped drive up global temperatures. Laurentia lay across the equator, separated from Gondwana by the opening Iapetus Ocean. The Cambrian marked a profound change in life on Earth; prior to the Period, the majority of living organisms were small, unicellular and poorly preserved. Complex, multicellular organisms gradually became more common during the Ediacaran, but it was not until the Cambrian that fossil diversity seems to rapidly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Granophyre
Granophyre ( ; from ''granite'' and ''porphyry'') is a subvolcanic rock that contains quartz and alkali feldspar in characteristic angular intergrowths such as those in the accompanying image. The texture is called granophyric. The texture can be similar to micrographic texture and to the coarser graphic intergrowths of quartz and alkali feldspar common in pegmatite. These textures document simultaneous crystallization of quartz and feldspar from a silicate melt at the eutectic point, perhaps in the presence of a water-rich phase. They may also be formed by crystallization when the magma is significantly undercooled, not necessarily under eutectic conditions. Granophyres typically are intrusive rocks that crystallized at shallow depths, and many have compositions similar to those of granites. A common occurrence of granophyre is within layered igneous intrusions dominated by rocks with compositions like that of gabbro. In such occurrences, the granophyre may form as an end pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Church Stretton
Church Stretton is a market town and civil parish in Shropshire, England, south of Shrewsbury and north of Ludlow. The population in 2011 was 4,671.National Statistics Church Stretton 2011 population area and density The town was nicknamed Little Switzerland (landscape), Little Switzerland in the late Victorian era, Victorian and Edwardian era, Edwardian period for its landscape, and became a health resort. The local geology includes some of the oldest rocks in England and a notable Fault (geology), fault is named after the town. Church Stretton is in the Shropshire Hills AONB, Shropshire Hills Area of Outs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhyolite
Rhyolite ( ) is the most silica-rich of volcanic rocks. It is generally glassy or fine-grained (aphanitic) in texture (geology), texture, but may be porphyritic, containing larger mineral crystals (phenocrysts) in an otherwise fine-grained matrix (geology), groundmass. The mineral assemblage is predominantly quartz, sanidine, and plagioclase. It is the extrusive equivalent of granite. Its high silica content makes rhyolitic magma extremely viscosity, viscous. This favors explosive eruptions over effusive eruptions, so this type of magma is more often erupted as pyroclastic rock than as lava flows. Rhyolitic ash-flow tuffs are among the most voluminous of continental igneous rock formations. Rhyolitic tuff has been used extensively for construction. Obsidian, which is rhyolitic volcanic glass, has been used for tools from prehistoric times to the present day because it can be shaped to an extremely sharp edge. Rhyolitic pumice finds use as an abrasive, in concrete, and as a soil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Basalt
Basalt (; ) is an aphanite, aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the planetary surface, surface of a terrestrial planet, rocky planet or natural satellite, moon. More than 90% of all volcanic rock on Earth is basalt. Rapid-cooling, fine-grained basalt is chemically equivalent to slow-cooling, coarse-grained gabbro. The eruption of basalt lava is observed by geologists at about 20 volcanoes per year. Basalt is also an important rock type on other planetary bodies in the Solar System. For example, the bulk of the plains of volcanism on Venus, Venus, which cover ~80% of the surface, are basaltic; the lunar mare, lunar maria are plains of flood-basaltic lava flows; and basalt is a common rock on the surface of Mars. Molten basalt lava has a low viscosity due to its relatively low silica content (between 45% and 52%), resulting in rapidly moving lava flo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dolerite
Diabase (), also called dolerite () or microgabbro, is a mafic, holocrystalline, subvolcanic rock equivalent to volcanic basalt or plutonic gabbro. Diabase dikes and sills are typically shallow intrusive bodies and often exhibit fine-grained to aphanitic chilled margins which may contain tachylite (dark mafic glass). ''Diabase'' is the preferred name in North America, while ''dolerite'' is the preferred name in the rest of the English-speaking world, where sometimes the name ''diabase'' refers to altered dolerites and basalts. Some geologists prefer to avoid confusion by using the name ''microgabbro''. The name ''diabase'' comes from the French , and ultimately from the Greek 'act of crossing over, transition', whereas the name ''dolerite'' comes from the French , from the Greek 'deceitful, deceptive', because it was easily confused with diorite. Petrography Diabase normally has a fine but visible texture of euhedral lath-shaped plagioclase crystals (62%) set in a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Precambrian
The Precambrian ( ; or pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated pC, or Cryptozoic) is the earliest part of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of the Phanerozoic Eon, which is named after Cambria, the Latinized name for Wales, where rocks from this age were first studied. The Precambrian accounts for 88% of the Earth's geologic time. The Precambrian is an informal unit of geologic time, subdivided into three eons ( Hadean, Archean, Proterozoic) of the geologic time scale. It spans from the formation of Earth about 4.6 billion years ago ( Ga) to the beginning of the Cambrian Period, about million years ago ( Ma), when hard-shelled creatures first appeared in abundance. Overview Relatively little is known about the Precambrian, despite it making up roughly seven-eighths of the Earth's history, and what is known has largely been discovered from the 1960s onwards. The Precambrian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uriconian
Uriconian is the name given to an assemblage of volcanic rocks found in parts of Shropshire, United Kingdom. The name relates to '' Uriconio'', the Latin name for an Iron Age hillfort on the summit of the Wrekin, a hill formed of these rocks. The Uriconian rocks of Shropshire ( Wrekin terrane) are thought to be potentially related to the Longmyndian Supergroup of the Stretton Hills, Shropshire, United Kingdom. Current geological profiling of the terranes suggests that the Uriconian rocks are of Precambrian age (Neoproterozoic Phases 2 and 3).P. J. Brenchley, P. F. Rawson ''The Geology of England and Wales'', 2006, 2nd Ed The Uriconian Rocks outcrop to the southeast of the Long Mynd area of the Welsh Borderland Fault System and beyond the Church Stretton Fault which trends northeast–southwest across the area.W. Compston, A. E. Wright, P. Toghill, ''Dating the Late Precambrian volcanicity of England and Wales, Journal of the Geological Society 2002; v.159''; pp. 323–339 The S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SSSI
A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain, or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland, is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle of Man. SSSI/ASSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in the United Kingdom are based upon them, including national nature reserves, Ramsar sites, Special Protection Areas, and Special Areas of Conservation. The acronym "SSSI" is often pronounced "triple-S I". Selection and conservation Sites notified for their biological interest are known as Biological SSSIs (or ASSIs), and those notified for geological or physiographic interest are Geological SSSIs (or ASSIs). Sites may be divided into management units, with some areas including units that are noted for both biological and geological interest. Biological Biological SSSI/ASSIs ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
