mandag 16. mars 2015

Where on Google Earth # 476

Yet again my unusual memory helped me pinpoint a WoGE in record time, and it is my turn again. Felix gave us the famous lithographic limestone quarries near Solnhofen, famous for the very many beautifully preserved fossils - including what is perhaps the most famous fossil of all, the  Archaeopteryx lithographica.

So this time there are no dunes, nor glaciers. Maybe.

In order to win the next challenge, you will have to clearly define the location of the picture (by lat. long for example) and find some words to the geology on display.




Previous WoGEs are collected by Felix on his blog and a KML file.

6 kommentarer:

  1. 70.131°, 28.714° Varangerfjord Norway. Neoproterozoic glaciation. "A Neoproterozoic valley coincides with the present-day Varangerfjorden in northern Norway. During the Marinoan glaciation this valley was eroded by a combination ofglacial, periglacial and transgressive erosivefacies." [http://www.academia.edu/2593419/The_late_Neoproterozoic_Smalfjord_Formation_of_the_Varanger_Peninsula_in_northern_Norway_a_shallow_fjord_deposit]

    SvarSlett
  2. I've browsed through the paper above, but I have to admit, that I'm not qualified enough to find out the major geologial event of the area. I do show a lot of respect to the geologists having discovered so many details of an area, that has been shaped such a geological long time ago. So I would say the major point is, that we have a Neoproterozic shaped valley.

    SvarSlett
  3. In here it's 16:49 now, before Felix's 16:59 and I've the answer too, should I have the victory? lol
    I "knew" that should be Norway ... I didn't expect to be so far north!
    Well, next time maybe I'll arrive before, like in Tonian! lol

    SvarSlett
  4. Luis; I think I can tell you, that I'm always ahead of you (at least one hour) :-)

    SvarSlett
  5. Well - The geological explanation wasn't quite what I had in mind, but close enough. :)

    From Anna Siedlecka, in the book "The Making of a Land: Geology of Norway":

    Innermost in Varangerfjorden, beside the sea on the south side of Selešnjarga (Karlebotn), is a world-famous outcrop of a conglomerate known as the Bigganjarga tillite (the Sámi place name is now written Oibaččanjarga). This outcrop was protected in 1966.

    The conglomerate is grey, unsorted and lacks stratification. Its clasts consist of various lithologies and vary in size from fine gravel to boulders; some are angular, some rounded, and some have smothly polished surfaces with fine stripes or scratches. The conglomerate rests with a knife-sharp boundary on light-coloured quartz sandstone whose surface has innumerable furrows, some parallel with one another, others criss-crossing.

    Baltazar M. Keilhau was the first to write about the conglomerate, in 1844. He thought it had to be Devonian. In 1891, Hans Reusch gave a very well documented description of the conglomerate. He considered it to be fossilised morainig gravel "...from a period very much earlier than the 'Ice Age' " and thought that both it and also "the sandstone in eastern Finnmark" might date from Cambro-Silurian time. Reusch pointed out its great similarity with Quaternary moraines and believed that the furrows in the underlying sandstone were ice striations made by stones frozen fst in the sole of a moving glacier. In his works from 1918 and 1931, Olaf Holtedal, supported by Sven Føyn in a paper from 1937, showed that the glacial conglomerate at Oibaččanjarga, the "Reusch moraine", and the rest of the succession near Varangerfjorden and in the Tana district were of Late Precabrian age. In 1967 it was also demonstrated that the fossilised moraine, the tillite, rested on a regional unconformity formed by erosion of a much older sandstone which was solid, hard rock already during the Varangerian Ice Age.

    The Bigganjarga tillite is the older of two tillite formations in Finnmark. Since the last World War, many geologists have studied both the Bigganjarga tillite and the other Neoproterozoic glacial deposits near Varangerfjorden and Tanafjorden. Some believed they found evidence that the Bigganjarga tillite was not formed as a moraine, but the majotity of studies have confirmed Reusch's opinion from 1891. The term "Varangerian Ice Age" is now well known throughout the world, not least through the discussion as to whether the world was completely covered by ice during the latter part of the Precambrian, a "Snowball Earth". The outcrop of the Bigganjarga tillite is one of the most outstanding gological localities in the world. "

    SvarSlett
  6. WOGE 477 is on display at :

    http://woge-felix.blogspot.de/2015/03/where-on-google-earth-477.html

    If somebody is quick, maby we get three Woges today? Maybe the one of the folks which are behind of Central Europe (timewise).

    SvarSlett