Geology of Great Britain England Scotland Map by Geologists of Geological Formations Features Units Stratigraphy

Siccar Point is where Dr. Hutton was the first man to put his finger on an unconformity, and know what it was. His famous quote is "no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end".

Siccar point is the classical location for an angular unconformity. 80 million years of deposition were eroded away here.

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The Open University is a place where course work is done from home, and lectures come over the T. V.

This format allowed the professors at OU to write papers with their free time. The University became a paper mill of geologic literature.

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The North Sea has some of the greatest tidal fluctuations on Earth.

At times, when the tide comes in, the Thames River runs backwards up its channel.

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South Eastern England is a composed of a series of anticlines and synclines. The concentric green rings are an Anticline. London is in a Syncline, and a Syncline continues underneath the English Channel, and pops up in France as another Anticline.

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The Camborne School of Mines is among the most prestigious geology schools on Earth. They have been educating geologists since 1888, and their graduates are known for being innovators in their fields.

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The Cornubian ore field is the richest deposit of tin in the world, and has been mined since the Bronze age (2500 Years B.C.). Many of the migrant 1800's miners in the U.S. were originally Cornish.

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The Moors are a group of granite batholiths. In the Devonian, igneous magma bodies pushed up through the country rock, but did not surface as volcanoes. Over the eons since, erosion weathered away the surface rocks until the Moors surfaced.

Heat from the Moors metamorphosed a zone of country rock, forming the Cornish economic minerals.

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Coal Mining in South Wales has been going on since the late eighteenth century. Since the 1980's the seams of coal have been running out, and most of the production mines have closed. Mine tourism has become popular, many people travel to South Wales in order to go down in a cage to experience the mines first hand.

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The Great Glen Fault (GGF) is composed of a 3km wide series of parallel strike slip faults. Most of the deformation from these faults is seen underwater in lochs that parallel the fault. In fact, the locks of northern Scotland that parallel the fault zone are a direct result of the faulting; hence, the use of a white line to show the fault since a black line (standard for showing faults) would not show up against the black colored locks in this map.

In the past the fault was a left lateral strike slip, but in the present it is a right lateral strike slip. There are about 3 earthquakes along the fault per century, these earthquakes are normally rated around 4 on the Richter scale.

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The Highland Boundary Fault is a product of the Caledonian Orogeny, when the Highland and Midland Valley crustal blocks collided here. The last major movement along this fault was in the Devonian, and it is difficult to find remnants of the fault scarp today.

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The Southern Uplands fault marks the boundary of an accretionary wedge. The Southern Uplands to the south west of the fault, were accreted to the Midland Valley to the north (a forearc basin in this setting). Today the Highland Boundary Fault and the Southern Uplands Fault are extensional, and form a rift valley, which is the midland valley.

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Harlech Dome was formed when igneous rocks in the basement of the sub surface pushed the overlying sedimentary rocks up into a synclinal domal structure. At the surface the central part of the dome is an erosion resistant massive conglomerate which is surrounded by grits and shales. Ores of economic importance, including sulphur were mined from the Grits Group of Harlech Dome. The Cambrian was named for rocks in the Harlech Dome Area.

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Snowdonia is composed of a series of interbedded Ordovician sedimentary and igneous rocks. These rocks are folded into a syncline anticline series. The synclines in Snowdonia are where the Ordovician igneous and volcanic rocks outcrop , and the anticlines are where Ordovician sedimentary rocks, and slate are found. Snowdonia is also home of some excellent U shaped glacial valleys, that were carved during the last ice age. Snowdonia also hosts a National Park due to its breath taking, grandeurs scenery.

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Ben Nevis, the highest point in Great Britain (4400ft), is the core of an Devonian Aged (350 Million Year Old) volcano. This core is composed of quartz diorites, on the outer flanks, and granites near the center of the core (which are exposed in places due to modern weathering).

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*This Page is Under Construction* Update it regularly as it is changing.

The Geology of Great Britain

My name is Charles Kieser, and I am a graduate student, working toward a masters degree. This semester I am a student in Dr Whitford-Starks Dynamic Stratigraphy at Sul Ross University in west Texas. Dr Whitford-Stark gave our Dynamic Stratigraphy class six lectures on the stratigraphic and geologic relationships of Great Britain. What I intend do do here is encapsulate those six lectures in a hyper linked geologic map. The first thing that I needed is a geologic map of Great Britain. I have searched on the web, and the best Map I have found, of the entire country, is from Horace B. Woodward in 1904. Even though Horaces' map is an old map, it is a good map. The graphic is resolute enough to work with, and the detail is nice. However, on the 1904 map, all igneous and volcanic rocks are grouped together, despite their age, or if they are intrusive or extrusive. Back in 1904 there was no method of isotopic radioactive decay dating, so intrusive igneous rocks could not be dated; therefore, I took the map into PhotoShop, so that I could make some modern revisions. Also, a few major faults were added to the map.

Click this for the original 1904 Map
By Horace B. Woodward

This map is best viewed in Internet Explorer (Animation is off in Netscape). Animation control instructions below.
Click on a Blank Spot (No Link) of the map to Pause. Double Click to Continue

Geologic Map of Great Britain -- Click on a non linked portion of the map (no Hand), to pause the animation. Double click to continue.

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