On 10 Mar, 15:38, Alan Gardiner wrote:
On Mon, 9 Mar 2009 22:44:29 GMT, Phil Gurr wrote:
The message
from "Nick Gardner" contains
these words:

Nick,

As a palaeontologist who has spent many years studying this section of
coast, please allow me to correct you on a number of points.

Bit of an odd name really and probably due to the film 'Jurassic Park'..

Not at all, the name was first coined by G.M.Davies in his description
of the Dorset coast in 1935

I say odd because only one section of the 'Jurassic Coast' is actually of
Jurassic age.

Hardly 'odd' as the truly Jurassic part of the section stretches from
Swanage in the east to Pinhay Bay to the west of Lyme regis - with a
small Cretaceous inset around Lulworth Cove.

The coast stretches from Exmouth and runs eastwards to near Swanage in
Dorset and covers the Permian (oldest), Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous
periods, around 500 millions years of continuous geological time and is
quite unique on Earth.

*The oldest rocks in the coastal sections are of Upper Permian age,
about 210my old, the youngest rocks are the Upper Cretaceous chalk of
the 'Old Harry Rocks' east of Swanage, dated at 65my old. This is a time
sequence of 145my (million years) and is by no means continuous, there
being many gaps in the sequence. Neither is this sequence unique on
earth, there being many examples covering a much greater time span than
the 'Jurassic Coast'.

HTH

Phil

Kyle of Sutherland
40 miles N. of Inverness
92m ASL

There is a website,http://www.jurassiccoast.com/, which has a wealth if
information.

Alan- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Warning - OT!

The site states that the Jurassic Coast is Englands 1st World heritage
site. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1215 shows several sites in
England - some of which appear to predate it's inception by several
years.

Of course Cornish rocks are much older, and were also more profitable
until successive governments decided miners were a bad thing.
http://www.cornish-mining.org.uk/default.htm In fact our regional
development agency has spent a lot of money doing it's best to ensure
that South Crofty at Pool doesn't re-open, as mining isn't in their
(very English) vision for Cornwall. Strange at the time when the
price of tin was rapidly rising, still I'm sure they had the best of
advice from investment & banking experts.

Still, it's a strange old world where no money is available for
temporary support to an culturally important industry, but loads is
available to close it & turn it into a heritage site.

Graham
Penzance