Introduction:
Anglesey is an island located to the North West of Wales. It is separated by a narrow stretch of tidally influenced water called the Menai Strait.
Fig.1 Map showing Anglesey in relation to Ireland and England (Left) Anglesey in relation to Wales and England (Right). Images sourced & adapted from www.vacationstogo.com and news.bbc.co.uk The island of Anglesey, for such a small island, has a great diversity of rock types. To the average everyday person walking along the coast, you would without a doubt notice the rock type variation and striking features. But, to a geologist, it tells a remarkable story of the history of the island. Angleseys past adventure can be re-written by examining the rocks seen at its surface.
Millions
…show more content…
Yellow star showing Anglesey. Image sourced and adapted from http://www.iatnl.com/
Ocean floor subduction was ongoing and as Avolonia continued to move north, the Iapetus Ocean closed and Avolonia crashed into Laurentia and Baltica. Due to this subduction and closing of the Iapetus, Ireland became one. England and wales also joined with Scotland. But the story isn’t over just yet, although wales and England were now joined with Scotland, they still had some distance to go until they reached their present day location. Fig.6 showing a map of Earth during the Devonian period. Yellow star showing Anglesey. http://eeos260-f13-poynton.wikispaces.umb.edu/-/Ancient%20Wiki%20Project/Grp10%20Devonian%20and%20Silurian%20Periods/
During the Devonian period (~390mya), Anglesey drifted toward the equator. Anglesey, (including Ireland, England and Scotland) as a result endured hot, arid, terrestrial conditions. Rocks, such as old Red sandstone were formed as a result and can be seen in Anglesey
…show more content…
Image sourced and adapted from www.geol.umd.edu.
By the Carboniferous period (~359-299 Mya) Anglesey had passed the equator. The environment here was shallow marine and Carboniferous Limestone was formed. 255mya all continents managed to collide forming one supercontinent, Pangea. At this moment in time Anglesey was located in the Northern hemisphere.
During the Jurassic period, Pangea began to break up and by the time of the Late Cretaceous, ~94 Mya, the Atlantic Ocean began to open and Pangea continued to break apart. Due to this breakage of continents, there were extreme volcanic activity and much evidence can be seen of this all around the world today. In Anglesey, there are many igneous dykes and sills that have intruded older rocks that have been dated back to this time. This movement of continents continued into the Cenozoic era which is the current and most recent geological era consisting of the past 65 million years. It was during this time that Anglesey reached its current, present day
A significant portion of New England was formed as a result of an accretionary orogen. Southeastern New England is marked by a series of terranes that accreted onto the Laurentian supercontinent during the Silurian and Devonian. The Terranes of Gander, Nashoba, Avalon, and Meguma are present from west to east in eastern Massachusetts and all of are Gondwanan provenance. Their modern-day juxtaposition suggests that the marginal Gondwanan micro-continents collided sequentially from west to east, expanding the Laurentian continent with each respective collision. As each subsequent plate collided, an intervening subduction zone died and a new subduction zone was created to the east. The oblique collision of the Avalon Terrane into Laurentia followed the accretions of the Gander and Nashoba Terranes and preceded the accretion of Meguma. The collision was marked by uplift, mylonitic metamorphism, and calc-alkaline Nashoba plutonism as the Iapetus Ocean subducted under the Nashoba and eventually the Avalon collided obliquely into the continental margin.
The shelf-edge includes carbonate-to-clastic facies transition and tectonic uplift and erosion of the carbonates followed by deposition of the clastics. The Saint Peter Sandstone is a well-sorted, almost pure quartz arenite deposited during a major mid-Ordovician low stand. Clastics spread across an exposed carbonate platform by transportation. This is shown by the well-rounded, frosted texture of the quartz grains.
The sediments of the Kimmeridge Clay Formation were deposited during Late Jurassic between around 160 and 145 million years ago. The outcrop and subcrop from Kimmeridge Clay in England extends from Dorset to North Yorkshire but due to the lack of exposure inland, all stratigraphic studies of the formation has occurred in the costal sections between Weymouth and Swanage in Dorset ( Figure 1) (Cox and Gallios, 1981)
Periods that the folding occurred in which formed the outlines of the basin as it
"Sedimentary Rocks." Backyard Nature with Jim Conrad. N.p., 18 May 2015. Web. 25 Oct. 2015.
The tense relationship between Ireland and England lasted for many years. There were constant attempts from the English government to exercise control over its neighbors, which were, at the same time, answered with several insurrections.
The relationship between Ireland and England played a major role in the causes of the Great Famine. Ireland became part of the United Kingdom in 1801 due to the Act of Union (Edwards & Williams 19). Under this act, Ireland was placed under "the jurisdiction of the richest and most industrially advanced empire in the world" (Kinealy 33). From this act, Ireland's parliament was abolished and became controlled by England through political leadership established throughout the Irish state. A...
The Carboniferous Period was a time period in the Geological Time Scale that came after the Devonian Period and ended at the beginning of the Permian Period. It lasted from 359 to 298 million years ago. The Carboniferous got its name from the large amount of coal deposits that were found during this time scale. In North America, the period is often separated into two, the Mississippian and the Pennsylvanian.
Later after the sea finally retreated occurred volcanic activity. Mountains rose through laccoliths, which also resemble volcanoes. These laccoliths differ in that they do not erupt. They shifted layers of rock upward in the shape of a dome. This specific piece of geologic morphology occurred at the end of the Cretaceous time. This marked the beginning of the Laramide Orogeny, which was a well-known period of mountain formation in western North America.
Basalt is a common extrusive igneous rock, there are a large number of volcanic provinces across Southeast Australia that have been found to contain basaltic lava flows. It is likely that these flows have come from volcanic activity caused by mantle plumes from the mesosphere. A variety of dating methods have been used to date these basaltic rocks, which have been aged from the Jurassic era right up to the late Cenozoic.
Han, J., Zhang, Z. F., & Liu, J. N. (2008). A preliminary note on the dispersal of the Cambrian Burgess Shale-type faunas. Gondwana Research, (1), 269-276. doi:10.1016/j.gr.2007.09.001
The Irish and British governments fought for many years over the ownership of Northern Ireland. Britain had main control over Northern Ireland, and Ireland did not think that was fair. Be...
Not a unified and separate country until 1921, Northern Ireland has had cultural, financial, and economic that makes it stand affront from the rest of the Emerald Isles. With its close proximity to England and the immigration all through the 1600s of English and Scottish, Northern Ireland has become more anglicized th...
...s I of England." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 19 Oct. 2010. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. .
Ireland. All these areas are easily confused, mainly because people are over zealous to blame ship/