The Geological Story of the Isle of WightHughes, J. Cecil (John Cecil)
Science
The Geological Story of the Isle of Wight
Hughes, J. Cecil (John Cecil)
Geology -- England -- Isle of Wight; Geology, Stratigraphic -- Tertiary; Paleontology -- England -- Isle of Wight
We must notice another thing which happens when rocks are being
upheaved and bent into curves. The strain is very great, and sometimes
the strata crack and one side is pushed up more than the other. These
cracks are called _faults_. At Little Stairs, about half way between
Sandown and Shanklin, two or three faults may be seen in the cliff.
The effect of two of the faults may be easily seen by noticing the
displacement of a band of rock stained orange by water containing
iron. The strata are thrown down towards the north about 8 ft. A third
fault, the effect of which is not so evident at first sight, throws
the strata down roughly 50 ft. to the south. These are only small
faults, but sometimes faults occur, in which the strata have been
moved on opposite sides of the fault thousands of feet away from one
another. We might think we should see a wall of rock rising up on the
surface of the ground where a fault occurs; but the faults have mostly
taken place ages ago; and, when they do happen, the rocks are
generally moved only a little way at a time. Then after a while
another push comes on the rocks, and they shift again at the same
place, and go a bit further. All this time frost and rain and rivers
are working at the surface, and planing it down; so that the
unevenness of the surface caused by faults is smoothed away; and so
even a great fault does not show at the surface.
As we follow the Sandown anticline westward it gradually dies away,
the upheaved area being actually a long oval--what we may call a
turtle-back. As the Sandown anticline dies out, it is succeeded by
another a little further south, the Brook anticline. There are in fact
a series of these east and west anticlines in the Island and on the
adjacent mainland, caused by the same earth movement. As a consequence
of the arching of the strata we find the lowest beds we saw in Sandown
Bay running out again on the west of the Island in Brook Bay, and a
general correspondence of the strata on the east and west of the
Island; while, as we travel from Sandown or Brook northward to the
Solent, we come to continually more recent beds overlying those which
appear to the south of them.
When, as in the south side of our central downs, the strata are
sharply cut away by denudation, we call this an _escarpment_. The
figure shows the structure of the Sandown anticline we have described.
We must now examine the rocks more closely, beginning with the lowest
strata in the Island, and try to read the story they have to tell.
Chapter III
THE WEALDEN STRATA: THE LAND OF THE IGUANODON
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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