I caught a show on History Channel about the geology of Loch Ness. Back in the day, we used to own Scotland.
S01E04 - Loch Ness
Home to the legend of the Loch Ness Monster, this lake holds more water than any other lake in Britain. It's only 10,000 years old, but billions of years in the making. Trace the extraordinary story of Loch Ness: from the three billion year old bedrock of Northern Scotland, to the giant glaciers that carved out the Loch. On this incredible journey we reveal that Loch Ness was once part of America, giant dinosaurs, suspiciously similar to the fabled monster once roamed the area, and that the entire region was engulfed by huge volcanic eruptions as Scotland was ripped from its birth place on the American continent . Could the mythical Loch Ness monster be a descendant of the dinosaurs, somehow surviving in the murky waters of the loch?*
downarchive.com
One of the most amazing facts about our geological past is that Scotland was separated from England and Wales during much of their early history by an ocean, once as wide as the North Atlantic. This ocean, named Iapetus after the father of Atlas, has of course long disappeared, but it existed between about 570 and 430 million years ago. At that time Scotland was still part of North America - the Laurentian continent - and lay south of the equator. The seaway which existed between the converging continents narrowed until they collided and subsequently mountains were created in place of the vanished ocean. Scotland still carries the legacy of these events. The Highlands are the eroded roots of that mountain belt formed when these continents collided.
Since late Devonian times Scotland has drifted progressively northwards through equitorial latitudes with various global dancing partners. Up to Jurassic times it formed part of large continental masses called Laurussia and Pangaea. Pangaea was a global supercontinent which only began to break up in the Jurassic with the opening of the central part of the embryo Atlantic Ocean. Scotland subsequently joined its current continental companions, collectively called Eurasia only some 65 million years ago. At that time, opening of the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean caused it to drift eastwards away from America, Canada and Greenland, to whom it had been attached for the previous 1000 million years. The separation was marked by great outpourings of basalt lavas.
snh.org.uk
*Spoiler alert...no; Loch Ness is only 10,000 years old. Dinos extinctified 65 M years ago. |
