The Lion's Head Mimetolith EarthCache
The Lion's Head Mimetolith
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Cheetah Boy's dad works at one of the nearby residential schools and one day some of the pupils came in raving about "The Lion's Heid" - a rock along the coastal path which they said looked exactly like, well... a lion's heid! CBD went to check it out and then I made him show me so that I could set an earthcache here!
I love mimetoliths - these are natural geological features that look like something else - usually a human face or an animal, or perhaps a familiar object.
The Lion's Heid is found on a jutting sandstone rock. Sandstone is a sedimentary rock - which funnily enough means that it forms from sediments! These could be from any other type of rock which has been weathered and eroded into smaller particles. The particles are transported by ice, air or water and they are deposited elsewhere. Once deposited, the sediments, over time, are turn into rock through compaction and cementation which "glues" the grains together. About 75% of the Earth’s continental crust is covered by sedimentary rocks. They vary enormously in colour, texture and composition depending on the nature of the original source material and the environment of deposition. The colour of the sandstone here is quite authentic for a lion - what a co-incidence!
The Lion's Heid itself has been formed by coastal erosion. A combination of three processes is likely to have contributed to shaping this feature and each of these would have acted on the rock face in the past when this part of the coastline was at the water’s edge and subject to wave action.
The three processes are:
(1) Hydraulic action - where the continual force of the waves crashing onto the rock face would have caused damage.
(2) Abrasion - where pieces of rock and sand carried by the waves would have helped to grind down the rock face
(3) Corrosion - where acids contained in the sea water slowly dissolved parts of the rock.
The general form of the Heid itself may have been caused by hydraulic action, with abrasion and corrosion helping to define the facial features.
Park at Silversands car park (N56 03.165. W003 17.266) and then head for N56 03.366, W003 17.099 and walk along the Fife Coastal Path to the cache.
In order to see the heid you need to look at the east side of the rock. Stand at the end of the fence at the given co-ordinates for what we think is the best view. The heid is in profile - can you see his nose and mouth? His eyes are narrowed as if to protect them from the blinding glare of the hot savanna sun! And his mane is formed by ivy!
In order to log this cache you must do both of the following:
(1) estimate the length of the lion's nose from his eyes to the tip of the snout.
(2) take a photo of yourself and/or GPS showing the heid in the background.
Please email me with your answer to (1) – do not include it in your log. Thankyou.
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Treasures
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