Urkut Palaeokarst
The South Bakony Mountain has a horizontally triangular outline and a vertically uneven surface, mainly because of the presence of volcanic cones in addition to the plateau blocks.
The highest point is Kabhegy - 601 m – a large volcanic cone.
At the foot of Kabhegy is to be found the village Urkut. There was the mining center in Hungary for the production of sedimentary manganese.
The deposit was formed through low temperature hydrothermal conditions in deeper parts of a carbonatic platform with massive support of microorganisms in the Jurassic in the middle of the Mesozoic. More than 150 million years ago when the Carpatian Basin was covered by seawater.
The Urkut manganese deposit has been mined since 1917, first from a palaeokarst filled with chert like manganese ore in open pits, afterwards mostly carbonatic manganese ore was mined underground. During the mining period the sediment layers together with the manganese have been removed and this beautiful palaeokarst surfaced.
In this area of the old mine originated today a nature reserve with a teachpath where you can admire geological curiosities of many million years.
This area can be entered thru the gate at the given coordinates free of charge. No special parking area is available but you can park in the streets nearby.
Your tasks for logging this earhtcache are:
1. The name of the sea that covered this area in the Mesozoic ?
2. Altitude at the first infoboard ?
3. How high are the rock towers ? (around?)
4. Take a photo of your GPSr in front of the mine and load up with your log.
Send your 2. and 3. answers to Paleo.team@gmail.com , if your answers are correct you’ll immediatelly get the log permission.
Don't wait for log permission. You may log your find, I later will check it, if you are right
Please don’t give answers in your log.
I wish you an interesting ride into the past of the Earth.
The name of the sea (ocean) can be found on the 2. infoboard, middle section, first line, last word. This information is given because the whole text is only in Hungarian language. Sorry :-(
