Tropical Shortwood EarthCache
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
Please email your answers before logging a find.
Shortwood used to be a busy industrial area, with a brick works, coal mines, clay pits and railways.
These Victorian industries were all dependent on what happened here millions of years ago.
Fossil tree stems and leaves in the local coal and clay show us that Shortwood must have been covered by a forest, this happened millions of years ago, when the area was on the equator and the climate was tropical.
Other fossils in these rock include the remains of scorpions and other insects.
Coal was formed from the compressed remains of the forest trees and clay was laid down under the swamp water.
In geologic terms, coal is a sedimentary rock containing a mixture of constituents, mostly of vegetal origin. Vegetal matter is composed mainly of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and some inorganic mineral elements. When this material decays under water, in the absence of oxygen, the carbon content increases.
The initial product of this decomposition process is known as peat. Peat can be formed in bogs, marshes, or freshwater swamps, and in fact huge freshwater swamps of the geologic past provided favourable conditions for the formation of thick peat deposits that over time became coal deposits. The transformation of peat to lignite is the result of pressure exerted by sedimentary materials that accumulate over the peat deposits.
Even greater pressures and heat from movements of the Earth’s crust (as occurs during mountain building), and occasionally from igneous intrusion, cause the transformation of lignite to bituminous and anthracite coal.
Shortwood Brick Works used good quality clay.
This clay was to make millions of bricks for local buildings. It was well known for the strength and attractive appearance of its bricks. The works started in the late 1800s.
The same clay is still quarried nearby but is now taken to the Brick Works at Cattybrook.
1. At the information board, find out how many years ago this area was covered in tropical forest.
2. On the board tell me the color of the clay extracted and what was found below it in this area.
3. In which year did the extraction of clay from these works end?
4. Name one of the large insects discovered as fossils
5. Research how coal was formed and how the clay, used here for the brickworks, relates to the coal formation
6. At this location, observe the wall in front of you. Look at the old, cracked, red bricks. These bricks show the clay that was used to make them. Is the texture of the clay used uniform? Does it have a mixture of particle sizes? Can you see anything mixed in with the clay?
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:
Loading Treasures