Otter Cove
| Otter Cove | ||
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 View of the east side of Straight Point with Otter Cove (relatively exactly in the middle of the picture). |
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| Waters | English Channel | |
| Land mass | Great Britain (island) | |
| Geographical location | 50 ° 36 '40.6 " N , 3 ° 21' 28.7" W | |
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| width | approx. 100 m | |
Otter Cove is a small cove on the eastern side of the headland Straightpoint near Exmouth , in the county of Devon , on the Channel coast in the southwest of England .
Straight Point and thus Otter Cove are about sixteen kilometers south of the city of Exeter , four kilometers southeast of Exmouth and about eleven kilometers southwest of Sidmouth . Straight Point is used by the Marines as a firing range. Otter Cove is therefore not freely accessible from land, but can only be reached on foot from Littleham Cove at low tide .
geology
From Orcombe Point at Exmouth to Old Harry Rocks east of Studland Bay extends to the east Devon and Dorset is a 155 km long coastline, the first natural landscape in England by the UNESCO in the World Heritage was taken. Straight Point and Otter Cove are part of this so-called Jurassic Coast .
The Jurassic Coast rock strata tilts slightly to the east. The geologically oldest rocks are therefore in the westernmost section of this coastal geotope . The mean age of the rocks gradually decreases towards the east. The natural outcrops along the coast form a largely continuous sequence, ranging from deposits of the Triassic , through those of the Jura to those of the Cretaceous period, and represents a geological period totaling around 185 million years. The storage room that received the sediment series from the Jurassic Coast at that time is the so-called Wessex Basin .
The rocks on the cliffs at Otter Cove belong to the westernmost and therefore geologically oldest part of the Jurassic Coast. You are late perm pean and / or early Triassic age and consist primarily of layers of red sandstone . Lithostratigraphically , they belong to the "Exmouth Mudstone and Sandstone Formation" (roughly translatable as "Exmouth Clay and Sandstone Formation"), which in turn belongs to the "Aylesbeare Mudstone Group" ("Alyesbeare Mudstone Group") and was deposited by the activity of rivers under semi-arid to semi-humid climatic conditions. The Exmouth Formation is closely related to some important Permian and Triassic sedimentary series in Central Europe, both in terms of its origin, its age and its petrography . B. with the Tambach formation of the Thuringian Forest or the red sandstone, which is widespread in Germany .
The sandstone sequence in the cliff of Straight Point and consequently also that of Otter Cove forms the geologically youngest part of the type profile of the Exmouth Formation.
The relatively high resistance to erosion of the sandstones compared to the claystones that make up the cliff of Sandy Bay and the cliff east of Otter Cove meant that the headland of Straight Point was able to form in the first place. In addition, a narrow surf platform was created on the south and east side of Straight Point just above the ebb level.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Dorset and East Devon Coast . UNESCO World Heritage Center. 2001. Retrieved October 19, 2010.
- ↑ a b Data sheet of the Exmouth Mudstone and Sandstone Formation in the British Geological Survey's online encyclopedia of named rock units
- ↑ Detlef Mader: Braidplain, floodplain and playa lake, alluvial-fan, aeolian facies and palaeosol composing a diversified lithogenetical sequence in the permian and triassic of South Devon (England) . In: Aspects of Fluvial Sedimentation in the Lower Triassic Buntsandstein of Europe. Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences . tape 4/1985 , 1985, pp. 15-64 , doi : 10.1007 / BFb0010515 .
Web links
- Ian West: Budleigh Salterton, and Littleham Cove, East Devon - Geology Field Guide. Illustrated excursion guide