Trier Bay
The Trier Bay (also Trier-Bitburger Mulde or Trier-Bitburger Triassic Bay ) is a Mesozoic basin into which the sea water penetrated several times and is particularly known for its deposits of Keuper , shell limestone and red sandstone . The rocks on the left bank of the Moselle in Trier , including the Kockelsberg, are known above all .
Emergence
When the supercontinent Pangea broke up in the Triassic , new basin boundaries emerged due to the increased tectonic activity in the North Atlantic . A flat coastal area developed. At that time the Trier Bay was separated from the Germanic Basin by a threshold. The sediments in the area of the Triassic Bay are therefore in a special peripheral facies. The former edge of the pool in the west and on the northwest edge can still be seen today. After the estuary was briefly silted up, another sea advance occurred in the Jura . The sedimentation from the Triassic period was overlaid and especially the southwestern part of the Trier Bay was flooded. In the area of the Rhenish Slate Mountains , an island protruded. Fossils of the animals living in the Jurassic Sea have been preserved in the rock to this day. For a long time it was suspected that the Trier Bay was the remains of a Mesozoic Gulf. This theory was long advocated by French geologists in particular, as they suspected a connection to the Paris Basin . However, since the middle of the 20th century it has been undisputed that a kind of "Eifel ditch" was created with the Variscan Folding . During this time, as mentioned above, the Eifel region represented a peninsula in the Triassic Sea connected to the North Atlantic. There was no connection to the Paris Basin.
geology
The Trier Bay is characterized in particular by shell limestone and red sandstone. The rocks on the left bank of the Moselle in Trier , which form the southern edge of the Eifel and Luxembourg's Switzerland, are particularly well known . The key-shaped storage of the Mesozoic rock in the Trier-Bitburger Mulde is disturbed by faults. The sediments mainly contain shell limestone and keuper, which is located in the center. The red sandstone is almost exclusively on the edge of the bay. The best-known such red sandstone deposits can be found in the Meulenwald .
The Bay of Trier continues to the southwest in the form of the Lothringer Furche and to the northeast in the form of the Bitburger Basin . It is part of the Trier-Bitburger Gutland natural area .
literature
- State Office for Geology and Mining Rhineland-Palatinate (Ed.) (2005): Geology of Rhineland-Palatinate. Stuttgart
- State Office for Geology and Mining Rhineland-Palatinate (Ed.) (2011): Geological map of the Trier Bay 1: 50,000. Mainz
- State Office for Geology and Mining Rhineland-Palatinate & State Office for Environment, Water Management and Trade Supervision (Ed.) (2010): Hydrogeological Mapping Bitburg-Trier. Mainz
- H. Wolfgang Wagner et al., 2012: Trier and surroundings, collection of geological guides. Vol. 60, 3rd edition, Bornträger, Stuttgart