21Visit www.englishrivieragetactive.co.ukunesco geoparkVisit Berry Head National Nature Reserve and you will be standing 60m
(200ft) above sea level on the remains of a
massive coral reef
. This reef
formed at a time in the Earth8217s history around 400 million years ago when,
thanks to the movement of continental plates, our landscape was a few
degrees south of the Equator. As a result the sea was warm,
tropically
warm
, and primitive corals were able to thrive, along with many other
creatures that are now extinct such as trilobites and ammonites.
Here in the middle of the horseshoe bay that shapes the English Riviera, the
land is made of the softer red sandstones which erode far more easily. Travel
back 280 million years and you would be in the
intense heat of an arid
desert
that covered most of Britain and Europe. Very little seems to have been
able to survive in these Permian deserts, although between
Goodrington

and
Saltern Cove
strange fossilised burrows up to 10 cm across in the stony
deposits may have been the homes of giant centipede-like creatures.
On a local scale this major episode in the Earth8217s history had a fundamental
effect on the rocks of the English Riviera. Sediments were folded and
fractured as they were crumpled and pushed northwards by the collision
and on
Babbacombe Downs
the pressure was so great that a large fold
was turned over on itself, literally turning the sediments upside down. The
dark slates at the bottom of the cliff are actually younger than the pale
limestones of the Downs at the top!
Just imagine the English Riviera echoing to the sounds of saber-toothed
cat and mammoth, whilst in the caves, sounds of early man would have
been all around you. Dating of bones and worked 64258 int tools discovered in
Kents Cavern
provide evidence that the caves were home to Britain8217s
64257 rst humans. The rock that forms this cave system is Devonian limestone,
shaped into caverns with stalagmites and stalactites formed by an
underground river about 2 million years ago.Berry Head
Goodrington
Babbacombe Downs
Kents CavernThe Devonian Period, 417 to 354 million years ago
The Permian Period, 290 to 248 million years ago
Mountain Building Era, 300 million years ago
The Quartenerary Period, 1.8 million years ago to date
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