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THE SUBMERGED FOREST BEDS OF THE DURHAM COAST

1947; Zoological Society of London; Volume: 27; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1144/pygs.27.1.23

2041-4811

C. T. Trechmann,

Geology and Paleoclimatology Research

The ancient Forest or peat bed at Hartlepool is the most extensive and best known on the north-east coast of England, It occupies a depression between two outcrops of Magnesian Limestone, the eastern one forming the isolated mass on which the old town of Hartlepool is built, while the western one is the edge of the main outcrop on which West Hartlepool stands. The Forest bed can be traced for about three miles in a NW and SE direction and is nearly a mile in width. Southward it extends towards the red sandstone outcrops at Longscar Rock and Seaton Carew, but beyond there, if it exists, it is hidden by beach sand. It seems everywhere to rest on boulder clay which in turn rests on a hidden mass of anhydrite and gypsum. The solution or glacial erosion of this rock has produced the depression which now accommodates the harbour, docks and timber ponds of the Hartlepools. Before the area was so much industrialised the Forest bed seems to have been much better exposed. A. G. Cameron describes the peat bed in excavations near the Slake as being 8 feet thick with blue underclay 1 foot 10 inches thick and this as resting on 10 feet of boulder clay. He says some of the trees were 18–20 feet long and one was 12 feet in circumference. R. Howse and J. W. Kirkby refer to it as extending nearly to Seaton Carew and state that from beneath the deposit have been ...