Shennongshan Science Tour Route

1、Peak wall column screen

The flow of water along the fracture zone deep into the formation of the valley, the mountain divided into tens of meters - hundreds of meters high, tens of meters - hundreds of meters long, both sides are cliff walls, the top due to the inherent solubility of carbonate rocks, often expressed as a peak cluster, the road of stone walls arranged in parallel, forming a column screen, a screen a scene, the wall changes scenery, constitute a unique geomorphic landscape here.

2、Longji Great Wall

The Great Wall of Dragon Ridge is a dragon-ridge-like mountain ridge sandwiched between two canyons, 11.5 kilometers long, 100-200 meters high, and only a few meters-more than ten meters wide. The entire mountain range is made up of limestone, with nearly horizontal output of laminae and two groups of vertical joints that together cut the limestone into blocks of different sizes, as if a stone wall of boulders, a ridge of nine peaks, a ridge like a long wall, peaks like a beacon, just like a "natural Great Wall" created by nature.

3、A line of sky

In the thin stratified carbonate strata formed in the Late Cambrian period about 490 million years ago, the water washed and dissolved along the fractures developed in the east-west direction for a long time, forming this linear canyon of 50 meters long, only 2-5 meters wide and more than 100 meters high. The bottom of the valley looks at the sky and the sky becomes a line, hence the name.

4、Dolomite

Dolomite is one of the main rocks constituting the stratigraphy of the region, and is a carbonate rock with dolomite (CaMg[CO3]2) as the main component, formed in the ancient land surface sea dry hot tide ping environment. Dolomite is the main raw material for refining magnesium metal, and can also be used as melting agent, and widely used in chemical industry and building materials.

5、Porphyritic tuff

It is a kind of limestone with irregular gray and dark gray spots, the main part is cryptocrystalline calcite or microcrystalline calcite, and the spotted part contains more dolomite, which is formed by dolomitization (Mg replaces part of Ca) during the process of limestone formation.

6、Checkerboard format section

Due to the influence of regional tectonic stress, two sets of vertical joints, near east-west and near north-south, are developed in the rocks, which are nearly straight and together, and they cut the rocks into blocks of different sizes together with the layers.

7、Hornblende fossil

Fossils are the remains or vestiges of organisms preserved in strata. It is the main basis for geologists to determine the age of strata. In the ancient sea more than 400 million years ago, there lived a carnivorous animal with a shell composed of calcareous or keratinous material, which is called keratite because the fossil formed has a horn cone shape. The hornblende fossil in this area is one of the main fossils in the Ordovician strata.

8、Fuchsia shale

Shale is a kind of rock with page-like phyllotaxy or thin laminated laminae formed after the consolidation of clay into rock. In addition to clay minerals, its composition includes quartz, feldspar and other debris, as well as other chemical and organic substances. The shale at this site is purple-red in color and was formed in the early Cambrian tidepool environment more than 500 million years ago.

9、Plumose interlayer

The interlocking laminae refers to the laminae of sedimentary rocks, which is a basic form of sedimentary rocks. 500 million years ago, during the Cambrian period, this was a coastal environment where the seawater was rich in carbonate components, and the two-way current generated by the ebb and flow of the tide made the carbonate rocks deposited at this time, and the laminae were in the opposite direction, forming a very beautiful feather-shaped and herringbone laminae.

10、Sedimentation interrupted surface

It is a sedimentary interval in the 468-448 million year old Middle Ordovician stratigraphy. After the deposition of the tuff under the interface, the surface was exposed due to sea level fall, and was submerged by seawater after suffering a short period of weathering and denudation, depositing the purple-red calcareous shale above the interface, and this sedimentary interval indicates a transient sea-land change process.

11、Fei Lai Stone

It is a huge rock block that collapsed and rolled down from the mountain, and the lithology is upper Cambrian dolomite of 490 million years ago. The central fracture is formed by the rupture of the rock mass at the moment of falling and touching the ground, with the release of huge kinetic energy impact.

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