Giant's Causeway
| Giant's Causeway and Causeway Coast * | |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland |
| Type | Natural |
| Criteria | vii, viii |
| Reference | 369 |
| Region ** | List of World Heritage Sites in Europe |
| Inscription history | |
| Inscription | 1986 (10th session Session) |
| * Name as inscribed on World Heritage List ** Region as classified by UNESCO |
|
The Giant's Causeway [1] is an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption. It is located in County Antrim on the northeast coast of Northern Ireland.
It is a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.[2]
It was named and a National Nature Reserve in 1987 by the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland. In a 2005 poll of Radio Times readers, the Giant's Causeway was named as the fourth greatest natural wonder in the United Kingdom.[3]
The tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead from the cliff foot and disappear under the sea. Most of the columns are hexagonal, although there are also some with four, five, seven and eight sides. The tallest are about 12 metres (36 ft) high, and the solidified lava in the cliffs is 28 metres thick in places.
The Giant's Causeway is today owned and managed by the National Trust and it is the most popular tourist attraction in Northern Ireland.[4]
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Geological significance [change]
The Giant's Causeway and Fingal's Cave are part of the same volcanic eruption. They were separated by the plate tectonics movements which happened when the supercontinent Pangaea broke up.
Some 50 to 60 million years ago,[5] during the Palaeogene period, Antrim was subject to intense volcanic activity, when highly fluid molten basalt intruded through chalk beds to form an extensive lava plateau. As the lava cooled rapidly, contraction occurred. The size of the columns is primarily determined by the speed at which lava from a volcanic eruption cools.[6] The extensive fracture network produced the distinctive columns seen today. The basalts were originally part of a great volcanic plateau called the Thulean Plateau which formed during the Paleogene period.[7] Parts of this plateau can be found in the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Norway, as well as at Fingal's Cave.
Related pages [change]
References [change]
- ↑ Placenames Database of Ireland
- ↑ UNESCO, "Giant's Causeway and Causeway Coast"; retrieved 2012-4-19.
- ↑ Report of poll result BBC.co.uk Retrieved 10 December 2006.
- ↑ Northern Ireland Tourist Board (2008-08-18). "Giant's Causeway remains Northern Ireland's Top Attraction". Press release. http://www.nitb.com/DocumentPage.aspx?path=b019d219-34a1-48eb-8e21-900525c4e543,b863bc15-f1a4-4c29-bb52-0a82ba59257c,4870b6cb-ec7f-4a61-8cae-027c591c188b,aaab5041-6a69-414e-8406-5eeedd548382,1a3ca69c-3386-46b4-93eb-5239112cc00e,6645f4a7-a521-4858-817f-a6af1a709454. Retrieved 2009-03-19.
- ↑ "Giant's Causeway and Causeway Coast". UNESCO World Heritage Centre. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/369. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
- ↑ "University of Toronto (2008, December 25). Mystery Of Hexagonal Column Formations". http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081216104325.htm.
- ↑ Geoffroy, Laurent; Bergerat, Françoise; Angelier, Jacques (September 1996). "Brittle tectonism in relation to the Palaeogene evolution of the Thulean/NE Atlantic domain: a study in Ulster". Geological Journal 31 (3): 259–269. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1099-1034(199609)31:3<259::AID-GJ711>3.0.CO;2-8. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/61005289/ABSTRACT. Retrieved 2007-11-10.
Other websites [change]
Media related to Giant's Causeway at Wikimedia Commons
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