Geology of the English Channel

This report covers the area from Start Point southwest to the limit of the UK designated area, and includes the sea area around the Channel Islands. The report's author is Chris Evans with contributions by Richard Hillis, Bob Gatliff, Geoff Day and John Edwards.

The Geology of the area : Around the coast, the geology is dominated by metamorphosed sedimentary rocks intruded by granites. Farther out on the shelf, these rocks are overlain by a sequence of Mesozoic and Tertiary strata in a number of sedimentary basins. These comprise dominantly Permo-Triassic red beds and evaporites deposited in arid continental and marginal shallow marine environments.
During the late Cretaceous, the opening of the north Atlantic Ocean caused the development of a series of faulted and rotated blocks. Younger strata are draped on to this complex relief. Late Cretaceous chalk sedimentation gave way in the Tertiary to deposition of deeper-water mudstones.
The area lay on the southern fringe of the Quaternary ice sheets and isolated patches of till have been dumped across the area by icebergs that floated from the main ice sheet to the north.

Author Hamblin. R.J.O

ISBN 0118844903

Year Published 1992