Integer Millennium

The Isle of Wight is roughly a diamond-shaped island with a spine of chalk down land running from west to east across the widest part of the diamond. There is also another area of chalk down land along the southern coast. The geological layers north of the chalk belong to the Tertiary era and consist primarily of clays, sands and, in places, layers of stone. Various types of sands predominate south of the central ridge of chalk and, along with the chalk, were laid down in the Cretaceous period. These sands are of marine origin and are divided into two general types: Upper Greensand and Lower Greensands. The Chalk itself was formed in a warm sea by the accumulation of the remains of vast numbers of coccoliths (a kind of algae) that collected in a massive layer of marine sediments on the sea bed. Different marine lives are found in both the chalk and the Upper Greensand.

Bellow is the Sketch geological sequence of the area we visit on second day of field trip. The bellow dimensions are rough, see Fig 5 for more details.

Lower chalk 10m

Chert beds

Passage beds 44m

Passage clays

Gault clay 45m

Carstone 2m

Clay beds 55m Sand rock

Sea

Fossils are distributed widely in many of the layers, although there are some horizons that are particularly unproductive. The Tertiary layers were formed in a variety of conditions; marine, estuarine, brackish and freshwater states are all represented in the clays, sands and limestone that