Devonian West Cork

The Bedrock Geology of West Cork

Some Principles of Geology

Fundamental to the understanding of geology are these three principles:
Geology does not end at the coast. Despite most geology maps only showing detail for areas of land, the rocks continue onto the continental shelf. The sea covers the edges of the continents, but they are still continental crust. The oceans don't start until the continental shelf ends.
Geology is still happening now. The processes are slow and they are not always visible, but geology is not just a thing of the past. It is about deposition, and erosion, the wearing away of surfaces, the deposition of sediments; plate movements, earthquakes, and volcanoes; all the processes that are happening today. This is known as 'uniformitarianism'. Appreciating this can make geology come very much alive.
Every rock type represents an environment. This is the attraction of geology, that it represents a record of past environments, like a directory or an index. As we can see from the bedrocks of West Cork, even subtle and hardly detectable changes in rock type can be interpreted as being caused by variations in environmental conditions. Thus palaeoecology and palaeoenvironmental studies are relevant, even going back hundreds of millions of years.

The Bedrock Geology of West Cork

Underlying everything in West Cork is the bedrock, the foundation of the area, upon which the region is built. It’s fundamental to the relief and topography, soil, drainage patterns, vegetation, and animal and human life. It’s fundamental to the ecology of now, and the ecology of the past, the palaeoecology. Geology is the study of the rocks, and the rocks tell us about the environment of then. Hidden away in the rocks are fossils and features that allow us to piece together the ecology of those far distant times.

The shape of the coastline is related intimately to the geology, as are the lakes and rivers, hills, ridges and mountains. The geology of West Cork dates back to an origin 400 million years ago, and over the intervening time has been added to, distorted and dismembered, buried, flooded, frozen, dried out and eroded away. It’s a long and complex story, but an exciting one. Understanding this history will change the way you see West Cork today.

Above: a 'sketch'map of the geology of West Cork, showing the generalised ages, by geological period, of the bedrock.

A more complete and detailed interactive geological map can be seen here (opens in a new tab)

NEXT - Desert Sands and Sinking Sediments - how West Cork came to be set upon one of the deepest sedimentary basins in Europe and why there is as much as 7 kilometres of sediment underneath Beara.

Interactive map

This interactive map of the geology of West Cork presents the bedrock geology, topography (contours), geomorphology and drainage in layers.

View the map here in a new tab

West Cork Palaeoecology

The Environment of West Cork through Time

Visit the Blogsite at westcorkpalaeo.ie (new tab)

The Bedrock Geology of West Cork

Interactive map