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Twinning Geological Sites

ScottishGeology.com is proud to announce the launch of the new Twinning Geological Sites project.

In Scotland today we have no tropical coral reefs, active volcanoes, icy glaciers, bubbling hot springs or blistering hot deserts... but we have had in the past.

This exciting new project aims to promote the connection between our present landscape and its dynamic past. Other countries in the world today have these fascinating and awe-inspiring features - features that we can witness as tourists, watch on television or read about in books and magazines. But how often do we think about our own country when we do this? For many, the answer must be never.

Our country today has much to offer - stunning scenery, impressive waterfalls, towering cliffs, rugged mountains, gently rolling hills and much, much more. But the processes that shape our landscape at the moment are quite gentle, and the climate that we live in is far from extreme.

In our geological past though, it has been a very different story. Over the last 650 million years, Scotland has travelled from near the South Pole to where it is today. In that time it has been a backdrop for volcanoes, deserts, tropical seas, rainforests, ice sheets, Himalayan-styled mountain ranges and ocean floors. The evidence for these lie in the rocks beneath our feet, but to the untrained eye, this isn't very obvious.

So by twinning the modern with the ancient, this project will help to increase awareness of our exciting past. We currently have two Scottish sites twinned:

• Glaciers @ Loch Lomond and Skaftafell, Iceland
• Hot springs and geysers at Rhynie and Yellowstone National Park, USA