Olympus & Rysy - geology

OLYMPUS

ORIGIN

The Olympus was created from sedimentary rocks, which were settled 200 million years ago in shallow inland sea. About 1 million years ago, glaciers covered Olympus and created its plateaus and depressions.

FORMATION

With the increasing temperature, ice melted and the resultin streams swept away large amounts of crushed rocks forming alluvial fans (cones) which spread from mountain to the sea.

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CROSS SECTION OF OLYMPUS

 

The composition of Mount Olympus is largely sedimentary rock, particularly Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous limestone, with walls of limestone visible from years of erosion, and outcrops of granite and flysch in the southwest

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RYSY

ORIGIN

Rysy are young because they were formed in the Tertiary (65-1.8 million years ago), during the Alpine orogenesis, when the Alps, Pyrenees, Apennines, Himalayas and Caucasus Mountains were formed.

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FORMATION

The main body of rock of the Rysy was formed much earlier, in the Mesozoic (250-100 million years ago). Interestingly, most of the rocks that make up the mountains today were formed in a completely different region.

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CROSS SECTION OF RYSY

The Rysy Mountains are made up of metamorphic, magmatic and sedimentary rocks. Their entire structure is based on a granite core, which is a metamorphic rock found mainly in the High Tatras. Sedimentary rocks (limestone, dolomite, sandstone) built the Western and Belian Tatras. As a result of the long and complicated history of the formation of the Rys, they have a great variety of stone types.

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