It's the K-T Boundary
Where the light rock is there were dinosaurs .... where the dark rock is, no dinosaurs ..... the thin dark line between them is the iridium and tektite rich debris layer from the asteroid strike that wiped them out ..... that layer is found all over the world but the significance of this particular place is that it is the outcrop in the Bottaccione Gorge near Gubbio in Italy where and Alvarez (father/son, physicist/geologist) first identified it .... their work turned the 'asteroid extinction event" from one of many unsupported possible theories for the dinosaur's disappearance into the accepted theory it is now.
Revolutionary piece of geological theory and it happened right there .... being there is the geologists equivalent of sitting under Iaacc Newton's own apple tree! 🙂
K
Ps Gubbio is well worth a visit in its own right even if you're not into rocks ... great old quarter with interesting architecture, great bars and eating places.
Pps .. I did say it was obscure ... but hoped the clues and google might do the trick 🙂
Very Interesting.
I had never heard of the K-T Boundary as my Geology studies were 45 years ago and pre date this theory!
It was interesting to read that the asteroid strike that made the dinosaurs extinct was by a 6 to 9 mile diameter asteroid which released a billion times the energy than the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki & Hiroshima.
In March 2010, an international panel of scientists endorsed the asteroid hypothesis, specifically the Chicxulub impact, as being the cause of the extinction. A team of 41 scientists reviewed 20 years of scientific literature and in so doing also ruled out other theories such as massive volcanism. They had determined that a 10–15 km (6–9 mi) space rock hurtled into earth at Chicxulub. For comparison, the Martian moon Phobos is 11 km (7 mi) and Mount Everest is just under 9 km (5.6 mi). The collision would have released the same energy as 100,000,000 megatonnes of TNT (4.2×1023 J), over a billion times the energy of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasak
