Geological Ages: Present to 4600 Million Years Ago - St. Martins, NB, Canada
Posted by: Groundspeak Premium Member T0SHEA
N 45° 21.528 W 065° 31.501
20T E 302236 N 5025911
The Sea Caves of St. Martins is one of those places that you just have to see for yourself. The timeline is on an informational sign at the end of the parking lot. If you want to see the caves you must go at low tide.
Waymark Code: WMQDGR
Location: New Brunswick, Canada
Date Posted: 02/10/2016
Published By:Groundspeak Premium Member veritas vita
Views: 7

Before leaving on our excursion through the Maritimes, the sea caves were on our to-do list. The sight of the caves surpassed all expectations.
A Place of Tidal Wonder
St. Martins is a place of tidal wonder at the heart of the Bay of Fundy. Life here is governed by the rhythm of the world's highest tides. A colourful fleet of fishing boats wait in the Bay for the high tide to rise and fill the empty harbour with water so that they can unload their catch.

Walkers and hikers consult the tidal charts to find the best time to walk the ocean floor out to sea caves, caverns and arches. The tide rises, soon erasing their footsteps, filling the caves and caverns with water. Beaches, the harbour and the sea caves change twice each day, every time you see them they are different.

The tide races and rages around the scenic Quaco Head Lighthouse, creating treacherous beauty that through history, sank great sailing ships. The tide fills and recedes each day from vast salt marshes, creating an incubator of life that sustains the entire Bay of Fundy ecosystem.

St. Martins in a place of great natural beauty and is the gateway to the Fundy Trail, the last undeveloped stretch of wilderness coastline in North America. Walking trails and a low speed roadway wind along the coast past waterfalls, secluded beaches, picnic areas and breathtaking vistas across the Bay to Nova Scotia.
From the Village of St. Martins
Transcribed from sign as follows:
Geological Ages
of this site in
Millions of Years:

0 - Neogene
23 – Paleogene
65 – Cretaceous
145 - Jurassic
199 – Triassic
251 – Permian
299 – Upper Carboniferous
318 – Lower Carboniferous
359 – Devonian
416 – Silurian
443 – Ordovician
488 – Cambrian
542 – Precambrian
600 – (Ediacaran)
1000 – (Stenian)
4600 – (The Earth is Born)
The rocks of St. Martins are Triassic age, about 250 million years old, and belong to the Honeycomb Point, Quaco and Echo Cove formations. The large sea caves are in the red Honeycomb Point Formation. The coarse boulder conglomerate is part of the Quaco Formation. The contact of the two formations is easily seen at the east end of the beach in front of the restaurants. Very few fossils are found in these rocks. Nova Scotia's fossil history includes the oldest dinosaurs in North America found in Triassic age rocks. These rocks are too old to have dinosaurs.

St. Martins has beautiful examples of sea caves, shallow features carved into sandstone and conglomerate. Waves pound relentlessly on the coastal cliffs. Sea caves are caused by physical erosion, unlike chemical solution caves in karst landscapes where carbonate bedrock has been dissolved by natural acids in rain and groundwater. In sedimentary rocks like these the caves may form along rock layers. You can see this where the boulder conglomerate meets the red sandstone. The cave floor is on the same angle as the rock layers.
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