Jurassic Park

If you like dinosaurs, you have probably seen the movie Jurassic Park.  Did you know that the word “Jurassic” comes from my home in the mountains?  I’m Max the Marmot and today we are going to find out about the geology of my part of the French Alps.

Six hundred million years ago, the country of France was completely underwater, then a giant earthquake folded the earth like a piece of paper, creating mountains that peaked up out of the water.  In between the mountains were swampy areas, and over millions of years these turned into coal.

Gradually, the mountains wore down and a shallow sea covered everything again.  This time, however, little shellfish and fish were everywhere!  There were so many that as they died their shells and bones fell to the bottom of the sea and became rock.  Because this rock was created from the sediment of the ocean, it is called sedimentary rock.  Limestone is the primary kind of sedimentary rock, and it forms the base of the Jura mountains.  In fact there is so much limestone in the Jura mountains that scientists named the time when it was formed about 100 million years ago, the “Jurassic” period.

Then, 60 million years ago, what is now Italy crashed into the southern part of France.  Like a giant car wreck, the Alps mountains formed from the crumpled land where Italy, France and Switzerland came together, driving the mountains again up out of the oceans.

The land it created was not only some of the most beautiful, scenic mountains in the world, but would become very important for the very first people as well.  Because limestone isn’t hard, it tends to melt away as water drips over it for a long time.  This creates caves and underground rivers.

There are many of these in the Juras, including three great springs in Nans-Sous-Ste-Anne where rivers just come gushing out of the side of the mountain!  There are also many caves.  This created great shelter for early humans as they moved south to escape the cold weather of the Ice Age.  People found shelter in caves and fresh water from springs as they hunted animals like buffaloes.

In fact, we know that humans lived in these caves because scientists have found ancient cave paintings in the Jura mountains as old as 30,000 years!  Today, people still come to the Jura mountains to hunt, hike and climb.