Tag: poland

europe geology historical / biographies minerals mining museums, societies urban, art, anthropology

Wieliczka Salt Mine of Poland (Part 2)

Khursheed Dinshaw (India) This the second of two articles on the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland. The first (Wieliczka Salt Mine of Poland (Part 1)) covered some of the highlights that can be seen there. This one covers some more of these features, but also deals with the geology of the site. The journey began in the Miocene period, which was about 13.5Ma, when the crystallisation of salt dissolved in sea water occurred. These salt deposits combined with rocks that normally accompany salt that occupied what was known as the Pre-Carpathian Sink. Subjected intensively to the tectonic process, these salt deposits shifted and folded. About 6,000 years ago, the local people of Wieliczka in Poland started to produce salt by evaporating salty water. In the thirteenth century, when the sources of the salty water were almost exhausted, they began to sink wells hoping to find salty water under the ground. In 1289, at the bottom of one of the wells, the first lump of the grey rock salt was found and that was the beginning of the Wieliczka Salt Mine. Today, the mine is divided into two portions. While its upper stratum is the block type, its lower stratum is of the stratified type; and visitors learn about salt, its excavation and types as they walk with their designated guides across chambers, pathways, tunnels, chapels and lakes. In the olden days, the equipment to transport salt from one level to another included wooden carts and trolleys. At Wieliczka, these are … Read More

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europe geology historical / biographies minerals mining museums, societies palaeontology urban, art, anthropology

Wieliczka Salt Mine of Poland (Part 1)

Khursheed Dinshaw (India) The Wieliczka Salt Mine of Poland was included in the first UNESCO World Heritage list in 1978. It is also on the Polish List of Historic Heritage and, when visiting, provides an interesting way to get to know how salt has been mined underground for almost nine centuries. In the summer, almost 8,000 tourists a day visit Wieliczka, which has 500 tour guides and 400 miners maintaining the mine. After buying your ticket, you are allotted a guide who will take you around the mine. Patrycya, our guide, has been on the job for 20 years and we enthusiastically followed her to explore the beauty, material culture and historic heritage of the mine and its excavated complex. Fig. 1. Kinga – the patroness of the miners, along with other salt sculptures. We opted for the tourist route, which lets you explore chambers, galleries, chapels and lakes. The mine has been opened to the public with this route since the end of the eighteenth century and has more than 300km of galleries and almost 3,000 chambers. It is divided into nine floors at depths varying from 64m to 327m. We went down to the third floor, which is at a depth of 135m. To get to the first level, one has to walk down 380 wooden steps, but the walk is comparatively easy. There are a total of 800 steps that tourists walk in the mine and, after the tour ends, a lift takes you to the exit … Read More

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fossils geology mining palaeontology

Exploring the Jurassic at Zalas Quarry, southern Poland

Tomasz Borszcz and Dr Michał Zatoń (Poland) The area of southern Poland is well known for its widespread Jurassic deposits, in particular, Middle and Upper Jurassic sedimentary rocks that outcrop in a belt running from south-east to north-west in the area known as the Polish Jura Chain (Fig. 1). This area owes its name to the occurrence of spectacular klippes (outliers formed by thrusting) of by white, massive limestones deposited in the northern shelf of the Tethys Ocean during the Late Jurassic (Oxfordian). Because of their resistance to erosion, the rocks form a picturesque element in the surrounding upland landscape. Fig. 1. Location of Zalas Quarry against the background of the geological setting of the area. The oldest rocks in the area are represented by Carboniferous Mudstones (1) and conglomerates (3) and Permo-Carboniferous volcanic rocks (2 and 4). The Mesozoic deposits (5) are mostly covered by Cenozoic mudstones (6). In many places, the rocks are cut by faults (7) and rivers (8). As well as these, the Middle to Upper Jurassic deposits (in the form of glauconitic sandstones, marls, platy limestones and sponge-dominated reef-like structures called bioherms) occur in several natural and artificial exposures along the whole Polish Jura Chain. They are, and used to be, a real Mecca for professional researchers since the 19th century, and also amateur collectors from both Poland and elsewhere. This not surprising, as the deposits contain abundant and diverse fossils, including nearly all the fossil groups characteristic of this geological period. In this article, … Read More

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europe fossils geology palaeontology

Fossils from the Polish Bathonian clays

Dr Michał Zatoń (Poland) The Middle Jurassic Bathonian stage, which is preceded by Aalenian and Bajocian and overlaid by the Callovian, was established on the basis of oolitic limestones outcropping at Bath in Somerset. This historical and English connection is a major reason I have chosen the Bathonian as a topic for Deposits Magazine. The Bathonian clays in Poland, like the English classic Kimmeridge Clay or Callovian Oxford Clay, are characterised by their rich fossil content. Although some years ago, the Bathonian clays from Poland were not as well known as these two English formations, today they have become progressively more recognised outside of Poland. This is due to an increasing number of publications dealing with different aspects of the clays and the 7th Jurassic Congress held in Kraków (southern Poland) in 2006, during which scientists from all over the world had the chance to meet and actually look at the Bathonian clays. Geological and palaeogeographical background The best outcrops of Bathonian clays are in southern and south-central Poland, in an area called the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland (Fig. 1). Here, the Jurassic rocks, and especially Oxfordian (Upper Jurassic) limestones, form a distinct belt stretching approximately in a south-east to north-west direction. That is why the late Professor Stefan Zbigniew Różycki in 1960, when comparing the area with such classic areas as the Swabian and Franconian Jurassic, called it the ‘Polish Jura’. Fig. 1. A map of Poland without the Cenozoic cover: 1. Pre-Jurassic, 2. Jurassic, 3. Cretaceous; PJ – Polish Jura. … Read More

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