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Dieren en planten

Water en land

In general   Geological history   Carboniferous period   Permian period   Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous   Tertiary sub-era   Quaternary   

Mens en Milieu

Geological history of the North Sea

How and when did natural gas, oil and salt develop? Why are there so many mammoth bones found on the bottom of the North Sea, and why do we find subtropical shells on Dutch beaches? To answer these questions, we must step back millions of years in time to the evolution of the North Sea. The story begins in the Carboniferous Period, around three hundred million years ago. The North Sea did not yet exist.

  • Time periods
    Geological time scale, global overview, eARTh works!, Wieringen
    period years ago features
    Carboniferous period 368-288 million Formation of minerals (coal, natural gas, oil)
    Permian 288-247 million salt deposition
    Triassic 247-211 million Muschelkalk deposition
    Jurassic 211-143 million volcano under the Wadden Sea
    Cretaceous 143-65 million imestone, marl
    Tertiary 65-2,5 million formation of the North Sea basin
    Quaternary 2.5 million - present Glacial Ages
    Pleistocene 2.5 million - 10,000 years evolution of man
    Holocene 10,000 years ago - present Peat formation


    The planet earth formed more than 4.5 billion years ago. The geological time scale is divided into the Precambrian and the Phanerozoic. Within in the Phanerozoic, roughly the last 570 million years, three eras can be distinguished: Paleozoic, (574 to 247 million years ago), roughly the days before the dinosaurs,the Mesozoic (247 to 65 million years ago), the days of the dinosaurs, and the Cenozoic (65 million years ago till the present), the days after the dinosaurs.
    Important geological events, such as periods of mountain formation (orogenesis) or notable changes in the species of fossils found in various layers in the earth, give the criteria for which man has based the divisions in the geological time scale.
    The eras are subdived into time periods. For example, the Quarternary has been classified in the epochs Pleistocene (from 2.5 million years to ten thousand years ago) and Holocene (from 10,000 years ago to the present).

  • Continental drift
    Continental drift, eARTh Works!, Wieringen

    Slowly drifting over the viscose innards of the earth, the plates upon which the continents lie have moved over the surface of the earth in the course of geological history. Based upon all kinds of geological information (types of rocks, fossils, magnetism), geologists have been able to reconstruct the general position of the continents in the past. For example, Scandinavia lay by the equator during the Silurian.