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Lion Pit
Lion Pit is a geological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Grays in Essex. It is a Geological Conservation Review site, and part of the Chafford Gorges Nature Park, which is managed by the Essex Wildlife Trust. The site is part of a nineteenth-century tramway cutting to carry chalk to riverside wharves. Evidence has been found of flint-knapping using the Levallois technique by Neanderthals 200,000 years ago, and it has even been possible to fit back together some of the flint flakes. Fossils have been found of mammals including, rhinoceros, bison, mammoth and straight-tusked elephant The straight-tusked elephant (''Palaeoloxodon antiquus'') is an extinct species of elephant that inhabited Europe and Western Asia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene (781,000–30,000 years before present). Recovered individuals have reac .... A public footpath goes through the site from Weymouth Drive to London Road. References {{SSSIs Essex Sites of Special Scientific Intere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Site Of Special Scientific Interest
A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle of Man. SSSI/ASSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in the United Kingdom are based upon them, including national nature reserves, Ramsar sites, Special Protection Areas, and Special Areas of Conservation. The acronym "SSSI" is often pronounced "triple-S I". Selection and conservation Sites notified for their biological interest are known as Biological SSSIs (or ASSIs), and those notified for geological or physiographic interest are Geological SSSIs (or ASSIs). Sites may be divided into management units, with some areas including units that are noted for both biological and geological interest. Biological Biological SSSI/ASSIs may ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grays, Essex
Grays (or Grays Thurrock) is the largest town in the borough and unitary authority of Thurrock in Essex, England. The town which is both a former civil parish and one of Thurrock's traditional Church of England parishes is located on the north bank of the River Thames. It is approximately to the east of central London, and east of the M25 motorway. Its economy is linked to Port of London industries, its own offices, retail and the Lakeside Shopping Centre at West Thurrock. In 1931 the parish had a population of 18,173. History Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary that he visited Grays on 24 September 1665 and apparently bought fish from the local fishermen. Parts of Grays and Chafford Hundred are set within three Victorian chalk pits; the largest two being the Lion Gorge, and the Warren Gorge. Another area of the Chafford Hundred residential development is built on a Victorian landfill site. The civic offices on New Road in Grays were built in the 1980s; work on an extension b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Greater London to the south and south-west. There are three cities in Essex: Southend, Colchester and Chelmsford, in order of population. For the purposes of government statistics, Essex is placed in the East of England region. There are four definitions of the extent of Essex, the widest being the ancient county. Next, the largest is the former postal county, followed by the ceremonial county, with the smallest being the administrative county—the area administered by the County Council, which excludes the two unitary authorities of Thurrock and Southend-on-Sea. The ceremonial county occupies the eastern part of what was, during the Early Middle Ages, the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Essex. As well as rural areas and urban areas, it forms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geological Conservation Review
The Geological Conservation Review (GCR) is produced by the UK's Joint Nature Conservation Committee and is designed to identify those sites of national and international importance needed to show all the key scientific elements of the geological and geomorphological features of Britain. These sites display sediments, rocks, minerals, fossils, and features of the landscape that make a special contribution to an understanding and appreciation of Earth science and the geological history of Britain, which stretches back more than three billion years. The intention of the project, which was devised in 1974 by George Black and William Wimbledon working for the Governmental advisory agency, the Nature Conservancy Council (NCC), was activated in 1977. It aimed to provide the scientific rationale and information base for the conservation of geological SSSIs (Sites of Special Scientific Interest, protected under British law (latterly the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, as amended 1995). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chafford Gorges Nature Park
The Chafford Gorges Nature Park is a nature reserve located in Chafford Hundred, England and managed by the Essex Wildlife Trust. It includes two Sites of Special Scientific Interest. Grays Thurrock Chalk Pit has been designated for its biological interest, and Lion Pit for geological interest. Facilities There was a visitor's centre for the nature park on Drake Road. It had a gift shop which sold refreshments and there were toilets and an observation deck. However, it has now closed. History The reserve is on the site of three major chalk quarries - Warren Gorge, Lion Gorge, and Grays Gorge which were worked from the end of the 18th century for around 150 years. Lion Pit In the Lion Gorge are the remnants of an old tramway cutting created in the nineteenth century to transport chalk from Lion Pit to the riverside wharves. The tramway ran roughly south from the chalk diggings to the Lion Works - a Portland cement factory opened in 1874. (Until about 1980, Thurrock was a major ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Essex Wildlife Trust
The Essex Wildlife Trust (EWT) is one of 46 wildlife trusts which cover the United Kingdom. The EWT was founded in 1959, and it describes itself as Essex's leading conservation charity, which aims to protect wildlife for the future and the people of the county. As of January 2017, it has over 34,000 members and runs 87 nature reserves, 2 nature parks and 11 visitor centres. Essex has one of the longest coastlines of any English county, with saltmarshes, lagoons, mudflats, grazing marshes, reedbeds and shingle. Its ancient forests were formerly important to the local economy, with wood being used for fuel, construction and bark in the tanning industry. Coppicing is being re-introduced by the EWT to encourage woodland grasses, flowers, invertebrates and birds. A few grasslands on the heavy clays of south- and mid-Essex are still grazed according to traditional methods, supporting a mixture of pasture and fen. Some brownfield sites, often on contaminated soil, have populations of na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flint-knapping
Knapping is the shaping of flint, chert, obsidian, or other conchoidal fracturing stone through the process of lithic reduction to manufacture stone tools, strikers for flintlock firearms, or to produce flat-faced stones for building or facing walls, and flushwork decoration. The original Germanic term ''knopp'' meant to strike, shape, or work, so it could theoretically have referred equally well to making statues or dice. Modern usage is more specific, referring almost exclusively to the hand-tool pressure-flaking process pictured. It is distinguished from the more general verb "chip" (to break up into small pieces, or unintentionally break off a piece of something) and is different from "carve" (removing only part of a face), and "cleave" (breaking along a natural plane). Method Flintknapping or knapping is done in a variety of ways depending on the purpose of the final product. For stone tools and flintlock strikers, chert is worked using a fabricator such as a hammerstone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Levallois Technique
The Levallois technique () is a name given by archaeologists to a distinctive type of stone knapping developed around 250,000 to 300,000 years ago during the Middle Palaeolithic period. It is part of the Mousterian stone tool industry, and was used by the Neanderthals in Europe and by modern humans in other regions such as the Levant. It is named after 19th-century finds of flint tools in the Levallois-Perret suburb of Paris, France. The technique was more sophisticated than earlier methods of lithic reduction, involving the striking of lithic flakes from a prepared lithic core. A striking platform is formed at one end and then the core's edges are trimmed by flaking off pieces around the outline of the intended lithic flake. This creates a domed shape on the side of the core, known as a tortoise core, as the various scars and rounded form are reminiscent of a tortoise's shell. When the striking platform is finally hit, a lithic flake separates from the lithic core with a distin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neanderthals
Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an Extinction, extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. While the "causes of Neanderthal disappearance about 40,000 years ago remain highly contested," demographic factors such as small population size, inbreeding and genetic drift, are considered probable factors. Other scholars have proposed competitive replacement, assimilation into the modern human genome (bred into extinction), great climate change, climatic change, disease, or a combination of these factors. It is unclear when the line of Neanderthals split from that of Early modern human, modern humans; studies have produced various intervals ranging from 315,000 to more than 800,000 years ago. The date of divergence of Neanderthals from their ancestor ''Homo heidelbergensis, H. heidelbergensis'' is also unclear. The oldest potential ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Straight-tusked Elephant
The straight-tusked elephant (''Palaeoloxodon antiquus'') is an extinct species of elephant that inhabited Europe and Western Asia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene (781,000–30,000 years before present). Recovered individuals have reached up to in height, and an estimated in weight. The straight-tusked elephant probably lived in small herds, flourishing in interglacial periods, when its range would extend as far north as Great Britain. Isolated tusks are often found while partial or whole skeletons are rare, and there is evidence of predation by early humans. It is the ancestral species of most dwarf elephants that inhabited islands in the Mediterranean. Description ''Palaeoloxodon antiquus'' was quite large, with individuals reaching in height. Like other members of '' Palaeoloxodon'', ''P. antiquus'' possesses a well developed parieto-occipital crest at the top of the cranium that anchored the splenius as well as possibly the rhomboid muscles to support the lar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sites Of Special Scientific Interest In Essex
Site most often refers to: * Archaeological site * Campsite, a place used for overnight stay in an outdoor area * Construction site * Location, a point or an area on the Earth's surface or elsewhere * Website, a set of related web pages, typically with a common domain name It may also refer to: * Site, a National Register of Historic Places property type * SITE (originally known as ''Sculpture in the Environment''), an American architecture and design firm * Site (mathematics), a category C together with a Grothendieck topology on C * ''The Site'', a 1990s TV series that aired on MSNBC * SITE Intelligence Group, a for-profit organization tracking jihadist and white supremacist organizations * SITE Institute, a terrorism-tracking organization, precursor to the SITE Intelligence Group * Sindh Industrial and Trading Estate, a company in Sindh, Pakistan * SITE Centers, American commercial real estate company * SITE Town, a densely populated town in Karachi, Pakistan * S.I.T.E Indust ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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