Hurst Hill or Cumnor Hurst is a biological and geological
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 ...
west of
Oxford in
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primarily ...
.
It is a
Geological Conservation Review site.
The site is owned by
All Souls College, Oxford,
and its mosses and liverworts have been monitored for more than fifty years. The hill is also important geologically. In 1879 a fossil of a ''
Camptosaurus prestwichii'', a large herbivorous dinosaur dating to the
Upper Jurassic
The Late Jurassic is the third epoch of the Jurassic Period, and it spans the geologic time from 163.5 ± 1.0 to 145.0 ± 0.8 million years ago (Ma), which is preserved in Upper Jurassic strata.Owen 1987.
In European lithostratigraphy, the name ...
153 million years ago, was found on the site. The fossil belongs to a typically North African genus, and provides evidence of a land bridge across the proto-Atlantic in the Late Jurassic.
The hill is mentioned in
Matthew Arnold's poem ''
The Scholar Gipsy
"The Scholar-Gipsy" (1853) is a poem by Matthew Arnold, based on a 17th-century Oxford story found in Joseph Glanvill's ''The Vanity of Dogmatizing'' (1661, etc.). It has often been called one of the best and most popular of Arnold's poems, and ...
''.
[
]
References
External links
Introduction to Cumnor's Landscape
{{SSSIs Oxfordshire
Geological Conservation Review sites
Hills of Oxfordshire
Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Oxfordshire