Sugworth is a geological Site of Special Scientific Interest north of

Abingdon-on-Thames Abingdon-on-Thames ( ), commonly known as Abingdon, is a historic market town and civil parish in the ceremonial county of Oxfordshire, England, on the River Thames. Historically the county town of Berkshire, since 1974 Abingdon has been admini ...

in Oxfordshire. It is a

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 ...

site. This site dates to the

Cromerian Stage The Cromerian Stage or Cromerian Complex, also called the Cromerian (german: Cromerium), is a stage in the Pleistocene glacial history of north-western Europe, mostly occurring more than half a million years ago. It is named after the East Anglian t ...

, an

interglacial An interglacial period (or alternatively interglacial, interglaciation) is a geological interval of warmer global average temperature lasting thousands of years that separates consecutive glacial periods within an ice age. The current Holocene ...

over half a million years ago. It is a river channel cut into

Kimmeridge Clay The Kimmeridge Clay is a sedimentary deposit of fossiliferous marine clay which is of Late Jurassic to lowermost Cretaceous age and occurs in southern and eastern England and in the North Sea. This rock formation is the major source rock for Nor ...

of the

Late 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 ...

, and it has rich deposits of vertebrates, ostracods, molluscs, beetles, plant remains and pollen.

References

{{SSSIs Oxfordshire Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Oxfordshire Geological Conservation Review sites