Nature » Geology

Geological History 3

The most recent formation outcropping within the Park is the Scaglia Rossa (Upper Cretaceous). This is a brick red or grey-rosy marly limestone outcropping in the Park near the Mountain Hut Boz, on Mt. Brendol and Talvena: the toponyms "Le Rosse di Erera" or "Le Rosse di Vescovà", "Val dei Ross" clearly indicate this kind of rock. Scaglia Rossa originates from muds deposited in a deep-sea environment, but it contains a considerable quantity of clay, with many traces of fossils left by big worms sieving the seabed. The presence of clay denotes that there is debris coming from emerged areas after the first stages of the Alpine orogenesis. The uprising of Dolomiti Bellunesi mainly occurred in the last ten million years within the more general process of the earth's crust compression, which gave rise to the Alpine chain and intensely deformed, refolded, fractured and overlapped the rock layers. In some areas, this process led to the formation of spectacular "thrusts" of older rocks over more recent ones. The chain of Dolomiti Bellunesi structurally corresponds to a big anticlinal "wave" (Coppolo-Pelf anticline), running from Vette di Feltre to Schiara.