apuan alps unesco global geopark

 

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How is the
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ApuanGeoLab
Interactive Museum of Earth Sciences in Equi Terme
 

where is the apuangeolab
what is the apuangeolab
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ApuanGeoLab shows you the continuous geological evolution of our planet in order to help you understand why earthquakes happen or mountains are created, why the Apennines and Mediterranean was formed and how water has shaped intricate underground passages and deep wells in the carbonatic body of the Apuan Alps...
 

 
 

ApuanGeoLab tells you why the planet surface is endlessly restless, fragile and gradually transforming. The "Earth shell" is divided into about ten large plates or slabs; they fit together like the pieces of a puzzle.
The plates are like rafts floating on the remaining part of the upper mantle (asthenosphere), which behaves like a highly viscous fluid. Tectonic plates move just a few centimetres a year, thanks to convection currents that move them passively, like objects on a conveyor belt.

ApuanGeolab tells you the world why the Apuan Alps, in the Late Triassic, about 220 million years ago. The continental environment is becoming a coastal, marine environment. This is followed by another 40 million years of carbonate sedimentation in a calm, continental shelf sea, until we have a “sudden”, later lowering of the sea bed around the Middle and Late Jurassic. Let’s now take another step forwards in time, to the end of the Age of Dinosaurs (Late Cretaceous). The African and Eurasian plates are now converging and starting to close in the area of the Tethys Ocean basin in today’s Mediterranean sea. During the Paleogene, the first signs of initial compression gradually appear in the Apennine and Apuan areas...