Warwickshire has accumulated evidence for wide-ranging conditions in the distant geological past, during the county's journey through time. Geological evidence, preserved in local quarries and Warwickshire Museum's collections, indicates a fiery beginning roughly 600 million years ago, and an icy conclusion, during the ice ages of the last few hundred thousand years.
| Fire! Warwickshire's fiery, volcanic roots are still exposed in quarries north of Nuneaton. There, layers of 600 million year-old volcanic ash are now preserved as hard flinty rock, known as 'tuff'. We know that the huge quantities of ash were erupted into an ancient sea, from a chain of volcanic islands that once
existed nearby.
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Ice! Gravel pits in the Bubbenhall area, south of Coventry, sometimes expose thick beds of pebbly clay that geologists refer to as 'till'. We know that these clays were deposited by ice sheets, a few hundred thousand years ago. The pebbles within the till are mainly locally occurring rock-types, such as Carboniferous sandstone from the Warwickshire coalfield. Elsewhere in the county, gravel pits have yielded bones of woolly mammoths, proving just how cold it once was.
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