The Tree of Lithic Life
The chalk cliff offers a striking exposure of the K/T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) Boundary, a spectacular mass extinction event 65 million years ago when an asteroid impact caused the demise of the dinosaurs and more than half of living species at the time. Because the chalk cliffs and limestone contain an amazing array of fossils, in 1825 Danish geologist Johan Georg Forchammer called this feature Fiskeler (“Fish Clay”). The theory that an asteroid impact caused the K/T extinction was formulated by Walter and Luis Alvarez, who found that this thin layer in the rock record contained a high concentration of Iridium that only exists in meteorites. The fascinating story of their discoveries is recounted in the wonderfully-titled book T-Rex and the Crater of Doom.
“The Tree of Lithic Life” confuses the boundaries between dead and living, rocks and life. The decomposing, termite-eaten wood of the dead tree trunk provides fertile ground for plants to grow. The Stevns Klint limestone harbors lithic life in the form of fossils; limestone is itself a kind of fossil, a sedimentary rock composed of skeletal bits of marine organisms.
The calcium-rich, water-soluble limestone erodes easily into fantastic forms displaying suggestive features, such as the rock placed in the hollow in the middle of a branch stump that resembles a ghostly animal or human face. The large black basalt rock with white limestone traces in its striking striations provides a strong color contrast that will be enhanced in the rain and snow, which will brighten the white and black to shiny surfaces. These well-weathered rocks are all-weather stones, well-suited to the local climate.
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- Stone is the New Green Paul A. Harris
