Fair warning – I over indulged in geology at Gros Morne, a Canadian National Park and an International Union of Geological Sciences, Geological Heritage Site! Who knew?! Which makes my excitement completely understandable. And if I have a prayer of holding your attention long enough to get to the good pictures, you’ll need to know about the Iapetus Ocean.

Newfoundland ended up retaining evidence from five different environments, one of those, the Tablelands, is the only known instance of a portion of the upper mantle protruding to the surface as cool crystalized material, about 500 million years ago. Mantle material is resistant to weathering and virtually no soil has built up since the last glaciation. And what has, is toxic to most plants. Carnivorous pitcher plants that don’t rely on the soil, and serpentine sandwort that tolerates metals, are able to survive.

Green Point, on the park’s northern coast is sedimentary rock formed a kilometer under the Iapetus Ocean. It was at Green Point that geologists definitively determined the start of the Ordovician period, 485.4 million years ago.

The Long Range Mountains rise east of Green Point and are the result of an uprising of the Canadian Shield along a fault line caused by a collision of tectonic plates. About 400 million years ago. As part of the Canadian Shield, these rocks are somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 billion years old. At Western Brook Pond the escarpment rises 2,000 feet over the pond.

Fourth formation is Gros Morne Mountain proper. The summit of the mountain is formed from sand from the tropical beaches of old North America.

The fifth formation is found at Green Gardens. These volcanic rocks are evidence of the rifting that originally created the Iapetus Ocean about 600 million years ago. Sadly, I didn’t realize the range of sites, and didn’t make it to Green Gardens. Perhaps next time. I do have some other photos to try and make up for the missing Green Gardens.