Description
Yeats Country, Dartry Mountains, County Sligo, Ireland
Proudly seated on Sligo’s Wild Atlantic Way coastline stands the mighty Benbulbin mountain. This tabletop plateau is a very iconic and a true symbol of County Sligo. This tabletop plateau is a very iconic and a true symbol of County Sligo.
What I love most about Benbulben mountain, is how it seems to change look when observed during different times of day & seasons. This is mainly due to how light is cast upon it from different angles and also the height of the sun. For example, during noon in peak summer the sun is directly above and Benbulben casts no shadows. This photo was captured recently in Spring close to sunset. The sun sets on the east side, casting its defused sunset light westerly onto the eroded ridges of Benbulben. This makes these jagged ridges stand out more clearly and adds a more contrasting structure to this mountain’s fascinating geology.
As hard to believe as it is, this mountain top was once a prehistoric seabed! You can clearly see the many layers of sediment that was deposited on this once seafloor which in return created this mountain entirely made from the bones and shells of tiny extinct sea creatures.
Then over millions of years earth’s tectonic forces slowly pushed it 526 meters into the sky. Even still today you can find seashells and marine fossils along the summit of this mountain! It’s also very possible there are remains of giant sharks & whales on this mountain top….. Just let that one sink into your mind for a moment.
During the last Ice age geomorphological processes began to shape this impressive plateau. Water and Ice began creeping through the cracks in the rock, until the underlying shale was eventually eroded by the movement of the ice above. The shale then eroded faster than the limestone above causing these slopes to become steeper and left large overhangs of limestone at the top of the valleys. As the ice began to recede, support for the slopes failed and the land began to slip into the valleys below. It just shows how much our planet changes through time.
