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Presquile Beach
Sedimentary Strata
and Soil Depth. Inset:
Illustration of Crinoid
and Trilobite.
Brighton is situated in the midst cross-sections of crinoid stalks, ice age (roughly 10, 000 years
of what geologists refer to as which show up as clusters of little ago), as the massive Laurentide
the Lindsay Formation, which circles. Much of the terrestrial glacier retreated, it dug out
wiggles diagonally across (on-land) life we take for granted, and pulverized the rocks
the map, ‘starting’ roughly at including plants and trees did not that used to exist where Lake
Collingwood and ‘ending’ in even exist yet, nor even jawed Ontario is today. In the process
neighbouring Prince Edward fishes. As these creatures died in of retreating, the glacier
County. The rocks under your the shallow layers of sediment, occasionally left behind some
feet are made up of sediments they slowly ossified into the fossils of the excess waste rock it was
that eroded down the rivers that residents and tourists can dragging, in what is referred to
and creeks off the (then, much appreciate in the provincial park as moraine. These moraines are
taller) Canadian Shield, then today. Really, if one is to dig down composed of sand and gravel,
settled and compressed in below the soil line anywhere in and topped with soil, and that
the warm sea basin among the community, the same rock explains why the Brighton,
the early critters who lived there. exists and it is often exposed when Cramahe and Quinte West
construction equipment prepares area has a number of
These creatures included lands for housing development. prominent operations engaged
little squid-like cephalopods, in the process of digging
hard shelled brachiopods Since sedimentary rocks tend aggregates for the purposes of
and the famous trilobites. A to be ‘softer’ than igneous road and building construction. l
careful search of shoreline rocks volcanic rocks, they can also
in Presquile will reveal some of be eroded more easily. Thus, NEXT ARTICLE – the first
these, as well as an abundance of at the end of the most recent residents of the Brighton area.
The Brighton Beacon 23
