SOSNOWIEC, POLAND — My friends Michał Zatoń and Tomasz Borszcz took me on a very pleasant day trip to Góra Świętej Anny in southwestern Poland about an hour’s drive northwest from Sosnowiec. This is a place of considerable geological and historical interest. It is an eroded volcanic caldera and the easternmost occurrence of the fine-grained igneous rock basalt in Europe. You would think I’d be able to show you at least a bit of basalt, but we saw only the surrounding Middle Triassic limestone country rock. (Sorry, Dr. Pollock.) We’ll talk about the history later. Now we’ll look at the geology.
Here is a great exposure of the Muschelkalk, a Middle Triassic sequence of limestones and dolomites that extends across central and western Europe. This is its best exposure in Poland. The rock appears very massive in this old quarried wall, but it actually has many distinct layers. Michał is standing at the top of stairs that lead down into a massive Nazi amphitheater called a Thingstätte, but more on this later.
Part of the Muschelkalk unit is dominated by terebratulid brachiopods, many of which are seen on this slab.
The topmost Muschelkalk here contains thick beds made primarily of crinoid skeletal debris, a kind of deposit known as an encrinite. We’ve seen encrinites before in this blog.
You don’t often see informative signs dedicated to the description of a trace fossil type. Rhizocorallium commune is the most common ichnofossil in this part of the Muschelkalk. It is a ropy, loopy tube produced in this case by crustaceans, probably including the decapod shrimp Pemphix.
The slabs used to pave the walks and plazas in this area are filled with Rhizocorallium commune traces.
Finally, this is a view west from Góra Świętej Anny towards the Oder River. It is the highest place around, dominating this fertile valley rich with farms, mines and factories. This will be the reason it is so culturally and historically significant in Silesia.
