Jurassic Coast Jurassic Coast The Jurassic Coast is a World Heritage Site on the English Channel coast of southern England. It stretches from Exmouth in East Devon to Studland Bay in Dorset, a distance of about , and was inscribed on the World Heritage List in mid-December 2001. The site spans 185 million years of geological history, coastal erosion having exposed an almost continuous sequence of rock formation covering the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. At different times, this area has been desert, shallow tropical sea and marsh, and the fossilised remains of the various creatures that lived here have been preserved
Geology of Dorset around the Dorset and Devon border, although these may have been transported here with the other river deposits. Chesil Bank a long barrier beach stretching from West Bay to Portland, was created 10,000 years ago, when sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age. The Variscan orogeny is the oldest event for which there is evidence in Dorset, forming a major series of thrust faults in Carboniferous and older rocks. These thrusts trend west–east, dip moderately towards the south and have controlled later basin development and subsequent phases of inversion. During the Permo-Triassic the area was affected