Geological history of Point Lobos than it is now (because more water was in the polar ice-caps and continental glaciers). Deep submarine canyons were cut in the Monterey Bay area, as an extension of the Salinas River. During late Cenozoic Era, because of sustained transpression of the Pacific Plate onto the American Plate along the nearby San Andreas Fault Zone, there was continued uplift of the entire coastline of California, so that erosive action of marine waves cut these terraces in the Monterey Bay area. Those Pleistocene marine terraces are composed of clay, silt, sand and gravel with a basal unconformity of gravel on top
Wivenhoe Gravel Pit establishing the previous course of the Thames. Two worked flints may be evidence of occupation by Homo heidelbergensis around half a million years ago. The pit, which is now water filled, is in a field off Brightlingsea Road opposite Broad Lanes. Wivenhoe Gravel Pit Wivenhoe Gravel Pit is a 2.1 hectare geological Site of Special Scientific Interest north of Wivenhoe in Essex. It is a Geological Conservation Review site. The site is the type locality for the Wivenhoe Gravel, which was laid down by the River Thames before it was diverted south to its present course by the Anglian glaciation