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Cooper's Pit, Canterbury PDF Print
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Grid Reference: TR147567

Cooper's Pit was once described as the finest inland exposure of Upper Chalk in the Canterbury district. Today it is in a degraded condition but still retains two good chalk faces.

Although obscured, the southern face contains the Tertiary-Cretaceous unconformity, about four meters of basal Tertiary loamy sands and the underlying "Bull Head Bed" marking the unconformity. The western face exposes Micraster coranguinum Upper Chalk with a distinctive flint known as Whitaker's Three Inch Flint Band.

Previous accounts refer to the abundance of the echinoid Conulus six metres above this flint. In the chalk cliffs of Thanet a similar Conulus band marks the base of the overlying Uintacrinus zone of the Upper Chalk. Cooper's Pit may therefore contain an unusual inland exposure of this higher chalk zone.

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Coopers Pit is a private site and is currently closed.

 

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(Regionally Important Geological Sites) 

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