Blick vom Hofer Sattel

Hof bei Salzburg, Salzburg

A view of the Alps from the Hofer Sattel. It is worth walking a few steps further to enjoy the panorama of the Limestone Alps, which lie to the south, or to cast a glance to the west towards Koppl, behind it to the Nockstein and Gaisberg or to the Hoher Staufen and Untersberg. View of the Untersberg The Northern Limestone Alps belong to the Eastern Alps and are composed of Mesozoic rocks. Our journey through time and space takes another enormous leap into the past, about 250 million years back. There was only a single continent, Pangea, which was surrounded by water. Over millions of years, this supercontinent broke into individual plates. Between these, bays and seas formed, one of which was the Tethys. The Tethys was located in the tropical region. For 200 million years, gravel, sand, and pebbles were sedimented into this primeval sea, which was many times larger than today's Mediterranean Sea, by rivers and streams. These deposited in layers. Mussels, corals, and snails were also deposited on the seabed. Mighty sedimentary layers formed. Afterwards, these layers were shifted north by continental drift. It was a tough mass, built up from different layers, which was further folded by pressure. In the Earth's interior, some sediments were remelted. The lighter sediments then “floated” upwards on these and piled up so high that they protruded from the primeval sea. This was the birth of the Alps. This happened about 50 million years ago, in the Tertiary (belonging to the Cenozoic, the youngest geological era from 65 million years ago to today, divided into Tertiary [65 million to 2 million years] and Quaternary [2 million years to today]). The Tertiary is also divided into 5 epochs: Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene.