How did Alfred find fossilised sea creatures high up in the Alps?

Your task is to use the comments from the mystery to help you answer a classic GCSE Geography examination question. Think carefully about what information the evidence is giving you and how you can use this to support and develop your answer. Your key aim is to use key terminology appropriately and effectively. 1. Read the mystery cards. Think about what is relevant/irrelevant for the question how did Alfred find fossilised seas creatures high up in the Alps? 2. Can you group or organise the information? What groups are there? Why are they relevant? 3. Answer the GCSE question at the top of the page. He found fossilised sea creatures at the top of the mountain because the mountains are constantly rising due to collisional plate boundaries.

There were long periods of quiet between earth movements during which sedimentary rocks, thousands of metres thick, formed huge depressions called geosynclines.

In some places, the folds were pushed over on one side to give overfolds, while in some of the highest fold mountains, such as the Alps, the rocks have been severely folded and faulted into nappes.

Sometimes the folds were simple upfolds (anticlines) and down folds (synclines).

Geosynclines are huge depressions which often contain seas.

Over millions of years the sediments were compressed into sedimentary rocks such as sandstone and limestone.

Rivers carried sediment and deposited them into depressions known as geosynclines.

The sedimentary rocks were forced upwards into a series of folds by the movement of tectonic plates.

Recent mountain building movements have created the Alps, Himalayas, Rockies and Andes., some of which are still rising. They are called young fold mountains.

Tectonic plates are sections of the earths crust.

Alfred is a keen geologist.

Tectonic plates float on the mantle molten rock beneath the earths surface

Alfred is also a keen climber and is preparing to climb Mt Blanc. He enjoys the amazing scenery created by overfolds and nappes.

The mantle is continually moving due to convection currents.

The Alps reach great heights the highest peak is Mt Blanc in France at 4810 m

Fold mountains occur where two tectonic plates are moving towards each other.

A compressional margin occurs when two tectonic plates are moving towards each other.

The Alps are known as young fold mountains

The Alps lie at a compressional margin.

Fold mountains have been formed at times in the earths geological history called mountain-building periods.

Early geologists suggested that the fossils of sea creatures were deposited on mountains by Noahs flood.

When sea animals die, their remains may fall to the bottom of the sea and they become covered in sediment.

When limestone is exposed to wind, rain and chemical weathering, fossils may become exposed.

This information arent really that useful to how Alfred Wegner found dead fossils at the top of the Alps, some of them is useful but not all of them. I have colour coded them to importance: traffic lights signal