Did you know that the Dinantian limestones got its name from the Dinant city in Belgium, where the limestones are occurring in a spectacular, wall-like structure near the river Maas (see pictures), and was described scientifically for the first time?
The DGE-ROLLOUT project is focusing on the Dinantian geothermal reservoir in NWE. This limestone reservoir is already exploited since 1986 in the Mons basin of Belgium and more recently tapped in the Belgian Balmat and the dutch Californie, where the limestone sediments are buried some kilometers deep and provide a reservoir for deep geothermal water. The limestone’s origin is a warm, shallow sea region, which 330 to 360 million years ago was stretched between today’s Scotland and Middle Germany and gave birth to thick layers of limestone similar to what is happening today at the Great barrier Reef in Australia.
Dinantian is also the name of a series of geological epochs from the Lower Carboniferous system in Europe. The Dinantian is equal to the lower part of the Mississippian series in the international geologic timescale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS).
As the legend says the 40-meter-high rock needle was built when the magical horse Bayard stepped on the rock and the deep fissure arose. Historians claim the cleft was built by the French army of Louis XIV during the Franco-Dutch War between 1672 and 1678 in order to build a road along the river.
