Welcome to a wonderful geological treasure of Los Angeles. We hope these few pages will provide a virtual field trip for the world to enjoy!
or return to ryono.net
This guy was born on the peninsula in 1950, but only started to study geology in 1997. He's your guide! Good luck, you may need it! Below him is Bluff Cove a beautiful surfing spot when the waves come in. In the distance is the southern bend of Los Angeles' Santa Monica Bay. We're at the northwest corner of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. If we go around that Flat Rock Point we'll come to Haggerty's surfing spot and then Malaga Cove.
|
We find Malaga Cove Beach (Rat Beach to locals) by turning down from Malaga Cove Plaza. Two of my kids, Mari & Morgan, attended Malaga Cove School (on this wave-cut terrace!). Walk down past the newly remodeled Palos Verdes Beach and Pool Club. It's Mediterranean-Revival style architecture matches the original club house of years ago. The beach itself has a gentle surf and a very mild slope into the ocean. On the walk down to the beach on the other side of the club house you'll see Malaga mudstone and Valmonte diatomite. Both Upper Miocene, the brown mudstone was formed above the diatomite layer in ocean waters up until about 5 million years ago (mya). |
||
|
The photo here shows the exposure of the white Valmonte diatomite (10 mya). Diatomite is a sedimentary rock formed by the fossils of dying diatoms which settled to a calm ocean floor when this land was all underwater! PV would last rise up as an island during the Upper Pleistocene Great Ice Age. The last photo shows brown Malaga mudstone mixed in with a diatomite slide rock thru erosion. At the base of this cliff or wave-cut terrace are large boulders of diatomite which anyone can lift if they would only try! |
||
