Paiva Bookshop

Geossítio 18 Paiva Bookshop

Stone books that preserve the marks of life…

Over the Mourinha stream, a tributary of the Paiva, vertical rocks rise imposingly in the landscape, resembling the spines of books arranged on shelves in a bookshop or library, hence the name “Livraria do Paiva”.

This is a metamorphic landscape well marked by the quartzite ridges that stand out in the landscape due to the high hardness of quartzite: a metamorphic rock formed on the seabed around 475 million years ago from quartz-rich sands. These rocks still bear traces of the activity of the living beings that inhabited the sea at the time, with particular emphasis on the Cruziana, tracks resulting from the activity of arthropods such as trilobites.

You can see this geosite on the PR5 geotourist walking route, which is linear and 1.5km long.

Este geossítio faz parte do itinerário B: Through the mines and unknown corners of Paiva.
Saiba mais sobre a Rota dos Geossítios .

Informação Geológica

These quartzite outcrops, of Arenigian (Lower Ordovician) age, resulted from the deposition of sands around 475 million years ago (Ordovician Period), on the shallow margins of the Gondwana paleocontinent, at latitudes very close to the South Pole at the time. It contains ichnofossils, i.e. marks of activity of the living beings that inhabited the sea at the time, with particular emphasis on the Cruziana, resulting from the activity of arthropods such as trilobites. The verticalization of the strata present here is related to the continental collision that gave rise to Pangea and the formation of the Variscan chain. This compressive process led to the emersion of vast areas, leading in particular to the verticalization of these strata, which had been deposited horizontally.