Geoparque Mundial UNESCO
Geoparque Villuercas > Nº36 – Camorro de Castañar
Towards the southeast of the town of Castañar de Ibor and from the EX-118 road, the path that runs through the Garganta de las Calabazas (pumpkin gorge) starts, from where a path leads up to Camorro del Castañar, a plateau at an altitude of just over 1100 metres.
We will go up to observe the complete structure of the Ibor-Guadalupe anticlinorium and imagine how high its quartzite vault may have been compared to the current height of this “remnant mountain”.
It will also help us to better understand marine life in those geological times. This is the case of Daedalus, the traces of enigmatic invertebrates that buried themselves in the seafloor (see geosite 14).
El Camorro de Castañar is a residual relief ( remnant mount), sculpted by erosion in the hard Armorican quartzite. This anticline was completely eroded away, leaving the deepest materials visible.
However, in the vicinity of the axis of the anticline there are also remains of these quartzites that have not been eroded, hence the concept of “remnant mountl”, a mountain of some 1100 metres in altitude known generically as Camorro. There are two Camorros in the area, this one in Castañar de Ibor and another further south in Navalvillar de Ibor.
El Camorro de Castañar is also an exceptional palaeontological site where numerous specimens of Skolithos and Daedalus can be observed, ichnofossils which are very abundant in the region of Las Villuercas.
The Armorican quartzites and siliceous sandstones of Lower Ordovician age, so abundant in the Geopark, show numerous traces of habitation and feeding (dwellings) of extinct animal species, some of which are difficult to attribute phylogenically, as is the case of those that have given rise to the Daedalus.
Their r relatively large size make them easy to observe. Daedalus is the shape of a cone or toroid as the result of the progressive displacement of vertically, or gently inclined, J-shaped tube. Daedalus lacks modern counterparts but is believed to have been formed by a worm-shaped animal opportunistically exploiting the substrate for food, alternatively harvesting biofilms that colonized the sand grains. Daedalus is a particularly characteristic trace fossil of the Armorican Quartzite.
