2.000 meters above sea level (Triassic)

2.000 meters above sea level

The Volaia Sandwich (Slices of Ordovician-Silurian-Devonian...)

The Carnian Alps (Alpi Carniche in Italian) a large mountain range in the North East of Italy, bordering with Austria (North) and Slovenia (East).
The Highest point is  Mt. Cogliàns.
The geology of the Carnic Alps is one of the most important and complex mountain ranges of the Alps, since they are located directly in the region, in which the massive build-up of the Alps occurred ages ago.
This results in a complex layering of different rock composites which gave way to a number of "Geo Trails" where you can follow onyour own with the help of displays placed at the sides of the trails.

The Carnic Alps represent one of the very few places in the world in which an almost continuous sequence of Ordovician to end-Permian age has been preserved.
It consists of a west-east orientated mountain range of 140 Kms long.

All the area were once covered by seas twice for long periods of time.
The first of these seas covered today's Carnic Alps in the Ordovicium Age. Sediments were formed  460 million years ago a first "event" triggered the first build-up of mountains in the area. A porphyry plate was pushed over the sedimentary rocks. Remains of this plate can still be seen along the main ridge.
Erosion did away with most of the built-up mountains. Some 350 - 400 million years ago the second sea started to cover the area and overall it lasted 200 million years.
This was the so-called Thetis Sea which also is responsible for the creation of the Dolomites. Huge coral atolls were formed the remainders of which are the mountain groups of the Dolomites.
200 million years ago the final formation of the Alps began and here the Carnic Alps area  again became very important in this formation.
The mountains were folded upwards, but this action took place in the form of waves which often overtook each other. With the waves "breaking" over the fault line the layering of the rocks became more and more complicated. Suddenly (thinking of it on a geological scale) old layers were sandwiched between younger ones, sometimes even layers of the same age several 100m apart with layers of all ages in between.
And this is what you still can find in the Carnic Alps today.
The area around the highest summit, Mt. Cogliàns (2782m) is the most complex, and thus most interesting.

Ref. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnic_Alps

You can find publications of Geology Professors of the Bologna University (Italy)
Prof. Michele Gortani - Prof. Gian Battista Vai -  Prof. Corrado Venturini

See: Carnian Alps Fossiles + Preondactylus

Geological Study Tour Italy - Geo Trails in Italy and Austria - Geology tour