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Velká Skála (Big Rock) Natural Monument

Principal data Hill above the right-hand Vltava bank south of Bohnice housing estate, above the K Pazderkám street. Cadastre: Troja - Prague 8: Area: 1.8046 ha. Elevation: 300 - 314 m. Established by the Ordinance of Prague Municipality No. 5/1968 of April 29, 1968.

Reason of establishment, principal motive of protection Geomorphologically significant point in the landscape with highly interesting geological history, consisting of the firmest rocks of Prague area - lydites (silicites) which had originated at the bottom of the Proterozoic sea.

Geology, geomorphology, pedology The Velká Skála (Big Rock) is a lydite body about 500 m long and some 40 - 50 m broad cropping up on the surface from the sandy and loamy Pleistocene sediments, partly covered with silty marlites of the Bílá Hora Cretaceous formation in the northeast. The whole rocky ridge formed an island in the Palaeozoic and Proterozoic seas and illustrates the geological development of the whole area. The lydite body forms part of a powerful archipelago of alternating phylliticized greywackes, siltstones and shales with the prevailing greywackes of the Kralupy - Zbraslav group. Soft soils of protoranker and ranker types, locally anthropogenically enriched.

Botany Botanically poor, scattered fragments of natural communities can be found on the top parts of the rock, represented e.g. by the heather and the hair-grass (Deschampsia flexuosa).

Zoology The number of invertebrates preserved along the boundaries includes i.a. also some more important beetle species of steppe character, such as Harpalus rufipalpis and Amara lucida from the ground beetles, the wingless Trachyphloeus spinimanus and Comasinus setiger of the snout beetles. The gastropods are represented by the steppe species of Chondrula tridens. Due to a great number of visitors the mammals include only some common species bound with the site.

Forestry The rocky slope is sparsely covered with the planted austrian pine, the false acacia and the larch.

Notes No economic exploitation. Great number of visitors, use for recreation purposes. It would be advisable to substantially reduce the wood and restore the function of the look-out point.

Bibliography Kubíková (1976), Kučera (1994).


Lydite knob
The geomorphologically conspicuous lydite knob in the Velká Skála natural monument.


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