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Geology

Gros Morne: a landscape with deep roots

Western Newfoundland reveals a long record of moving continents.

Cedar & Current / Background / Source checked: 20 October 2026
Still lake, conifer forest and distant mountains in dawn light.
Editorial illustration of a forest and mountain lake.

An ocean in the story

Gros Morne National Park in western Newfoundland preserves rocks that help explain plate tectonics. Parks Canada connects its geology with the opening and closing of the ancient Iapetus Ocean. The mountains and shorelines therefore offer more than a modern landscape: their rocks record earlier arrangements of continents and ocean floor across an immense span of time.

Different rocks, different origins

The Long Range mountains include deeply eroded granite and gneiss from an ancient mountain belt. Other formations contain sediments that accumulated along a continental margin. Western Newfoundland also exposes a sequence associated with oceanic crust and upper mantle. Reading these materials together helps explain why the park is important to the study of the Earth.

Ice reshaped the surface

The rock record and the shape of the present landscape are related, but they are not the same story. Parks Canada describes repeated glaciation, retreating ice and sea-level changes during the last two million years as major influences on today’s scenery. Its geological account provides a useful sequence for connecting those older rocks with the valleys visible now.

Original source

Parks Canada — Gros Morne geology

Read the original source ↗

Source checked on 20 October 2026. Practical information may change. Illustrations accompany the theme and do not identify the place or objects described.

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