The History of the Maltese Stone

The Maltese archipelago is situated in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. It is made up of mainly three islands: Malta, Gozo, and Comino. Malta, which is the main island, is made up of 316 square kilometres, composed entirely of sedimentary rocks. Due to its geographical position, Malta is continuously exposed to a constantly changing Mediterranean, resulting in compacted sediments of rocks which form the Maltese Islands.

The Maltese land was formed underwater through a gradual yet firm layering of particle sediments found underwater. As regards the layers of the Maltese islands, the oldest layer is that of the lower coralline limestone which were formed in the surrounding seas of Malta approximately 35 million years ago.  The most recent layer of sediments is the upper coralline limestone, which started to establish themselves around 7 million years ago. This is as expected when observing a series of layers; the sediments at the bottom are the oldest with age which slowly decrease in age as one reaches the upper layer.

These time frames seem extensive. However, in reality, if placed in perspective, the lower layers of rock in the Maltese islands were formed 30 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs, meaning dinosaurs were extinct  65.5 million years ago.