Leichlinger Sandberge

The Leichlingen Sand Mountains are located in front of the western edge of the Bergisches Land on the city border between Langenfeld and Leichlingen. They are part of the Bergische Heideterrasse.

Anyone who used to walk through the sand pit before the steep drop of the Heidberg, which is "cut up" to Leichlingen, often discovered ammonites, fossilized cephalopods with calcareous shells that lived in the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. As floating inhabitants of the high seas, their dead bodies formed the material for the white adhesive sand that was so much sought after in the glass and building materials industries. In order to extract this material from the former bay, now called Cologne Bay, in open-cast mining, almost the entire sand mountains were removed. Incidentally, they are located on the eastern edge of the middle terrace of the Rhine, which – in addition to the uplift of the former seabed by tectonic forces – could possibly have contributed to the special accumulation of fine white sand over millions of years.

Wikipedia