The final stage of the Tour de France Femmes leads the peloton to the highest peaks and through the oldest rocks of the Devonian; the period of the invasion of land.
Today the peloton will ride over the collision zone of rocks derived from the mega-continent Gondwanaland in the south, and the Euramerican continent to the north. The Tour-cyclist would have seen an environment in the Vosges that looks like Brazil today.
Today’s ride will bring the peloton through rocks that were deposited in the Permian period, probably the least hospitable period visited by the Tour de France Femmes. From a desert icehouse to global warming and mass extinction.
The stage will start in the upper Jurassic (~145 million years old) near Bar-le-Duc, in the world of the dinosaurs, and from there the riders will travel back through geological time to the lowermost Triassic (251 million years old) near Saint-Dié.
GeoMap Tour of the Day - 8
You can zoom and pan the map, you can click on the map to get a description of the lithology (rocks). If you move the mouse over the profile (the yellow line in the graph below), the location is also shown on the map.