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Gentbrugge Formation

Belgian geologic formation

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ2043192 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Gentbrugge Formation (Dutch: Formatie van Gentbrugge, abbreviation: Ge; named after the town of Gentbrugge in East Flanders) is a geologic formation in the west of Belgium. The formation crops out in East Flanders and West Flanders and also occurs in the subsurface of the Province of Antwerp. It consists of marine clay, silt and sand, deposited in the shallow sea that covered northern Belgium during the Ypresian age (around 50 million years ago, part of the early Eocene).

Description

The Gentbrugge Formation reaches its greatest thickness in the north of Belgium, where it can be maximally 50 metres (160 ft) thick. It is subdivided into three members. The base of the formation is formed by silty clay and clayey silt (Merelbeke Member). On top of this are laminae of silt (Pittem Member) and beds of very fine sand, disturbed by bioturbation (Vlierzele Member). The sands can have horizontal bedding as well as cross bedding, and are often lithified into sandstone.

Stratigraphy

The Gentbrugge Formation is part of the Ieper Group and is stratigraphically on top of the older Mons-en-Pévèle Formation (micaceous sandstone), another formation of the same group. On top of the Gentbrugge Formation are deposits of the Lutetian Zenne Group.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Gentbrugge Formation” is belgian geologic formation. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Gentbrugge, Formation and Belgian, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 202-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Gentbrugge, Formation and Belgian is the immediate research focus.
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Why this record matters

The phrase “belgian geologic formation” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2043192. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Gentbrugge Formation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.