The Granada Geopark is located in the central sector of the Baetic Cordillera (see map), which occupies the south and south-east of the Iberian Peninsula along some 600 km by approximately 200 km wide. The Baetic Cordillera may be divided into several geological domains, such as the Baetic External Zone and the Baetic Internal Zone (this latter also known, including other sub-domains, as the Alborán Domain). Several Neogene basins formed in these domains, including the Guadix-Baza basin, to which the bulk of the Granada Geopark territory belongs. All these domains are represented in the Granada Geopark, but the main one is the Neogene basin of Guadix-Baza, which presents an exceptional thickness of continental sediments from the Quaternary period (several hundreds meters).
The Quaternary is the geological period of the history of the Earth thats covers the last two and a half million years of evolution of the planet and life on it (from 2.58 million years ago to the present).
The Quaternary, with its sediments, fossils and spectacular modeling, is the main protagonist of the Granada Geopark. But the Granada Geopark also tells us of stories older than the Quaternary, thanks to the Mesozoic and tertiary rocks. These rocks do not only appear in the mountains that shape the edge of the Geopark, but, thanks to the engagement of the valleys, they have emerged just below the quaternary sediments in the central part of the Geopark, giving us un excepcional three-dimensional view of the basement that houses and that provided the quaternary sediments.