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The Arouca UNESCO Global Geopark is located in northern Portugal and coincides with the area of the Arouca Municipality. This territory is located on the western border of the north sub-plateau of the Iberian Peninsula, and is characterized by mountains carved by narrow valleys. The average altitudes range from 200 to 600 m but exceeds 1000 m in Freita (1100 m) and Montemuro (1222 m) mountains. The Arouca UNESCO Global Geopark is renowned for its exceptional geological heritage of international significance, with 41 geosites. Rocks that outcrop in this region tell stories of the ancient seas that bordered the supercontinent Gondwana 520 to 420 million year (Ma) ago and chronicle the formation of the next supercontinent called Pangea that formed 250 Ma ago. The Arouca UNESCO Global Geopark territory is framed in the major morphostructural unit of the Iberian Peninsula – the Hesperian Massif, which is the largest fragment of the Variscan basement that crops out in Europe. In the Arouca UNESCO Global Geopark are three main lithological groups: i) the basement, formed by metasedimentary rocks with Neoproterozoic to middle Cambrian in age (630-520 My); ii) the Paleozoic sequence, represented by the Ordovician, Silurian and Carboniferous rocks; and iii) the magmatic bodies represented by the sin-orogenic granitoids differentiated into six main plutonic bodies. Besides the diversity of the Variscan magmatic rocks, some other important late variscan dyke rocks are known partly linked to relevant mineralizations that gave mining recognition to this region. One of the most distinctive characters of the Geopark's geodiversity is due to the high fossil content of the Ordovician slates (460-470 Ma ago), with giant trilobites up to 90 cm in size, the Giant Trilobites of Canelas, together with a specific granitic body that contains a remarkable abundance of nodules ranging from 1−12 cm in diameter, the Birthing Stones of Castanheira. A popular legend attributes magical properties to these nodules in terms of female fertility, since these dark mineral lumps pop out spontaneously from a creamy-coloured matrix due to differential dilatation during hot weather.