Tag: Scotland

A major Precambrian impact in Scotland

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The northwest of Scotland has been a magnet to geologists for more than a century. It is easily accessed, has magnificent scenery and some of the world’s most complex geology. The oldest and structurally most tortuous rocks in Europe – the Lewisian Gneiss Complex – which span crustal depths from its top to bottom, dominate much of the coast. These are unconformably overlain by a sequence of mainly terrestrial sediments of Meso- to Neoproterozoic age – the Torridonian Supergroup – laid down by river systems at the edge of the former continent of  Laurentia. They form a series of relic hills resting on a rugged landscape carved into the much older Lewisian. In turn they are capped by a sequence of Cambrian to Lower Ordovician shallow-marine sediments. A more continuous range of hills no more than 20 km eastward of the coast hosts the famous Moine Thrust Belt in which the entire stratigraphy of the region was mangled between 450 and 430 million years ago when the elongated microcontinent of Avalonia collided with and accreted to Laurentia.  Exposures are the best in Britain and, because of the superb geology, probably every geologist who graduated in that country visited the area, along with many international geotourists. The more complex parts of this relatively small area have been mapped and repeatedly examined at scales larger than 1:10,000; its geology is probably the best described on Earth. Yet, it continues to throw up dramatic conclusions. However, the structurally and sedimentologically simple Torridonian was thought to have been done and dusted decades ago, with a few oddities that remained unresolved until recently.

NW Scotland geol
Grossly simplified geological map of NW Scotland (credit: British Geological Survey)

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Impact debris in Britain

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These days reports of geological evidence for asteroid impacts are not regarded with a mixture of disbelief, wonder and foreboding: well, not by geologists anyway. But for such a small area as Britain now to have three of widely different ages and in easily accessible places is pretty good for its brand as the place to visit for practically every aspect of Earth history. The first to be discovered lies at the base of Triassic mudstones near Bristol (see Britain’s own impact) and would need some serious grubbing around at a former construction site. The next to emerge was located in one of the best geological districts in the country at several easily accessed coastal exposures in Northwest Scotland. A glass-rich ejecta layer occurs in the basal Torridonian Stoer Group on Stac Fada, Stoer, Sutherland (UK National Grid Reference 203300, 928400). The most recently found (Drake, S.N. and 8 others 2018. Discovery of a meteoritic ejecta layer containing unmelted impactor fragments at the base of Paleocene lavas, Isle of Skye, Scotland. Geology, v. 46, p. 171-174; doi:10.1130/G39452.1) is on the Inner Hebridean island of Skye at the base of its famous Palaeocene flood basalt sequence (UK National Grid Reference 155371,821112).

View to the northwest across Loch Slapin to the Cuillin Hills of Skye (Central Igneous Complex). The flood basalts beneath which the ejecta layer occurs are just above the trees. (Credit: Wikipedia)

The last is perhaps the most spectacular of the three, as it contains the full gamut of provenance, matched only by material from the drill core into the 66 million year-old Chicxulub crater. The 0.9 m thick debris layer rests directly on mid-Jurassic sandstones beneath Palaeocene basalts of the North Atlantic Igneous Province (NAIP). The layer contains a basalt clast dated at 61.54 Ma, but is dominantly reminiscent of a pyroclastic ignimbrite flow as it contains glass shards. But there the resemblance ends for the bulk of small clasts are of quartz and K-feldspar, sandstone and gneiss. Zircons extracted from the debris show shock lamellae and give Archaean and Proterozoic ages commensurate with the local basement, but also with the bulk of the Scandinavian and Canadian Shields. So the impact could have been anywhere in such widespread terrains, although the enclosed basalt narrows this down to areas where basement is overlain by lavas of the NAIP. The Skye impactite contains unmelted meteorite fragments in the form of titanium nitrides alloyed with vanadium and niobium, metallic iron-silicon alloy containing exsolved carbon, and manganese sulfide.

Although it may be coincidental, the situation of the ejecta layer immediately beneath the Skye lavas, its containing a clast of basalt whose age corresponds to the oldest flows anywhere in the NAIP is fascinating. But the actual impact site is, as yet, unknown. Even so, the layer provokes thoughts about whether an impact may have been more than spatially related to the large NAIP flood basalt pile, preserved on either side of the North Atlantic. If the event was large, then surely the ejecta should be preserved near the base of the flood basalts elsewhere in NW Britain and further afield

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