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The age and structural setting of limestones and basalts on the Main Ring Fault in southeast Rhum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

N. J. Smith
N. J. Smith
Affiliation:
Department of Geological Sciences, University of Durham, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, U.K.
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Abstract

In southeast Rhum, a Mesozoic/Tertiary sequence is preserved as a fault-bounded and rotated wedge. This is juxtaposed between Precambrian rocks (Torridonian sediments and Lewisian gneiss) and caught up in the complex structure of the Tertiary Main Ring Fault (MRF), which shows three distinct phases of movement. The Mesozoic rocks comprise fossiliferous limestone, sandstone and shale, which show differing degrees of thermal metamorphism depending on their relationships to the Layered Complex. On the basis of faunal and lithological evidence the Mesozoic sediments have been correlated with the Lower Liassic Broadford Beds. The Rhum sediments are overlain by sheared Tertiary basalts, the contact between them probably representing the original landscape unconformity. The presence of these younger strata caught up along the MRF provides crucial evidence for a major phase of central subsidence in the early history of the Rhum Tertiary volcanic centre.

Type
Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 122 , Issue 5 , September 1985 , pp. 439 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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