Geosites Project

An important locality for Cambro-Ordovician stratigraphy and paleoenvironments

This extensive site covers parts of the shore of the Kyle of Durness, Balnakeil Bay and the area to the south and east of Durness. The sequence ranges from the unconformity at the base of the False- bedded Quartzite to the lower formations of the calcareous Durness Group, this being the type area for the Group. A Cambrian age for beds up to the top of the Eilean Dubh Formation is generally accepted, the overlying Sailmhor and Sangomore formations possibly being of Tremadoc age. The facies of both the arenaceous and the calcareous units have been the subject of much study. The close affinity of these carbonate rocks with those of Greenland and Spitzbergen has long been recognised; the sequence having been deposited on the opposite side of the Iapetus Ocean from the Cambrian sequences of Wales and England. Fissuring and erosion at the top of the Sailmhor Formation and new fossil discoveries have led to recent interpretations of the stratigraphy, which have wider implications in the correlation of these rocks with those elsewhere, and in the understanding of the palaeogeography of the region in Cambro-Ordovician times. A key stratigraphical locality with international implications for its bearing on continental drift and correlations.