1995 Milestones in Geology Geological Society Memoir No 16 PDF

Milestones in Geology
Reviews to celebrate 150 volumes of the
Journal of the Geological Society
Geological Society Memoirs
Series Editor A. J. FLEET
, !j
Parliamentary-style meeting room of the Geological Society at Burlington House before 1975.
The meeting room after renovation.
Milestones in Geology
Reviews to celebrate 150 volumes of the
Journal of the Geological Society

E D I T E D BY
M. J. LE BAS
University of Leicester, UK
Memoir No. 16
1995
Published by
The Geological Society
London
THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

The Society was founded in 1807 as the Geological Society of London and is the oldest geological society in the world. It received its Royal
Charter in 1825 for the purpose of 'investigating the mineral structure of the Earth'. The Society is Britain's national society for geology with a
membership of 7500 (1993). It has countrywide coverage and approximately 1000 members reside overseas. The Society is responsible for all
aspects of the geological sciences including professional matters. The Society has its own publishing house, which produces the Society's
international journals, books and maps, and which acts as the European distributor for publication of the American Association of Petroleum
Geologists and the Geological Society of America.
Fellowship is open to those holding a recognized honours degree in geology or cognate subject and who have at least two years' relevant
postgraduate experience, or who have not less than six years' relevant experience in geology or a cognate subject. A Fellow who has not less
than five years' relevant postgraduate experience in the practice of geology may apply for validation and, subject to approval, may be able to
use the designatory letters C Geol (Chartered Geologist).
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Foreword
vii
LE BAS, M. J. Introduction
RUDWlCK, M. J. S. Historical origins of the Geological Society's Journal
WINDLEY, B. F. Uniformitarianism today: plate tectonics is the key to the past
11
HALL, R. P. & HUGHES, D. J. Early Precambrian crustal development: changing styles of mafic magmatism
25
ROGERS, G. & PANKHURST, R. J. Unravelling dates through the ages: geochronology of the Scotting metamorphic complexes
37
BLUCK, B . J . W . Q .
57
Kennedy, the Great Glen Fault and strike-slip motion
BROWN, M. P - T - t evolution of orogenic belts and the causes of regional metamorphism
67
MCKERROW, W. S. The development of Early Palaeozoic global stratigraphy
83
FORTEY, R. A. Charles Lapworth and the biostratigraphic paradigm
93
RILEY, N. J. Dinantian (Lower Carboniferous) biostratigraphy and chronostratigraphy in the British Isles
105
CALLOMON,J. H. Time from fossils: S. S. Buckman and Jurassic high-resolution geochronology
127
SAVAGE, R. J. G. Vertebrate fissure faunas with special reference to Bristol Channel Mesozoic faunas
153
COCKS, L. R. M. Triassic pebbles, derived fossils and the Ordovician to Devonian palaeogeography of Europe
165
ALLEN, J. R. L. Sedimentary structures: Sorby and the last decade
175
SELLWOOD,B. W. Structure and origin of limestone
185
WALKER, G. P. L. Flood basalts versus central volcanoes and the British Tertiary Volcanic Province
195
WILSON, M. Magmatic differentiation
205
ATHERTON, M. P. Granite magmatism
221
RANKIN, A. H. Hydrothermal orefields and ore fluids
237
BAILEY, D. K. Carbonate magmas
249
Index
265
Foreword
The Geological Society, which is the senior Earth science society in the World, was founded in 1807 for the purpose 'of
investigating the mineral structure of the Earth'. In keeping with the place of science in society at the time, it soon received its
Royal Charter (1825). The Society's role today is not so different in essence: as a learned society it is primarily concerned with
the furtherance of scientific knowledge. This is achieved through debate and, of particular relevance here, through the
publication of the results of scientific investigation, analysis and discussion of findings. The Society's principal medium for
publication is the Journal. It first appeared in 1845 and has continued, without break, since that time. Hence we arrive at
volume 150, and this book celebrates that event.
I am sure that readers of this book will not only learn much about how our science has progressed and where the frontiers
lie, but will also find interesting the manner in which the Geological Society played the major role in this advance.
The Society has grown over the years both in its membership (now over 7000) and in the range of its activities, publications
and responsibilities. To its role as the leading UK Earth science society, has been added that of representing professional
geologists in the UK and, through the European Federation of Geologists, throughout Europe.
I am pleased of this opportunity to recommend this book, edited by the Journal's Chief Editor, Dr Mike Le Bas, to all
Earth scientists. His introduction sets the scene.
Charles Curtis
President 1992-1994
Foreword
vii
LE BAS, M. J. Introduction
RUDWlCK, M. J. S. Historical origins of the Geological Society's Journal
WINDLEY, B. F. Uniformitarianism today: plate tectonics is the key to the past
11
HALL, R. P. & HUGHES, D. J. Early Precambrian crustal development: changing styles of mafic magmatism
25
ROGERS, G. & PANKHURST, R. J. Unravelling dates through the ages: geochronology of the Scotting metamorphic complexes
37
BLUCK, B . J . W . Q .
57
Kennedy, the Great Glen Fault and strike-slip motion
BROWN, M. P - T - t evolution of orogenic belts and the causes of regional metamorphism
67
MCKERROW, W. S. The development of Early Palaeozoic global stratigraphy
83
FORTEY, R. A. Charles Lapworth and the biostratigraphic paradigm
93
RILEY, N. J. Dinantian (Lower Carboniferous) biostratigraphy and chronostratigraphy in the British Isles
105
CALLOMON,J. H. Time from fossils: S. S. Buckman and Jurassic high-resolution geochronology
127
SAVAGE, R. J. G. Vertebrate fissure faunas with special reference to Bristol Channel Mesozoic faunas
153
COCKS, L. R. M. Triassic pebbles, derived fossils and the Ordovician to Devonian palaeogeography of Europe
165
ALLEN, J. R. L. Sedimentary structures: Sorby and the last decade
175
SELLWOOD,B. W. Structure and origin of limestone
185
WALKER, G. P. L. Flood basalts versus central volcanoes and the British Tertiary Volcanic Province
195
WILSON, M. Magmatic differentiation
205
ATHERTON, M. P. Granite magmatism
221
RANKIN, A. H. Hydrothermal orefields and ore fluids
237
BAILEY, D. K. Carbonate magmas
249
Index
265
From Le Bas, M. J. (ed.), 1995, Milestonesin Geology, Geological Society, London, Memoir No. 16, 1-4
Introduction
M . J. L E
BAS
Department of Geology, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK
Science advances by taking new and unexpected turnings,

pioneers opening up pathways which later workers follow
and explore. This book takes the reader along several such
geological paths that have followed from observations and
theories first printed in The Quarterly Journal of the
Geological Society of London (since 1971, the Journal of the
Geological Society). Following the paths, one sees the
history of geological thought during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.
To achieve this desired structure for the book, leading
geologists were invited to present their personal views on
significant topics that had been brought to the fore in earlier
contributions to the Journal, to evaluate the evidence
presented and to give their view of how these seminal
papers affected our present understanding of geological
processes, and further to hazard where future paths of
investigation may lie.
Bringing these together under one cover serves two
purposes: first to celebrate 150 years of continuous
publication of papers by the Geological Society of London:
second, it makes a British review of the current 'battle lines'
across many fields of geological research. Not only will the
serious research investigator discover the several turning
points which have governed the paths of his study, but the
general reader also will discover the delights, the fortunes
and machinations taken by many leading British geologists.
Others will use the chapters to answer the question: 'Does
historical contingency govern the paths of geological
exploration, as it has been said to govern the evolution of
living creatures?'
Most of the papers have already been published as
Celebration Papers during 1993 in Volume 150 of the
Journal of the Geological Society, hence the size and format
of this book. To emphasize the historical context, all the
chapters are preceded by the abstracts or prefaces of the
seminal papers reproduced from the Journal. The exception
is Rudwick's, which sets the scene on why the Geological
Society of London rated so highly the publication of
geological observation. He recounts the creation of the
Journal, and how it survived growing pains to become a
leading international ,journal.
One of the several maxims followed by geologists is that
of uniformitarianism. It was defined by Hutton over 200
years ago and popularized by Charles Lyell in his Principles
of Geology and in his many papers read before and
published by the Geological Society. Earlier this century, it
was considered applicable only to the Phanerozoic.
Nowadays with the great advances made in dating
techniques, Windley is able to argue cogently that the plate
tectonic paradigm can be successfully applied not only to the
Proterozoic but even to the Archaean. He shows how the
growth of the North American plate and the Kapvaal craton
can be explained by the plate tectonic model, and how
secular changes in heat production changed the course of

development of igneous and metamorphic processes at
subducting plate boundaries. The application to the
Archaean is still not universally accepted, but that working
model helps interpret the rocks formed during the first half
of the Earth's existence. The magmatism during those early
times used to be thought to be no different from present-day
ones, on the principle of uniformitarianism. In 1951 came
the seminal work of Sutton and Watson on the Lewisian
gneiss complexes and the mafic dyke swarms cutting them.
This became the cornerstone on which gneiss and
greenstone dyke complexes were interpreted, and later
contributed to the concept of terranes. Pursuing this, Hall &
Hughes narrate the magmatic differences that emerged,
mainly as the result of the early high heat flow: the unstable
komatiitic volcanic-dominated crust mainly in the Archaean;
and then the onset of noritic magmatism and the
concomitant crustal accretion super-event, as markers of the
transition from the Archaean to the Proterozoic. Their
contribution provides greater understanding of the evolution
of Precambrian mafic magmatism and the formation of the
Earth's early crust.
The single great technique that enabled the mysteries of
Precambrian metamorphic complexes to be unravelled, was
the application in 1961 of R b - S r isotope systematics to age
determination, by the Oxford school led by Moorbath.
K - A r isotope studies had not been enough; too often they
produced only thermally reset ages. Nowadays, any study of
high-grade metamorphic rocks automatically includes
isotope determinations, and the same now applies to igneous
rocks. But the whole process has become very sophisticated,
and Rogers & Pankhursl present a thorough analysis of the
process as applied to Scotland. They show how the
techniques were expanded to include the use of the isotopes
of lead, uranium, samarium and neodymium, with great
success but not without considerable controversy, much of it
still running (e.g. Ben Vuirich).
Another break-through in studies of the Earth's crust via
the rocks of Scotland was the identification by W.Q.
Kennedy in the 1940s of the extent of the Great Glen Fault.
Here was a fault of apparent massive strike-slip displacement; hitherto faults had been mainly normal, reversed or
thrust phenomena. Bluck analyses the extent of this and
other major Scottish faults, and the implication is made that
massive displacement along lines of fracture are possible
through the Earth's crust. That such displacements could
occur was an essential ingredient to the theory of sea-floor
spreading and to the analysis of many tectonic basins and
oil-bearing structures, even to creating space as sphenochasms for the permissive emplacement of granites.
Another process which came to be understood through
careful field work in Scotland was the identification by
George Barrow 100 years ago of metamorphic zones in the
M . J . LE BAS
Dalradian schists. It marked the birth of meaningful

metamorphic petrology. Barrow's 1893 paper quickly
became a classic and was much quoted, even though he
mis-identified the heat source for the metamorphism;
demonstrating that observation is more important than
interpretation. Brown shows how a knowledge of mineral
chemistry, textural and field relations which identify stability
relations, together with a knowledge of the time relations
deduced from age determinations, can produce paths across
petrogenetic grids which give information on how pressure
and temperature varied with time in different tectonic
environments. Even within a single tectonic environment,
more than one P - T - t path can be recognized.
The next four papers are on stratigraphical classification
and correlation, particularly using fossils, one of the main
bases of our science and one whose terminology eventually
becomes part of everyday language. McKerrow discusses
Palaeozoic stratigraphy in general, beginning with the works
of Sedgwick and Murchison, and then sets out a logical
sequence of steps that might, perhaps should, be followed in
developing the stratigraphy of an area, once the structural
relations of strata within an area are appreciated. Fortey
focuses on the contribution of Lapworth's work on
graptolites in the Southern Uplands of Scotland, Riley
compares Vaughan's and later work on Early Carboniferous
bio- and chronostratigraphy, and Callomon, in reviewing
Buckman's pioneering work on the Jurassic of Dorset, goes
on to discuss the current limits of resolution attainable in
biochronology. It is interesting to reflect on how views on
some of the problems addressed and concepts advanced by
our predecessors have changed over the years. For instance,
Fortey shows how durable Lapworth's biostratigraphy (as
we should now call it) has been, while ideas on structure and
palaeogeography that he derived concurrently with it have
changed almost beyond recognition within the scientific
lifetimes of many still active in the field. As Callomon
describes, Buckman's practice in collecting and recording
fossils in the field, and his ideas on the prevalence of gaps in
the rock record, were far in advance of their time, entirely
compelling, and relevant to many current concerns in
sedimentology and sequence stratigraphy. Yet his contribution has been under-recognized for many years, partly
because his views on evolutionary palaeontology were based
on theories now superceded, and in his own later practice he
departed from his earlier standards.
Savage relates the remarkable story of the discovery by
Charles Moore of Mesozoic terrestrial vertebrate remains
within ,:fissured Carboniferous Limestone, and how the
search widened as more species were discovered. This most
fortunate means of preservation provided an abundance of
material as well as species, and this occurrence and others
subsequent have given vertebrate palaeontology a foundation upon which much of our present-day understanding of
evolutionary history is based.
Even more remarkable is the story unfolded by Cocks of
four different faunal assemblages within one set of strata.
When fossiliferous quartzite pebbles were found in the
Budleigh Salterton Pebble Bed of Triassic age along the
Devonshire coast, Salter realized in 1864 that they were
different from anything known in Britain but could correlate
some of them with Lower Palaeozoic strata in Europe. Then
Davidson in 1870 showed there were Devonian fossils as
well, and modern work reveals there are four faunas, two
Ordovician and two Devonian, with tectonic reconstruction

now explaining all in terms of adjacent palaeocontinents.
Present-day geologists sometimes forget the importance
of accurate description, going straight to interpretation often
based on generalizations of assumed facts. Sorby was a
'quantifier' and had a particularly keen eye, creating
meticulous drawings to accompany his precise writings. His
President's Address on the study of sedimentary structures,
published in 1908 after his death, is taken by Allen as the
starting point for marrying description to interpretation.
After detailed descriptions, he examines the current
understanding of aeolian bedforms, sand-wave bedding,
tidal bedding, marine storm bedding, hummocky and swaley
cross-stratification, soft sediment deformation and dewatering structures, particularly reviewing the past ten years
research into these.
Sorby appears again in the next contribution. His 1879
President's Address on the structure and origin of limestone
can still be read with pleasure and profit by any modern
student. He was far ahead of his time, and virtually invented
geological microscopy. From that starting point, Sellwood
develops current ideas on limestone classification, their
environment of deposition and diagenesis, and their
significance in sequence stratigraphy.
In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, controversy
arose between Geikie and Judd on the interpretation of the
Hebridean volcanic complexes of Scotland. Until then, most
igneous rocks were regarded in isolation, but Geikie and
Judd both realised that there was an association of rock
types waiting to be interpreted. This opened the 'school of
Hebridean petrology' which was so strongly developed by
Harker, Bailey and others, and has flourished ever since.
Walker investigates the association of flood basalts with
volcanic centres and shows that the former have much more
to tell us than most have hitherto supposed: evidence of
whether the basalt lavas and dykes were fissure-fed or
emanated from point-source vents, and the crustal tension
implied; tilting of volcanic fields perhaps related to inflation
or deflation of volcanic edifices; and direction of flow of
magma. As volcanic hazards become a matter of daily
concern, more needs to be learnt about the magmatic
plumbing of volcanoes, and the magma flow direction of
dykes and sills, now laid bare by erosion within old volcanic
structures, could supply the vital data. The study of the
anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility would seem to be
potentially significant in this respect.
In contrast to the structural and mineralogical approach
taken by Walker, Wilson takes the geochemical approach,
which is equally applicable to volcanic and plutonic rocks.
One hundred years ago, Harker began a school of thought
on the controls of crystallization applied to the
differentiation of basic magma as exemplified by variations
seen within individual plutonic masses. Nowadays, finegrained rocks are considered to be better representatives of
variation in magma chemistry, and Wilson reviews the many
possible processes from fractional crystallization, assimilation and magma mixing to thermogravitational diffusion and
liquid immiscibility that can be responsible for magmatic
differentiation. These processes concern mainly basaltic
magmas which, by and large, are partial melt products of the
upper mantle of the Earth.
By contrast, most granites have their origin in the partial
melting of the continental crust of the Earth. They are the
INTRODUCTION
layman's best known coarsely crystalline rock. Most granites
are superficially similar, but all are individually distinct when
studied geochemically. Fifty years ago, the 'granite
controversy' raged, with the Read school upholding the
metamorphic and migmatitic association, and the TilleyBowen school maintaining that granites were the product of
crystal fractionation from basic magmas. Atherton reviews
the pros and cons of granitization, the 'room problem' for
plutons, the evidence of melting experiments, the use of
rock and mineral geochemical analytical data in determining
the production of acid magma by partial melting or by
fractional crystallization, and the manner in which isotopes
may identify the source rock and the region. He takes the
example of Garabal Hill in Scotland, which is one of the few
Caledonian complexes including ultrabasic to acid igneous
rocks, where crustal contamination might be argued. Also
considered are thoughts on the association of basins,
granites
and
thermal
highs
with
high-T/low-P
metamorphism.
In the penultimate chapter, Sorby's observations on fluid
inclusions published almost 140 years ago are shown by
Rankin to have led directly to the present state of
knowledge about the pressures and temperatures of fluids in
rocks, especially igneous-related ones. Fluid inclusions tell
us much about mineralization processes, fluids being the
carriers of the ore components. Rankin analyses the
contribution of current fluid inclusion studies to understanding the many mineralization processes, taking several
classical examples from the UK and abroad, some related to
igneous bodies and others to tectonically driven crustal
circulation of fluids. He also includes some original
thermometric data on the main British ore fields.
Only recently has undoubted carbonatite been discovered in Britain (and published in the Journal of the
Geological Society, 1994, 151, 945). These exotic igneous
rocks confounded geologists early this century, who could
not believe in igneous 'limestones'--an apparent contradiction. The Journal of the Geological Society has a long history
of publishing papers on African geology, a product of the
past colonial era. In 1956 Campbell-Smith presented his
review of African carbonatites, coinciding with a similar
review by Pecora in the USA, and the two changed world
opinion. Geologists flocked to the 1960 International
Geological Congress in Norway and Sweden and saw the
Fen and Alno carbonatite complexes. Calcite carbonatite
became an acceptable igneous phenomenon. CampbellSmith's review showed the igneous nature of carbonatites:
their occurrence as cross-cutting dykes with fine-grained
margins (i.e. chilled) and as small plugs with thermal
contacts marked by alkali metasomatic reaction aureoles
(fenitization). Their origin remains controversial with three
main current theories: they were produced by fractional
crystallization of nephelinitic magmas; they were separated
by liquid immiscibility from a nephelinitic (or melilititic)
magma; they were produced by direct partial melting of the
upper mantle. Bailey examines the last of these, on the
premise that many carbonatites are found without associated
nephelinite/phonolite, and on the experimental evidence
that dolomite carbonatite melts can be produced in the
mantle under CO2-saturated conditions. This view is
contrary to the powerful consensus that now exists: that
carbonatites are essentially infracrustal differentiates of
alkali silicate melts, to the extent that most modern
discussions of petrogenesis begin with this assumption.

Bailey's chapter re-dresses this imbalance in the literature.
The relation of dolomite carbonatites to calcite carbonatite
remains uncertain; perhaps like 'granites and granites' there
are 'carbonatites and carbonatites'. Their importance in
understanding Earth history is undoubted because, having
minimal partial melt compositions, they are potentially the
best natural products to give clues to the chemical and
thermal evolution of the Earth's mantle.
Many more seminal papers could have been selected
from the pages of the Journal of the Geological Society for
essaying in this book. One which changed the character of
the British geologist, is that by Howell Williams on 'The
geology of Snowdon (North Wales)' published in 1927 (83,
346). Beginning with clear field descriptions, he explicitly
interprets glowing avalanches, mass-flow epiclastic deposits,
and proximal and distal water-lain tufts from rocks
considered by many to be among the most difficult to
interpret. Until this exposition, pyroclastic rocks had been
by-passed by geologists in Britain, but this paper fired
imaginations. The area described became a training ground,
and has spawned several generations of geologists renowned
for their pyroclastic expertise.
On more traditional grounds is the 1938 President's
Address by O.T. Jones 'On the evolution of a geosyncline'
(94, lx). For the next 30 years, students pondered on
geosynclines which were understood to be crustal downwarped structures filled with sediment, and in so doing
opened the subject of conditions of sedimentation and the
sources of the sediments. Distinct sedimentary basins were
recognized. When 'plate tectonics' burst on the scene, the
data accumulated supplied the vital items allowing
reinterpretation of geosynclines as oceanic trenches.
A paper which was to turn geological interpretation
upside-down was Bob Shackleton's 1957 paper in the
Journal (113, 361) on 'Downward-facing structures of the
Highland Border'. These Scottish schistose rocks had been
observed to be largely flat-lying but synformal near
Aberfoyle. Shackleton's revelation that they were all
upside-down led to the re-interpretation that the 'flat belt' of
Loch Tay was the lower half of a nappe with the synform
being the inverted anticlinal nose of the nappe, this structure
extending across the whole of Scotland. Whereas many
geological advances are made on a broad front of carefully
documented data, here the break-through depended on a
few astute observations of way-up criteria on a bleak
mountain side.
Some regard geophysics as beyond the bounds of normal
geology. It is not. In 1906, Oldham presented 'The
constitution of the interior of the Earth, as revealed by
earthquakes' (62, 456), which foretold how geophysics
would contribute to the fundamentals of geology, i.e. the
constitution of the Earth's core, mantle and crust. He
pointed out that the seismograph 'enables us to see into the
Earth' and that the three wave motions observed allowed
interpretation of a shell-structure of the Earth. Having
defined the depth to the core-mantle boundary and shown
the seismic 'shadow zone', he goes on to discuss the
possibility of other discontinuities (now mostly confirmed).
This in turn has led on to an explanation of the Earth's
geomagnetic field, and to the constitutions of the Moon and
planets. This was a truly seminal paper.
In bringing all these topics together, it is hoped that
M.J.
readers will find that the separate topics are not so

unrelated; some topics need the others to sustain them,
some merge into new topics, but all combined are essential
to advancing the frontiers of science. The chapters also give
hints on how this frontier may be further advanced.
I thank most sincerely each of the authors of the
chapters, for writing so assiduously to the briefs given them.
LE BAS
I am grateful to the editors of the Journal of the Geological
Society for guidance in the early stages of planning this
volume and for editing the versions of the chapters
published in volume 150 of the journal, and am particularly
indebted to John Hudson who provided unstinting assistance
at several critical stages.
From Le Bas, M. J. (ed.), 1995, Milestones in Geology, Geological Society, London, Memoir No. 16, 5-8
First published in Journal of the Geological Society, London, Vol. 150, 1993, pp. 3-6
Historical origins of the Geological Society's Journal

MARTIN
J. S. R U D W I C K
Science Studies Program, University o f California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0104, USA
Transactions, its earliest periodical (from 1811), published the full
texts of a few selected papers, with fine illustrations, but generally long after they had been read at one of
the meetings. Conversely, the Proceedings (from 1826) recorded all the papers soon after they had been
delivered, but only in abstract and without illustrations. The launching of the Quarterly Journal (1845)
was an attempt to combine the advantages and eliminate the disadvantages of the earlier periodicals. After
a shaky start, it proved highly successful through the rest of the nineteenth century and much of the
twentieth, and was the direct forerunner of today's Journal.
Abstract: The Geological Society's
The Geological Society was a publishing body even before it

was founded. That paradox is easily explained. One of the
reasons for its foundation was the desire of a group of London
'men of science' (the later term 'scientist' would be anachronistic and highly misleading in this context) to give permanent
form to meetings that had been concerned with the publication
of a specific scientific work. Another reason was the frustration
felt by others at the inability of the Royal Society to provide an
adequate publication outlet for geological work, and particularly for work that was highly factual in character and
localized in content.
Those two reasons for the foundation of the Society (there
were others too) epitomize the two distinct kinds of publishing
activities that have characterized learned societies ever since
they proliferated in the eighteenth century. On the one hand
there was, and still is, the need to publish the completed results
of scientific research and thereby place them permanently on
record. On the other hand there was, and still is, the need to
inform those with particular interests about the current work of
others with the same interests, whether the reasons for seeking
such information are those of competition or collaboration or
a mixture of the two.
Scientific societies have tried to meet both needs through
their own publishing activities. By its very nature, the detailed
results of scientific research generally appeal to only a relatively small and specialized public, and are therefore often
unattractive to ordinary commercial publishers. One solution
to this problem that was widely adopted before the twentieth
century, and not only for scientific works, was to appeal for
subscribers to a particular book before the printing process
began; the subscribers' advance payments guaranteed the publisher against loss, and any further sales made after publication could go towards a profit. An alternative solution, however, was for all members of a scientific body, who by definition
were a specialized public with common interests, to receive a
continuing series of shorter publications in return for a continuing subscription. In effect, members with a great interest in
one particular subset of papers received copies of those papers,
which might not otherwise have been published at all, in return
for subsidizing the papers that were of great interest to other
members. This was, and of course remains, part of the rationale
behind the publication of any specialized scientific periodical,
and the Geological Society's Journal was and is no exception.
At the same time, however, the specialized common interests of the members of any scientific society provide the opportunity for the exchange of opinions and conclusions, and often
of course for vehement controversy; indeed the desire for such
exchanges has been one of the most common reasons for founding such societies. But unless all the members meet regularly
face-to-face, and even more if they are spread widely and unable to meet in that way, they have often felt a need for some
kind of newsletter to keep them informed of the current
activities of others. Again, this was, and remains, part of the
rationale behind the publications of scientific societies, and
again the Geological Society was and is no exception.
Some of those who founded the Geological Society in 1807
were already subscribers to an important but costly publication. This was a three-volume monograph (1808) on the mineralogy and crystallography of calcium carbonate, by Jacques
Louis, Count de Bournon, a French aristocrat who had fled to
England from the Revolution in France. The work dated from
before the profusion of crystal forms was explained satisfactorily in terms of a small number of types of symmetry and sets of
crystal faces. In de Bournon's view, and that of his subscribers,
his work required many expensive engraved plates, in order to
reproduce a large number of detailed drawings of specific
crystal specimens: in terms of illustration, crystallography
was in the state in which palaeontology necessarily still
remains. So the work was expensive, and could best be published by subscription. The subscribers were of course united by
their common interest in research such as de Bournon's, and it
was natural for them to regard themselves as a potential core
for a permanent society to foster that kind of scientific work.
Most of them, however, were already Fellows of the longestablished Royal Society, which had its own Philosophical
Transactions for the publication of high-level scientific research (though not of book-length works such as de Bournon's). When, after the Geological Society was founded, its
leaders began to talk about starting a periodical of its own,
some of the members who were also FRSs were highly critical
of that proposal; a few, including the Royal Society's autocratic president, Sir Joseph Banks, even resigned from the Geological Society and for a time put its future in jeopardy. In fact,
however, the proposal had been for a periodical that would
supplement, and not necessarily compete with, the Philo-
sophical Transactions.
M A R T I N J. S. R U D W I C K
The concern of the leaders of the Geological Society was

that the Royal would not, and perhaps could not be expected
to, publish geological papers with highly detailed descriptions
of mainly local interest. In other words they argued that there
was a need for a more specialized periodical, to supplement the
Royal Society's coverage of all the natural and mathematical
sciences. But they also had in mind such Continental periodicals as the Parisian Journal des Mines (founded 1795), which
published much practical material of interest to mining geologists as well as reports of more fundamental importance.
The conflict within the early Geological Society reflected in
part a difference of opinion as to whether it should model itself
on a learned society such as the Royal Society, or make itself
useful in a more practical way to the owners and managers of
Britain's mineral resources. In the event, the former opinion
triumphed, and the Society was not, after its earliest years,
notably congenial to those whose interests were mainly practical or commercial, still less to those (such as the mineral
surveyor William Smith) who did not share the wealth and
social status of the Society's leaders.
Even within the former model, however, there was in fact a
clear precedent for the Geological Society's publication plans.
This precedent, which had never aroused the hostility of Banks
and the Royal Society, lay in the volumes of the Linnaean
Society's Transactions (founded 1791), with their detailed and
specialized papers on plant taxonomy. In any case, the Geological Society soon launched its own Transactions, modelled
on those of both the Royal and the Linnaean. The quarto
format was decidedly lavish, and clearly designed to match the
gentlemanly tastes and pockets of the Society's members. The
first volume (1811) was priced at 1 12s [1.60], the second
(1814) at 3; these were substantial sums. Added to the
membership fee, which rapidly rose to 4 a year, an active
gentlemanly interest in geology did not come cheaply. (As a
rough-and-ready guide to real values, a n inflation factor of at
least 50, and perhaps even 100, should be applied to these
prices to make them comparable to modern prices.)
Since the price of the Transactions was not included in the
membership fee, only the more enthusiastic or more wealthy
members bought the volumes, and the sales languished accordingly. As with de Bournon's book, a major expense was the
illustrations. Engraving on copper was by far the best medium
for the pictures, maps and other diagrams that geological
papers required; but engraving was a highly skilled and timeconsuming craft, and correspondingly expensive. Furthermore, many geological illustrations required, or at least were
greatly enhanced by, the use of colour. This could only be
provided by applying watercolour washes by hand to every
copy; and although this work was generally done by poorly
paid female labour, it added further costs to the final plates.
Still, the volumes were impressive, with handsome letterpress and fine illustrations. The Transactions helped to establish the scientific reputation of the Society, and of the selfconsciously new science of geology, both in Britain and
abroad. But the periodical remained a medium of record rather
than one for reporting work in progress. The intervals between
successive volumes narrowed to about two years, as the Society
became more established and the quantity of completed research increased; but there was still generally a long delay
between the reading of a paper and its eventual publication.
This was ill-suited to a science that was burgeoning rapidly
into a major area of research internationally. Members of the
Society could and did often seek alternative outlets for more
rapid publication; but monthlies such as the Philosophical
Magazine, which at this period carried many geological papers,

could not provide comparable illustrations, which were so
important in geology.
After the first decade, the Society took over the management
of the Transactions from the commercial publishers who had
handled it initially. A 'Second Series' was launched in 1822 to
give the work a new look and to boost its sales. At the same
time the opportunity was taken to adopt the new and cheaper
technique of lithography in place of copper engraving. The
price of the volumes was roughly halved, and authors could
now be offered more space for their illustrations; an added
bonus was that for most geological subjects (except perhaps
maps) the more subtle tones of lithography were positively an
advantage.
Meanwhile, however, the Society had hardly taken any
steps to improve the exchange of provisional ideas and ephemeral information, beyond the primary arena of its meeting
room. An 'arena' is what its meetings had famously become: in
contrast to the other learned societies in London, the Geological permitted discussion of the papers that had just been
read. This was at first a cautious experiment, because there were
those who feared it would lead to acrimonious argument; but it
soon became an established and successful tradition of lively
debate.
Almost from its foundation, however, the Society had appealed for the collaboration of those living outside London.
Its founders recognized that a geographical spread of the
membership was even more valuable for geology than for
many other sciences, since widely scattered members could
report on local areas that they knew thoroughly. Such informants were enticed with the offer of free 'honorary' membership.
But these provincial members could not get a first-hand impression of the current state of geological opinions in the
Society, unless they were able to attend its meetings in person,
on trips to London that for many of them were expensive,
uncomfortable and therefore infrequent.
The Society's very first publication, mooted almost immediately the Society was founded, and issued three years before the
first volume of the Transactions, was in fact directed at these
provincial members, and at those of the 'ordinary' or London
members who found themselves travelling for any reason. The
publication was a small booklet of 'Geological Inquiries'
(1808), which listed the kinds of observations that could
usefully be made, and the kinds of specimens collected, in
more or less remote areas. It was probably inspired by, and
partly based on, the famous 'Agenda' published in 1796 by the
great Swiss naturalist Horace-B6n6dict de Saussure. Like that
model, it was based on the belief that far more empirical information needed to be collected in the field, before it would be
appropriate or profitable to indulge in high-level theoretical
speculation about the structure or history of the earth. The
Society's booklet certainly produced plenty of local information, most of it in the form of letters to the first President,
George Bellas Greenough; in due course he incorporated much
of it in his great geological map of England and Wales (1820).
Together with the provincial members themselves, the 'Inquiries' gave the Society a network of local informants, so that
its premises in London quickly became a centre of research
material for the whole of Britain and beyond. However, this
still did not give those informants much in return.
In 1826, just 20 years after the foundation of the Society, a
decision was taken to publish summaries of the papers that had
been read, without waiting for their possible and eventual
appearance in full in the Transactions. This marked the start of
H I S T O R I C A L O R I G I N S OF THE G E O L O G I C A L SOCIETY'S JOURNAL

the Society's Proceedings, a publication that in effect complemented the older and grander periodical. The papers had been
summarized in writing since soon after the Society was founded,
but only in manuscript for its official minute books. From 1827
the summaries began to be printed and distributed to the Fellows (as they had been termed since the Society's formal incorporation in 1825). The Proceedings was published as a small
octavo booklet about six times a year, during the Society's
'season' from November to June. Each issue contained summaries of the papers read at the most recent meetings, together
with the names of new Fellows elected and other Society business. One issue each year was devoted to the business of the
AGM, and also contained the president's 'Anniversary
Address'. The latter had grown from a mere review of the
Society's domestic affairs into a summary and assessment of all
the papers read during the previous year. Some presidents expanded their survey beyond the Society, giving a major evaluation of the state of geological research nationally and even
internationally, and often focusing on some particular aspect
of the science.
The Proceedings immediately became an important medium
for the rapid exchange of news and views about geology in
Britain. The periodical was not primarily designed to keep
provincial Fellows informed, and indeed they were again at a
disadvantage: in view of the high costs of postage, the newsletter (as it was in effect) was distributed only within London, and
provincials did not receive it unless they could arrange for a
friend in London, or their London club, to hold it or forward it
for them. But in practice it was distributed and read widely
beyond the capital. Furthermore, the summaries of papers
could soon be read even by those who were not FGSs, because
the general scientific monthlies took to reprinting them from
the Proceedings. So any author who had his paper read at a
meeting of the Society could be sure of having at least a
summary in print, and widely read, within a month or two. By
contrast, the authors of papers selected for publication in the
Transactions (after a refereeing procedure much like that of the
present) often had to wait a couple of years or more, before
seeing their work fully in print and with its illustrations
attached.
As the volume of work presented at the Society's meetings
grew, and its average quality improved, so the disadvantages of
this two-track system of publication became more and more
apparent. The Transactions languished again, as authors
became impatient at the long publication delays; sales remained small, and the financial burden on the Society correspondingly great. Conversely, although the Proceedings provided rapid publication, it was at the cost of omitting the
details, and particularly the illustrations, that would have
given the papers most of their value and persuasive power. The
effects of that dilemma can be seen in the successive issues of
both periodicals. The number of papers published in the Transactions declined, in proportion to the number read, while the
summaries published in the Proceedings became on average
progressively longer. Even a few illustrations crept into the
latter, as the Society began to adopt the technique of wood
engraving. This was less effective for fine detail than copper
engraving; but it was adequate for small maps and sections, it
was much cheaper, and above all a wood engraving could be
printed on the same page as the text to which it referred,
rather than having to be bound separately at the end of the
volume.
In 1842, a substantial issue of the Transactions brought the
problem to a head, because although it was a scientific success
it finally made the financial burden of the periodical almost

intolerable. The following year the trend mentioned above was
formally recognized, when the Society resolved to modify the
format of the Proceedings to include much fuller summaries of
the papers, with small illustrations on a regular basis. Even a
few folding lithographed plates, of maps, sections and fossils,
were included. But this palliative failed to yield the anticipated
increase in sales. So in 1844 the Society tried another tack. The
commercial publishers Longmans agreed to produce a new
Quarterly Journal in octavo format, at their own risk and profit
and for a trial period of one year. This was to incorporate the
Proceedings, now extended to full texts of the papers, and fully
illustrated with wood engravings and larger lithographed
plates. A 'second, or miscellaneous part' would make the new
periodical still more attractive, by reporting on recent geological books and other publications in Britain, and by printing abstracts or extracts, in translation, of significant work
from abroad. The intention was that the Transactions would
meanwhile continue 'when a paper could only be advantageously given in quarto'.
The Quarterly Journal started to appear in 1845, but after
the first year Longmans reported that they had made a loss on
the venture and would not renew the agreement. In retrospect
the reason for the failure is clear. The Society had allowed
Fellows to continue to receive the Proceedings free, as they had
always done, as an alternative to subscribing to the new quarterly (incorporating the Proceedings) at the commercial price.
As the Society's centenary historian commented, many Fellows were evidently 'more concerned in appending F.G.S. to
their names than in adding the Quarterly Journal to their
bookshelves' (Woodward 1907, p. 157).
However, the format of the new periodical was so attractive
that its publication was continued at the Society's own expense
and risk. Significantly, the Proceedings were no longer to be
available separately; Fellows were now faced with an all-ornothing choice. Conversely, the Transactions virtually came to
an end as soon as the Quarterly Journal began. Three small
issues appeared in 1845~,6, printing papers that had been in the
pipeline before the change was decided. By the time a final issue
appeared a full decade later, the Transactions had clearly
become redundant.
The Society had thus decided, in effect, to adopt a compromise between the two earlier forms of periodical, between
lavish but slow publication on the one hand, and quick but
abbreviated publication on the other. As its name implied, the
Quarterly Journal was published rather less frequently than
the old Proceedings, but much more frequently than the Transactions. Like the former, it ensured reasonably quick publication; like the latter, what it published were the full texts of
papers. Its octavo format made it look like the Proceedings; but
it provided illustrations virtually as good as those in the
Society's original periodical. They ranged from small wood
engravings embedded in the pages of text, to substantial folding engraved plates of geological maps, some of them handcoloured, and lithographed plates of fossils and geological
sections.
Although initially regarded as an uneasy compromise, the
Quarterly Journal proved to be a highly successful formula. It
combined the advantages of both its predecessors, with just the
right balance to satisfy most authors and most of their readers.
In particular, it combined in an adequate manner the functions
of both newsletter and medium of record. After the first few
years its cost was absorbed into the Fellows' annual fee, so that
its purchase became in effect a compulsory condition of
M A R T I N J. S. R U D W I C K
membership; that ensured a steady and predictable level of

sales, which made it financially sustainable.
The Quarterly Journal continued to serve as the Society's
sole periodical throughout the rest of the nineteenth century
and beyond the middle of the twentieth. The volumes became
fatter, and the techniques of illustration were improved, or at
least enlarged, by the adoption of photography for landscapes,
rock exposures and fossils, and of chromolithography and
other methods for coloured geological maps and sections. But
the format remained almost unchanged until 1971, when the
'Quarterly' was dropped and the present Journal appeared in its
place. Significantly, it has reverted to a larger format similar to
the original Transactions, allowing for many larger illustrations to be included without the expense of fold-outs. Even
before that change, the need for a separate newsletter had reemerged, for the quick publication of relatively ephemeral
material; in that respect the modern Circular (Newsletter from
1972-1990), and its recent successor Geoscientist, represent a
revival of one of the functions of the old original Proceedings.
In conclusion, the Society's periodicals are now once more
surprisingly similar, in form and function, to those of its earliest decades and first Golden Age.
Bibliographical note
The system of references conventional in scientific papers is
ill-suited to a historical article such as this. Readers who want
to pursue this topic further will find that the following historical works ('secondary' sources, in historians' jargon) provide some starting points; they also give references to the contemporary ('primary') sources on which all historical research
is properly, indeed necessarily, based. It should be noted that
although the pace of research in the history of science is quite as
intensive as in geology, historical books and articles generally
enjoy a much longer useful life than those in the sciences.
Woodward's centenary history (1907) of the Society is still a
valuable source, since it prints much otherwise unpublished
material from the Society's archives; but it is chaotically
organized, and scarcely attempts any historical analysis or
interpretation. My article on the foundation of the Society
(Rudwick 1963) was based particularly on the manuscript
papers of the Society's first president; a more recent analysis of
the Society's "prehistory' is by Weindling (1979). kaudan (1977)

and Miller (1986) both analyse the micropolitics behind the
Society's early emphasis on fact-gathering and its rejection of
theorizing; Moore et al. (1991) describe its museum and early
collecting activities. The present paper is, as far as I am aware,
the only analysis, albeit a very brief one, of its early publications; my earlier review of the origins of what I termed the
'visual language' of geology (Rudwick 1976) discusses the importance of illustrations, and emphasizes the crucial role of the
Society's publications in the establishment of a consensual
practice that routinely combined maps, sections and other
illustrations. Recent detailed analyses of two major geological controversies serve incidentally to demonstrate the
role of the Society's publications in the concrete practice of
geologists during the period covered in this paper: they are
Secord's account (1986) of the famous arguments over the
Cambrian and Silurian systems, and my account (Rudwick
1985) of the establishment of the Devonian.
References
LAUDAN, R. 1977. Ideas and organizations in British geology: a case study in
institutional history. Isis, 68, 527 538.
MILLER, D. P. 1986. Method and the 'micropolitics' of science: the early years of
the Geological and Astronomical Societies of London. In: SCHUSTER, J. A.
& YEO, R. R. (eds) The politics and rhetoric of scientific method. Reidel.
Dordrecht, 227-257.
MOORE, D. T., THACKRAY, J. C. & MORGAN, D. L. 1991. A short history of the
museum of the Geological Society of London, 1807-19l 1, with a catalogue
of the British and Irish accessions, and notes on surviving collections. Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Historical series, 19, 51-160.
RUDWlCK, M. J. S. 1963. The foundation of the Geological Society of London: its
scheme for cooperative research and its struggle for independence. British
Journaljor the History of Science, 1, 325 355.
-1976. The emergence of a visual language for geological science 1760-1840.
Histoo, of science, 14, 149-195.
- - - 1985. The great Devonian controvers:v. the shaping of scientific knowledge
among gentlemanly specialists. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
SECORD, J. A. 1986. Controversy in Victorian geology: the Cambrian-Silurian dispute. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
WHNDLING, P. J. 1979. Geological controversy and its historiography: the prehistory of the Geological Society of London. In: JORDANOVA, L. J. &
PORTER, R. S. (eds) Images of the earth. British Society for the History of
Science, Chalfont St Giles, 248-271.
WOODWARD, HORACE B. 1907. The history of the Geological Society of London.
Geological Society, London.
Received 18 August 1992; accepted 21 August 1992.
THE
QUARTERLY JOURNAL
OF
THE
GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON,
EDITED
RY
THE VICE-SECRETARY OF THE GEOLOGICALSOCIETY.
VOLUME THE FIRST.
1845.
LONDON:
LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS,
PA.TERNOSTER-ROW.
MDCCCXLV.
Uniformitarianism today: plate tectonics is the key to the past

BRIAN
F.
WINDLEY
Department o f Geology, The University, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK
Abstract: James Hutton published the first two volumes of The Theory of the Earth in 1795 and the third
volume was published posthumously by the Geological Society in 1899. Charles Lyell in his four
addresses (1836, 1837, 1850, 1851) to the Society put the uniformitarian paradigm of Hutton (the present is
the key to the past) into the perspective of his era. Uniformitarianism today can be expressed in the view that
plate tectonics is the key to the past. This paper summarizes key data and ideas which confirm that the plate
tectonic paradigm can be applied convincingly back to the beginning of the geological record. In spite of
the fact that heat production was greater in the early Precambrian than now, tectonophysical and geochemical processes that produced oceanic and continental rocks since the early Archaean have not been
fundamentally different from those that operate today.
'The Present is the key to the Past' was the uniformitarian

paradigm of James Hutton (1788). He published the first two
volumes of his book Theory of the Earth in 1795. In the conclusion of the second volume he said 'In pursuing this object I
am next to examine facts with regards to the mineralogical part
of the theory etc', but he never published his intended third
volume before his death in 1797. The manuscript was passed via
Playfair and Webb Seymour to Leonard Horner who gave it to
the Geological Society in 1856, where it was re-discovered in
1895 by F.D. Adams (1938, p. 242). In 1899 the Geological
Society published volume 3 of Theory of the Earth as a book
edited and indexed by Archibald Geikie. The uniformitarian
paradigm was promoted and developed by Charles Lyell in his
Principles of Geology (1830 and in 10 subsequent editions).
Lyell also presented to the Society two anniversary addresses
in 1836 and 1837 and two presidential addresses (1850 on tectonics; 1851 on palaeontology), in which he addressed the
question of how far the leading contemporary discoveries had
confirmed the uniformitarian argument, namely: 'that the
ancient changes of the animate and inanimate world, of which
we find memorials in the earth's crust, may be similar both in
kind and degree to those which are now in progress'. Also
having coined the term 'metamorphism' in the third edition of
his book, he took the opportunity to follow the development of
'his metamorphic theory' in 1850. The uniformitarian idea of
Hutton and Lyell was an important progenitor of the way of
thinking of many generations of geologists.
Lyell was not concerned with the building of the history of a
continent, so he started with the Recent and worked backwards
to 'conduct us gradually from the known to the unknown'
(Bailey 1962). Adopting a similar time procedure, the aim of
this paper is to summarize key ideas and data that suggest that
the plate tectonic paradigm can be applied back to the beginnings of the geological record.
constrained, modern analogues of pre-Mesozoic orogens. One

or two decades ago there was not much information about
mid-early Precambrian island arcs, accretionary prisms,
oceanic plateaus, foreland basins, indentation and escape tectonics, ophiolites with sheeted dykes, suture zones, basic dykes
intruded in failed arms and passive margins during continental
break-up, the seismic pattern of the crust, and terrane accretion
in the lower and upper crust. Kerr (1985) and Kr6ner (1984)
concluded that modern-style plate tectonics began at 2 Ga and
Meissner (1983) at 1 Ga. However, more recent advances in all
the above fields now enable us to postulate reasonably that
plate tectonics goes back to 4 Ga.
The Phanerozoic
Accretionary and collisional orogens can be considered to be
two ends of a spectrum of orogens (Murphy & Nance 1991).
The former developed largely by the amalgamation of numerous island arcs, accretionary prisms and ophiolites, and they
represent almost total crustal growth of juvenile material;
Phanerozoic examples include the Kun Lun orogen in Central
Asia ($eng6r & Okurogullari 1991), and incomplete, ongoing,
accretionary orogens include the Japanese islands and the
Cordillera of western North America. Collisional orogens
formed largely by the abutment of one continental block
against another, and represent little or no crustal growth;
modern examples include the Swiss Alps and the central-eastern Himalayas.
The important developments in Phanerozoic geology that
are relevant to the uniformitarian argument will be considered
in the Precambrian sections below where Phanerozoic analogues can be discussed in their appropriate context.
The Late Proterozoic (1.0-0.6 Ga)

Current evidence sugggests that in the last 400 Ma of Proterozoic time, widespread terrane accretion and plate collision
led to the formation of a supercontinent, which rifted and
broke-up into separate continental blocks before the inception
The plate tectonic uniformitarian model

Ideas about the origin of orogens and the continental crust are
evolving fast, and this information now provides us with better
11
12
B.F.
~,..
on
WINDLEY
$5rvMa;rm~:7~-~/Belomorian
S~ avecon,
~ ~orw.eg
SUPERIOR
Penokean
Yavapai
:i:i:i:ili:i
~.~Mazat
...)i...~..z.al7.~
1.9-1.8GaJuvenilcrust
e
e
e
of the Phanerozoic. Most prominent are the many orogens

grouped within the terms Pan-African, Cadomian and
Avalonian. The Pan-African includes the Arabian-Nubian
Shield, the Mozambique belt and the Damaran orogen.
A ccretionary orogens
The Arabian-Nubian Shield. This is an assemblage of accreted
island arcs, ophiolitic belts, and probable microcontinents and
oceanic plateaus, and thus provides good evidence of processes
of lateral crustal growth and modern-type obduction-accretion tectonics (Kr6ner 1985; Stoeser & Camp 1985; Windley in
press a). Disrupted ophiolites occur in linear belts up to 900 km
long defining sutures between island arcs and microplates
(Kr6ner 1985; Pallister et al. 1988). Some ophiolites contain a
complete (Penrose definition) succession (Shanti & Roobol
1979). In Arabia in addition to the island arcs there are remnants of pre-Pan African (i.e. > 1.0 Ga) microcontinents and
possibly oceanic plateaus, whereas in Egypt and Sudan the
deformed passive continental margin of the Mozambique belt
was partly transformed into an active margin along which there
are ophiolites and inter-thrust arc volcanic rocks (Kr6ner
1985).
In the Shield, there are three ages of island arcs that are very
similar to modern arcs formed at sites of plate convergence
(Stoeser & Camp 1985).
(1) The earliest are chemically immature bimodal suites of
low-K tholeiites and sodic dacites/rhyolites depleted in lithophile elements. After deformation, they were intruded by
plutons of diorite and trondhjemite at 910 Ma. The lavas have
chemical characteristics similar to immature island arcs such
as the Tonga-Kermadec and Lesser Antilles arcs.
Fig. 1. Map of Laurentia showing the

distribution of Early Proterozoic
collisional orogens in the north of the
Baltic Shield and three belts of Early
Proterozoic accretionary orogens that
extend from W. USA to Finland.
Modified after Hoffman (1989). MK,
Makkovik; KL, Killarney.
(2) Younger lavas are predominantly calc-alkaline and

low-K arc tholeiites, andesites, dacites and tufts which were
intruded by granitic batholiths dated at 816 Ma and 743 Ma.
These are similar to more mature, partly emergent, intraoceanic island arcs in the western Pacific.
(3) The youngest voluminous lavas have calc-alkaline or
high-K, calc-alkaline compositions with moderately high
lithophile element abundances; they are comparable to volcanic arcs as in Central America and Indonesia which are transitional between island arcs and continental margin volcanic
arcs.
Collisional orogens
The Mozambique belt. This complicated high-grade and highly
deformed orogen in East Africa is still understood only in
reconnaissance outline. Shackleton (1986) suggested that widespread thrusts, nappes and high-grade metamorphism imply
crustal thickening as a result of continent-continent collision
tectonics, and Burke & Seng6r (1986) proposed that the belt
was the site of a Tibetan-style continental collision. Berhe
(1990) described many ophiolitic remnants in deep crustal
gneisses. The most detailed, recent work in the Mozambique
belt was by Key et al. (1989) in Kenya who concluded from
considerable field and geochronological results that the belt
represents a deep crustal section through a Pan-African continent-continent collision zone.
Orogens surrounding the West African craton. This Precambrian craton is surrounded by Pan-African sutures, arcs and
collisional orogens. In Morocco there is a complete ophiolite
at Bou Azzer dated at 788 Ma that is overlain by an island arc
U N I F O R M I T A R I A N I S M : PLATE TECTONICS
consisting of calc-alkaline lavas and diorites (Bodinier et al.
1984). Many ophiolites, accretionary m61anges and fore-arcs
occur as dismembered slivers on a suture between the craton
and the island arc (Saquaque et al. 1989). In the Sahara on the
east side of the craton in the central Hoggar, there is a
collisional orogen that retains evidence of a complete Wilson
Cycle spanning the period 900-550 Ma (Caby et al. 1981).
The Mid-Proterozoic (1.6-1.0 Ga)

During the mid-Proterozoic a number of orogens formed, the
best-known of which is the Grenville in North America
(Davidson 1986) that was preceded by its genetically-related
period of so-called anorogenic magmatism (Windley 1993).
The Grenvillian Wilson Cycle started with prominent 1.481.43 Ga anorogenic magmatism in Canada, especially anorthosites, and in the central/southern USA, mostly rhyolitic
ashfall tufts and peraluminous granites (Van Schmus et al.
1987). This magmatism most likely developed on the continental margin of the Grenvillian Ocean; modern analogues
border the Atlantic Ocean (Kay et al. 1989; Windley 1993).
Closure of the ocean by subduction is indicated by the 1.28-1.25 Ga island arc of the Central Metasedimentary Belt of
Ontario, and by an island arc associated with an incomplete
ophiolite in Texas which was thrust northwestwards onto a
foreland and shelf (Garrison 1981). Collision of the Belt with
adjacent continental blocks gave rise to the 1.25-1.22 Ga
Elsevirian orogeny and the 1.12-1.03 Ga Ottawan orogeny.
The result of these orogenies was the formation of the
collisional Grenville orogen, which consists of several major
inter-thrusted terranes (Rivers et al. 1989) bounded by sutures
that can be recognized on COCORP deep seismic profiles
(Culotta et al. 1990), and which shares some fundamental similarities with the Himalayas (Windley 1986). The northwestdirected deformation caused by the terminal Ottawan orogeny
fractured the foreland giving rise to the 1.1 Ga Keweenawan
rift, that in origin is comparable to the Rhine graben caused by
the Tertiary Alpine deformation in Europe.
The Early Proterozoic (2.5-1.6 Ga)

No significant orogens formed from 2.5 Ga to 2.1 Ga (a supercontinent?), but from 2.1 Ga to 1.6 Ga many orogens did form
of both accretionary and collisional type.
A ccretionary
orogens
Early Proterozoic 'growth' orogens, include:

1.7-1.6 Ga Mazatzal (North America)
1.8-1.7 Ga Killarney, Central Plains and Yavapai (all in
North America)
1.9-1.8 Ga Svecofennian (Baltic Shield), Ketilidian (Greenland), Makkovik and Penokean (North America)
2.1 Ga Birimian (West Africa).
Except for the Birimian, all the above orogens belong to a
mega-orogen that extends across what is now North America
and Europe and which youngs southwards (Fig. 1). Just key
examples will be discussed.
The Svecofennian. Extending from Central Sweden and Finland southwards to the Tornquist Line in Poland, this 1200 km
wide orogen developed by the accretion of 1.9 Ga island arcs
(Park 1991) and accretionary prisms, and by extensive crustal
melting in the period 1.8-1.55 Ga. Extensive isotopic data in-
13
dicate that it contains no Archaean material (Huhma 1987;

Patchett et al. 1987; Romer 1991).
Extending along its northern margin with the KolaKarelian orogen to the north, the Lule&-Kuopio suture zone
contains ophiolitic lenses. The 1.96 Ga (U-Pb) Jormua
ophiolite with sheeted dykes was thrust about 30 km onto the
northern continental margin (Kontinen 1987).
Within the Svecofennian orogen there are several island
arcs, whose lavas are chemically comparable with modern
calc-alkaline arc lavas (Pharaoh & Brewer 1990). U-Pb zircon
data indicate that many of the arc lavas were erupted in the
short period of 1.92-1.87 Ga contemporaneously with the intrusion of innumerable 1.91-1.86 Ga, subduction-derived
granitic plutons (Nurmi & Haapala 1986).
Between many of the Svecofennian arcs there are biotitebearing granitic gneisses and schists which, because of chemical
similarities, have been widely regarded as metagreywackes and
metapelites, and which were most likely derived from accretionary prisms.
Thrusting and folding was associated with high amphibolite
facies metamorphism that locally reached granulite grade.
Crustal thickening led to the formation of three types of crustal
melt granites, the last of which were 1.7-1.55 Ga rapakivi granites and coeval gabbros, anorthosites and basic dykes (Haapala
& R~im6 1990). These formed as a result of the internal slow
heating of the thickened crust, its final extension and collapse,
and thus to decompression melting of the mantle and melting
of depleted granulitic lower crust (Windley in press a).
The Ketilidian. This orogen in South Greenland (Allaart 1976)
is an incomplete segment of an Early Proterozoic accretionary
orogen which contains an Andean-type batholith (Fig. 2;
Windley 1991 & references therein).
A northern foreland of Archaean gneisses is overlain unconformably by a shelf-foredeep succession deposited by
turbidity currents into basins on the deepening shelf, a 30 m
thick sulphide-facies iron formation (chert-pyrite-shale) similar to that which commonly occurs on the outer ramp of Early
Proterozoic foredeeps, and tholeiitic pillow lavas and basicfelsic pyroclastics, like those in the axial zones of other Early
Proterozoic foredeeps (Hoffman 1987). The above succession
has been thrust northwards over the foreland and back-thrust
near the suture, where it and the basement thrusted gneisses are
intruded by several 1.775-1.675 Ga granites that contain
appreciable crustal-melt components (Kalsbeek & Taylor
1985). These relations are comparable to those that occur in the
deformed foreland of modern collisional orogens such as the
Himalayas.
The Kobberminebugt suture is a 15 km wide vertical shear
zone that contains relict greenschist-grade pillow lavas and
gabbros, copper and gold mineralization, and late 100 m thick
mylonite zones. The Julianehaab batholith is a 80-100 km
wide Andean-type tonalitic-granodioritic batholith that contains relicts of pillow lavas, pyroclastic rocks and extensive
noritic gabbros (Allaart 1976) that probably belong to an
early island arc into which the major calc-alkaline batholith
was intruded (Windley 1991). The arc rocks are similar to those
in the Kohistan arc in the Himalayas of North Pakistan, the
lower part (magma chamber) of which is occupied by the
Chilas complex of noritic gabbros (Khan et al. 1989).
The southernmost part of the Ketilidian orogen consists
largely of metamorphosed, accretionary prism-type, supracrustal rocks that were deformed in three sub-horizontal thrust
nappes and metamorphosed at 1.8 Ga. The thrust slab was
14
B.F.
KETILIDIAN OROGEN
~::i:':':':':':':':':"
!
62
WINDLEY
'
'
":i~iiiiiii
i i i i i i i i i i:' ili!iii "
'; :':':'~
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o~e~'~'~
+
~!i!iiiiiiiiii~.~.-'.-.:-.--::. :, Shelf
/
..:::.:::::....::::::::::::::::,
Archaean ~ : : i - .
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basement ~ ' . ' . ' . - :
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:.i~
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,," ,- ,- -"+ ++ + ,"+ -;-,-
AnOU . . . . .
battloinH
" ' : t : ~
.:.:-:~.I,;~:
:-~.'~:i~-*.':.:~
~ ~ : ,.-..-..<.'.'."
. "
__
61
Ivigtut
~,~lr"
++
,+ ~,r(.~- +~__.j~r~,,~,,~/~/,,.,,,."
^t'O~
Rapakivi granites
~"
..~t~<.~_'~,L~
~ Para-gneisse,,
""'--~L~._.S~
Thrust nappes
""'-
'JL]~'
0
I
48
46
44
intruded by post-tectonic 1.755-1.74 Ga rapakivi granites. The

emplacement of such granites within 60 Ma of the peak of
regional metamorphism and associated thrusting is consistent
with the time lag caused by slow thermal relaxation heating
(Sonder et al. 1987; Dewey 1988), between the last thrusting
during crustal thickening, and the intrusion of crust-mantle
melts in extensional zones in a collapsing crust (Windley
1991).
The Birimian. The 2.1 Ga Birimian orogen in West Africa
extends for about 1600 km across strike. It consists predominantly of greenschist-grade mafic lavas and tufts, volcanodetrital argillites and turbiditic wackes, and all were intruded
by post-orogenic leucogranites. Sm-Nd isotopic data by Abouchami et al. (1990) indicate that the sediments are free of any
Archaean or older recycled components, suggesting that they
formed in ocean basins far from any continental influence, and
they confirm contemporaneity of the Birimian sediments and
volcanic rocks. Abouchami et al. (1990) found that the trace
element signatures of the volcanic rocks are most comparable
to those of basalts in modern oceanic plateaus and thus proposed that this is a very extensive accretionary orogen that
formed in a short time around 2.1 Ga from juvenile, mantlederived material.
Collisional orogens
The Kola-Karelian. This orogen occupies the northern part of
the Baltic Shield (Fig.l). It contains five Archaean terranes.
The Murmansk and Inari terranes consist of high-grade
gneisses, whereas the S6rvaranger, Belomorian and Karelian
terranes are composite, consisting of both low-grade greenstone belts and high-grade gneisses. In the period 2.0-1.9 Ga,
these Archaean terranes collided and were amalgamated to
form the Kola-Karelian orogen (Windley 1991, in press a, b).
Early Proterozoic (2.4-1.9 Ga) rocks and structures added to
these terranes include island arcs, Andean-type magmatic arcs,
sutures and remnant shelf successions. The Early Proterozoic
50 km
i
Fig. 2. Map of the Early Proterozoic

Ketilidian orogen in South Greenland
showing the position of shelf sediments
in the foreland, the suture zone,
Andean-type batholith, and crustal-melt
rapakivi granites in a thrust-thickened
nappe stack in the south. After Windley
(1991).
structure of this orogen is well constrained by geophysical data

(Gafil et al. 1989; Marker 1989).
The Kola suture zone is a south-dipping thrust zone up to 40
km wide that has placed the Inari terrane against and over the
S6rvaranger terrane (Berthelsen & Marker 1986; Marker
1989). The borders of the suture zone are marked by mylonites
and it contains at least two thrust-bound slices made up of the
2.4-2.0 Ga Pechenga Series that contains sediments from the
rifted continental margin, shelf-rise transition, and trench and
tholeiitic basalts with R E E characteristics resembling those of
MORB. On the south side of the suture zone there is a thrustbound, greenschist-grade Early Proterozoic island arc
sequence that consists of weakly deformed abundant andesites,
basaltic pillow lavas, minor komatiitic lavas, tufts and
sulphide-bearing carbonaceous pelites (Berthelsen & Marker
1986; Gafil et al. 1989). A further result of the southward subduction that gave rise to the island arc was emplacement of an
Andean-type magmatic arc represented by 1.95-1.9 Ga calcalkaline plutons into the northern border of the Inari terrane
(Barbey et al. 1984). The South Kola belt, containing Lapland
granulites and gneisses, was metamorphosed at 1.9-2.0 Ga; its
turbiditic precursors were possibly deposited in a back-arch
basin (Berthelsen & Marker 1986).
The Wopmay. Wopmay is a 1.95-1.84 Ga orogen in N W
Canada (Hoffman & Bowring 1984) that developed as a result
of the collision between the Archaean Slave Province and an
unknown Nahanni continental block to the west; a small
island arc, the Hottah (that was built offshore on a 2.3-2.1 Ga
crust) was trapped between the colliding blocks (Hoffman
1989). The western rifted margin of the Slave Province is overlain by shelf-rise sediments of the westward-facing Coronation
Supergroup and succeeded by an eastward-migrating foredeep
that formed in a late thin-skinned thrust-fold belt. The shelf
began to collapse at 1.97 Ga, and collided at 1.91-1.90 Ga with
the 1.95-1.91 Ga Hottah arc as a result of westward subduction
below the arc. A new dextral-oblique, east-dipping subduction
zone developed on the west side of the accreted arc and led to
U N I F O R M I T A R I A N I S M " PLATE T E C T O N I C S
"'~
Cape
"~
Smith
15
':':': .... " : ' : ' : ' :

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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
PAYNE
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.-
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k~:i:i:i2~'!:i:i:
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generation of the 1.88-1.86 Ga Great Bear calc-alkaline

batholith, partly on top of the Hottah arc and partly on the
deformed continental margin to the east. 1.86-1.84 Ga syenogranites were generated from the metasediments of the deformed shelf-rise. Terminal collision at about 1.8 Ga of the
Nahanni terrane in the west led to formation of the postulated
Johnny Hoe suture, indicated by gravity and magnetic highs.
Proterozoic plate tectonics

Current data suggest that the types of orogens that formed
throughout the Proterozoic are fundamentally similar to those
of the Phanerozoic. In particular, the two end-member types,
accretionary and collisional, can be readily recognized back to
the early Proterozoic.
There may have been a supercontinent in the midProterozoic. The fact that platform carbonates and quartzites
were common after, but not immediately before, 1.5 Ga
suggests widespread transgressions such as would be expected
at a time of continental break-up (Nance et al. 1986). Also
Hoffman (1989) pointed out that most orogens in North
America formed between 1.98 and 1.65 Ga and that they led to
the formation of a supercontinent by 1.5 Ga.
The assembly and fragmentation of a mid-Proterozoic
supercontinent would provide an ideal framework to explain
the long-problematic mid-Proterozoic anorogenic magmatism. Windley (1993) proposed that there were two main
periods of formation of such anorogenic rocks that were related
to the formation of adjacent orogens. 1.76-1.55 Ga rapakivi
granites and rhyolites formed about 60-200 Ma after the last
deformation in the Svecofennian, Ketilidian and Penokean
orogens, the time-lag being caused by the slow thermal relaxation of thickened lower crust that had been commonly
Fig. 3. Early Proterozoic (2.4 1.85 Ga)

mafic dykes and their coeval, related
volcanic belts around the perimeter of
the Superior Province. Inset shows the
suggested relations between the position
of ocean openings and the dykes in
failed arms and passive margins. After
Fahrig (1987).
depleted by the extraction of earlier granitic crustal melts. In

contrast, 1.45-1.41 Ga anorthosites in eastern Canada and
rhyolitic ash fall tufts and peraluminous granites in central/
southern USA formed in the continental margin of the Grenvillian ocean, modern analogues being found on the borders of
the present-day Atlantic Ocean. Thus these anorogenic magmatic rocks formed in the extensional regimes during the
formation and the break-up of the 1.5 Ga supercontinent.
Mafic dykes are typically intruded into a stable craton in the
early stages of continental break-up associated with the formation of an ocean. After the closure of the ocean by plate subduction many of the dyke swarms may be preserved in the
foreland of resultant orogens. Fahrig (1987) showed that in
North America the 2.4-1.85 Ga Molson, Marathon and Mistassini swarms (Fig. 3) and the 1.2 Ga Mackenzie and Sudbury
swarms are all orientated at high angles to, and commonly
radiate from, their parent plate boundaries and are related to
coeval volcanic belts along those boundaries. This suggests
that these swarms occupy failed-arm environments and formed
during early spreading. The Payne River dykes of Labrador are
orientated parallel to their original passive margin (Fig. 3).
The existence of Proterozoic sutures between originally allochthonous continental blocks has long been suggested on
the basis of geological and geophysical data (Burke et al. 1977;
Fountain & Salisbury 1981). Several sutures in the Canadian
Shield (Fig. 4a) show paired negative and positive gravity
anomalies (Fig. 4b). G i b b e t al. (1983) and Gibb & Thomas
(1976) proposed that the positive anomaly is related to an increased density and thickness of the younger block, and that the
negative anomaly is an expression of the increase in crustal
thickness of the older block towards the suture. Re-evaluating
these data in the light of the more recently established correlation between the age of continental lithosphere at the time of
16
B.F.
WINDLEY
,,,\
~-..2ooghl y " ~
"" :
,',,',,\\\ Suture zone I
0l
~ 5 0 0 km k~ ~ - -
I-'_
~,~",~x('6'k'/
)~\"~'----~"~
Z
~
/U
APE SMITH
"~-) 24-
/ITHE,ONFRONT
"--"
50 _~
100
o
50
._1
25
0
23-
OLDERPROVINCE
e ~
Y'O~JI~GE'R".~
-%'e"~/PROVINCE
20
~ . . ~ +o o7~/'/'/.1
xz
~. 40
a
b)
- --
I
0
100
ly/7-~y-s~/7-;!
-0.4-J
-0.33 d
I
200
300
D i s t a n c e (km)
15
400
22
7.0
7.5
8.0
8.5
9'.0
9.5
10.0
Loglo Age (year)

Fig. 4. The relationship between lithospheric flexure and gravity anomalies at Early Proterozoic plate boundaries in the Canadian shield
(after Pilkington 1990). (a) Map of the major geological provinces showing the location of suture zones. (b) Type crustal model of sutures
and associated gravity anomalies after Gibb & Thomas (1976). Density contrasts are in gcm -3. That of the younger province is relative to the
crust of the older province. (c) Graph of logL0 [plate age at time of loading (year)] versus log10 [flexural rigidity (N m)] for Canadian sutures.
HIM (KW), Himalayas from Karner & Watts (1983). HIM (LC), Himalayas from Lyon-Caen & Molnar (1983). Solid circles indicate oceanic
data from Watts et al. (1982). The straight line is the equivalent rigidity from the depth of the 450 C isotherm based on a cooling half-space
model (from Karner & Watts 1983).
the loading in mountain belts and its flexural rigidity (Karner

& Watts 1983), Pilkington (1990) demonstrated that the negative anomaly may be the result of flexure of the older lithosphere as it is thrust under the younger, more buoyant block,
and that the positive anomaly is related to the presence of a
subsurface load, indicated by the absence of any visual correlation between topography and observed gravity. Figure 4c
shows that the sutures of the Grenville Front (1.1 Ga), Labrador Trough (1.58 Ga), Cape Smith belt (c. 1.8 Ga) and Thelon
Front (. 2.0 Ga) demonstrate a systematic increase in lithospheric rigidity with age at the time of suturing and loading, and
that these relations are in agreement with comparable data for
the Alps, Himalayas and Appalachians and oceanic lithosphere.
Sutures contain two diagnostic rock groups: blueschists and
ophiolites.
Ophiolites. There are many ophiolites in the Pan-African of the

Arabian-Nubian shield. Beyond Africa there are three important and well-dated early Proterozoic ophiolites, all of which
have sheeted dykes: the 1.96 Ga Jormua ophiolite was thrust
onto the shelf of the Svecofennian orogen (Kontinen 1987); the
1.9 Ga Purtuniq ophiolite in Canada obducted onto the foreland of the Cape Smith belt (St Onge et al. 1989); the 1.73 Ga
Payson ophiolite in Arizona developed on a 1.76-1.75 Ga magmatic arc (Dann 1991).
There are innumerable other geological data and relations
which support the idea that modern-style plate processes were
in operation throughout the Proterozoic, but the above
examples suffice to make the point.
Blueschists. Late Proterozoic examples occur in the Mona

Complex on Anglesey (560-550 Ma; Dallmeyer & Gibbons
1987), in the Aksu Group of Xinjiang Province of W. China
(698-718 Ma; Nakajima et al. 1990), the Hoggar-Iforas orogen
in the central Sahara (undated; Caby et al. 1981), and the Delhi
orogen in Rajasthan, NW India (undated; Sinha-Roy &
Mohanty 1988).
The Archaean regions of the world contain two types of

terrane: low-grade, volcanic-dominated greenstone-granite
terranes that formed in the Archaean upper crust, and terranes
dominated by high-grade granulites and gneisses that represent
the Archaean mid-lower crust. Some regions contain both
types and their mutual relationships are particularly
important.
The Archaean (4.0-2.5 Ga)
Greenslone-granite
17
terranes
Archaean greenstone-granite terranes contain the oldest major

belts of well-preserved volcano-sedimentary rocks, and so
they give us much direct evidence of early crustal conditions.
They vary in age from c. 3.6 Ga to 2.5 Ga. The volcanic rocks
typically consist of a calc-alkaline basalt-andesite-daciterhyolite association, with basaltic and ultramafic komatiitic
lavas as a minor but important component. Andesites make up
30% of Canadian greenstone belts, but form a far smaller proportion of belts in southern Africa and Australia. Rare alkaline to shoshonitic volcanic rocks are like those in modern arcs.
Most greenstone volcanic rocks show depletion in Nb, Ta and
Ti relative to the rare earth and the large ion lithophile elements, this being a geochemical signature of subductionderived igneous rocks. All the features described above are very
similar to those in modern immature to mature island arcs
(Condie 1989). Intrusive diorite-granodiorite-granite plutons
are coeval with the volcanic rocks; they mostly have arc-type
chemical characteristics.
There is now general agreement that most greenstone belts
formed as a result of seafloor spreading followed by obduction
or subduction-accretion processes associated with island arcs
(de Wit et al. 1987; Hoffman 1990; Taira et al., in press). Possible modern analogues include obducted slabs of ocean floor
(de Wit et al. 1987, 1992), island arcs built on oceanic crust
(Sylvester et al. 1987), segments of arcs ranging from forearcs to
closed backarc basins (Ludden et al. 1986), intra-arc basins,
collages of disparate arcs, arcs thrust onto continental crust
(Spray 1985), volcanic arcs and pull-apart basins developed on
an active continental margin (Thurston & Chivers 1990), and
accretionary prisms that seal amalgamated arcs (Hoffman
1990; Percival & Williams 1989; Kusky 1990).
Although not yet widely recognized, there were probably
many oceanic plateaus in the Archaean. Kusky & Kidd (1992)
suggested that in the Belingwe region of Zimbabwe there are
major thrusts between the three groups of greenstone belts. In
particular, a major detachment separates underlying gneisses
from a 2.7 Ga allochthonous block (the Mberengwa allochthon) which contains 6.5 km of lavas including abundant
basaltic and peridotitic komatiites, and which therefore they
interpreted as a fragment of an accreted oceanic plateau. They
went on to suggest that many of the other stratigraphically
comparable greenstone belts in the Zimbabwean craton may be
dismembered fragments of this large oceanic plateau.
The Superior Province of Canada is composed of several
2.7-2.75 Ga subparallel greenstone belts (Fig. 5) of contrasting lithology, age and metamorphic grade that are very similar to modern arc collision zones. There are two main types
(Hoffman 1989; Card 1990): (1) volcanic-plutonic terranes,
which appear to be composites of several island arcs; (2) metasedimentary belts which resemble accretionary prisms. Subvolcanic complexes in the Abitibi Belt range from pyroxenite
cumulates to gabbros (Raudsepp & Ayres 1982), and
hornblende-bearing gabbros to anorthosites (Ashwal et al.
1983; Morrison et al. 1986). These appear to be intrusions
derived from the magma chamber in deep parts of island arcs;
they are comparable to the Jurassic Border Range complex in
Alaska (Burns 1985), and the Chilas complex in the Cretaceous
Kohistan Arc in the Himalayas of Pakistan (Khan et al. 1989).
Considerable isotopic data indicate the major arc terranes get
younger southwards; the main terminal orogeny occurred
about 2.725 Ga in the Uchi-Sachigo terranes, about 2.705 Ga in
the Wabigoon terrane, and about 2.695 Ga in the Wawa-
IslandArcTerranes
~ AccretionaryPrisms
~
~'~..,~
Hudson~
Bay~~
For:;::d/
,,,,v,,r
'
W,.,,,,'.<<'-
oue,,co cJ
~%
M~ne~~'~~?
Kapuskasing
1~
us
E
2~
3~
GL
41
M~n.
us
US
us
Fig. 5. Map of the Archaean greenstone belts of the Superior

Province of the Canadian shield in terms of island arcs and
accretionary prisms, and an interpretive plate tectonic history. E,
English River; GL, Great Lakes Tectonic Zone; Minn, Minnesota;
Q, Quetico; Wa, Wawa; Wn, Wabigoon; US, Uchi-Sachigo. After
Hoffman (1989).
Abitibi terrane (Card 1990). Thus the arc terranes were

assembled progressively from north to south before finally
colliding with the Minnesota foreland in the south, as illustrated in Fig. 5.
The Slave Province of Canada comprises two fundamentally different tectonostratigraphic terranes that collided at c.
2.6 Ga; an older gneissic microcontinent in the west and a
composite greenstone-granite terrane containing a paired
island arc and accretionary prism in the east (Kusky 1990).
Most important is an ophiolitic complex (Helmstaedt et al.
1986). Although it is much thicker (11 km) than a typical equivalent section of Phanerozoic ophiolites, there is an obvious
resemblance of the whole sequence, and in particular of the
sheeted dyke complex, to a modern ophiolite. The implication
is that mid-oceanic accretionary processes were active in the
formation of the greenstone belts of the Slave Province, and
this in turn implies that subduction and collision processes
were also in operation in the Archaean. These greenstone belts
are the remnants of a trench accretionary complex of juxtaposed island arcs and other crustal bathymetric highs such as
fracture zones, seamount chains and oceanic plateaus, delaminated from subducting oceanic lithosphere and overlain
by trench turbidites. Subsequently the foreshortened accretion-
18
B . F . WINDLEY
ary complex was extensively intruded by crust- and mantlederived plutons of the prograding magmatic arc (Hoffman
1990).
Storey et al. (1991) pointed out that Archean komatiites are
chemically comparable to the Tertiary komatiites of Gorgona
Island off`the coast of Columbia. Peridotitic komatiites ( > 18%
MgO), which have an eruption temperature greater than 1650
C, require a very high degree of melting (50-80%) of the
mantle. This fact may be explained by shallow depths of
melting, which may be consistent with expected high rates of
heat flow in the Archaean that were concentrated in mantle
plumes that may have facilitated the formation of many oceanic
plateaus, like the Kaapvaal craton.
Similarities between Archaean arc volcanoes in Canada
and modern arc volcanoes include (Ayres & Thurston
1985): (a) an upward change from basaltic to calc-alkaline
volcanism, and an accompanying increase in the proportion
of tufts and volcaniclastic rocks, reflecting a progressive upward chemical trend in the evolution of the volcanoes; (b)
subduction signature of trace elements such as a negative
Nb anomaly; (c) a gradual emergence of volcanic islands
from submarine to subaerial, and the tectonic alignment of
these islands. The differences include: (i) very magnesian
peridotitic komatiites do not exist in modern arcs; (ii) there
are less andesites, more rhyolites and more bimodal volcanic suites in Archaean volcanics; (iii) alkaline shoshonitic
volcanics are uncommon in the Archaean; (iv) more rapid
eruption rates of Archaean volcanoes during their subaqueous, komatiitic and tholeiitic basaltic phase resulted in a
higher incidence of non-pillowed sheet flows, thicker flows,
and lava plains; (v) development of larger, longer-lived,
zoned magma chambers during the later felsic stages of
Archaean volcanism.
Granulite-gneiss terranes
These terranes have undergone deep crustal metamorphism

that ranged from amphibolite to granulite facies. Harley
(1989) pointed out that Archaean granulites formed within a
wide range of pressures (6-12 kbar) and temperatures (750980 C) and that some have near-isothermal decompression
P - T paths (S India; Aldan Shield, Scourian, NW Scotland;
Limpopo belt), and others have near-isobaric cooling paths
(W Greenland; Napier Complex, Antarctica; Pikwitonei,
Canada). He suggested that the decompression granulites
formed in crust thickened by collision, with magmatic additions that were commonly calc-alkaline tonalites, and that
the isothermal paths were generated during rapid thinning
(1-2ram a -1 exposure) related to tectonic exhumation during moderate or waning extension. In contrast, the deeplevel isobaric cooling granulites formed in thickened crust
which underwent very rapid (5mm a-l) extensional
thinning subsequent to collision. These conclusions confirm
structural relations that indicate substantial tectonic intercalation of rock units by thrusting and of massive injection
of tonalites in many regions. For example in West Greenland the long history of thrusting since c. 3.8 Ga culminated in the juxtaposition of four distinctive thrust-slabs
or gneissic terranes at 2.75-2.55 Ga (Friend et al. 1987; Nutman et al. 1989). Because the granulites today are still
underlain by some 30-35 km of continental crust, it can be
reasoned that the orogenic belts must have reached by the
end of the Archaean a crustal thickness of some 60-75 km,
comparable to that of the modern Himalayas and Tibet.
The deep crustal levels of Archaean terranes are

obviously more difficult to unravel in terms of modern tectonic environments, but Wedepohl et al. (1991) found no
systematic changes in chemical composition with age of
early to late Archaean granitoid rocks from West Greenland, and concluded that typical modern processes of crust
formation started to work early in the Archean.
In terranes of the Superior Province of North America,
granulite metamorphism formed in three distinct tectonic
environments (Percival 1989): (1) the Minnesota River Valley terrane was metamorphosed at modest pressure (4.5-6.5
kbar) in a continental collision zone--it was the continental foreland that collided with the collage of accreted
arcs (greenstone belts) to the north; (2) the Kapuskasing
and Pikwitonei terranes formed at 7.5-9 kbar in the roots of
the island arcs of the greenstone belts; (3) metasedimentary
belts between composite island arcs which represent accretionary prisms that were tectonically thickened and metamorphosed during uplift at 4.5-6.5 kbar.
Archaean plate tectonics

The late Archaean (2.9-2.7 Ga) greenstone belts of the
Superior and Slave Provinces of Canada that formed
largely by the amalgamation of island arcs and accretionary prisms are comparable to Proterozoic arc-accretionary orogens like the Pan-African of the ArabianNubian Shield and the Japanese islands today (Taira et al.
in press). The late Archaean (3.1-2.6 Ga) Kaapvaal craton
evolved by formation of Pacific-type continental margin
orogens and Himalayan-type collisional tectonics (Table 1;
de Wit et al. 1992). If the late Archaean (3.1-2.55 Ga) craton of W Greenland is the exposed deep level of a Tibetantype plateau, then there are few fundamental tectonic
differences between these late Archaean arc-accretionary
and collisional orogens and modern orogens.
De Wit et al. (1992) described the evolution of the Kaapvaal craton of South Africa in terms of a two-stage formation of an Archaean continent from 3.7 Ga to 2.6 Ga. During the first stage (3.7-3.1 Ga), dominant intra-oceanic
processes similar to those operating along mid-oceanic
ridges caused separation of continental lithosphere from the
mantle and formation of an oceanic plateau comparable to
the Ontong-Java plateau. During this stage the 3.5 Ga
mafic-ultramafic Barberton greenstone belt was obducted
onto volcanic arc-like rocks. Amalgamation of oceanic
plateaus/terranes by subduction/accretion processes like
those occurring today along oceanic convergent margins
gave rise to the Kaapvaal shield by 3.1 Ga (Table 1).
According to Matthews (1990) the 2.94 Ga Pongola Supergroup was deposited partly on the passive continental margin of the newly created Kaapvaal shield and partly in an
aulacogen extending into it. The second stage (3.1-2.6 Ga)
of de Wit et al. (1992) records the accretion of crustal fragments by Cordilleran-type subduction/accretion processes,
the formation of intermontane riffs and foreland basins, and
finally Himalayan- and Tibetan-type continent-continent
collision between the Kaapvaal and Zimbabwe cratons and
consequent formation of the Limpopo orogen at 2.68 Ga
(Treloar et al. 1992). Figure 6 shows that the Limpopo belt
has a symmetrical thrust structure, which is similar to that
of many Phanerozoic collisional orogens. Burke et al.
(1985) postulated that the Limpopo collision was responsible for the deposition of the Witwatersrand Supergroup in
Table 1. The first 1 Ga o f formation of the Kaapvaal continent (after
de Wit et al. 1992)
Age (Ga)
Kaapvaal shield formation: 500 Ma of intra-oceanic tectonics
Regional emergence of Kaapvaal continental

lithosphere by intra-oceanic obduction
processes
Western Pacific-style intra-oceanic
amalgamation of oceanic terranes
Widespread within-shield melting, granite
formation and chemical differentiation in
the upper lithosphere
Kaapvaal shield stabilized by
3.7-3.2
3.3-3.2
3.2-3.1
3.1
Kaapvaal craton jormation: 500 Ma of inter- and intra-continental

tectonics
Regional extension of the Kaapvaal shield;

passive continental margin and rift basins
Cordilleran-type accretion of composite
terranes along north and west margin of
Kaapvaal shield; intermontane and
foreland basins
Alpine or Himalayan-type continentcontinent collision between the Kaapvaal
and Zimbabwean cratons
Foreland extensional and impact-generated
rifts
Kaapvaal craton stabilized by
3.1-2.9
2.9-2.7
2.68
2.7-2.6
2.6
a foreland basin, and that the 2.64 Ga Ventersdorp rift system

formed by post-collisional extension in the Kaapvaal craton.
Although de Wit et al. (1992) concluded that the Archaean
thermal and tectonic processes resemble plate tectonic processes occurring today, they emphasize there were some
differences. For example, during the first-stage the Kaapvaal
oceanic-type plateau formed by intra-oceanic obductiondominated tectonics that gave rise to stacking, tectonic loading
and subsidence, and this resulted in melting of the lower parts
of the thrust stack to yield extensive trondhjemite-tonalite
melts.
MacGregor & Manton (1986) found that the variation of
major elements with oxygen isotopes of Archaean eclogites
from Cretaceous kimberlites in South Africa matches that
calculated for modern oceanic volcanic rocks altered by circulating seawater in ridge crest hydrothermal systems, and thus
they proposed that the eclogites were derived from subducted,
buoyant Archaean oceanic lithosphere (Bickle 1986). Seismic
shear velocities indicate that Precambrian shields are underlain by chemically depleted mantle roots of Archaean age
(Jordan 1988), and Helmstaedt & Schulze (1989) suggested
that these roots were formed of imbricated slabs of partly subducted Archaean oceanic lithosphere.
Discussion
A review of current and recent data and ideas on crustal evolution indicates that Cenozoic-style plate tectonic processes have
been in operation since the beginning of the geological record,
but that there are some differences which we must consider.
19
According to Murphy & Nance (1991) the Pan-African and

Cadomian-Avalonian belts developed by subduction and accretion on the outer margins of a late Proterozoic supercontinent (peripheral orogens), whereas the Mozambique belt
formed by continent-continent collision and thus is situated
within the supercontinent (internal orogen). Similar earlier
Proterozoic accretionary and collisional orogens may have
developed in relation to large continental blocks or supercontinents. However, in the early Archaean, when there was a more
widespread primordial ocean, accretion was predictably the
more important process in the generation of orogens (de Wit et
al. 1992).
Secular thermal changes have important implications for
plate tectonic processes. Total heat production in the Earth in
the late Archaean was around three times that of the present
and this would have given rise to a higher temperature
Archaean mantle, which in turn would have led to increased
depth and volume of melting, a thicker continental lithosphere
(150-200 km), a thicker oceanic crust (20-50 km) and sea-floor
spreading rates 2-3 times than at present (Sleep & Windley
1982; Bickle 1986). Archaean oceanic lithosphere was highly
chemically depleted, and buoyant subduction was more
common than today (Burke et al. 1976; Hoffman 1990). Plate
tectonics could have operated very efficiently in early Earth
history, the plates moving over an asthenosphere with a greater
heat flux and lower viscosity than now (Nisbet & Fowler 1983).
The relatively light, low-viscosity asthenosphere would have
facilitated easy movement and rapid subduction of the oceanic
plates. Simple models of thick relatively buoyant plates above
a hot (c. 1700 C) upper asthenosphere suggest that the resistive
forces to plate motion may have been considerably less in the
Archean than today, and that the mean age of subducted
oceanic crust would have been around 20 Ma compared with 60
Ma today (Bickle 1986; Nisbet & Fowler 1983). The younger
net age of subducting slabs would favour widespread shallowdipping subduction in the Archean (Abbott & Hoffman 1984)
and the buoyancy problem during subduction could be overcome by delamination of upper oceanic crust (Hoffman &
Ranalli 1988); these relations would be consistent with the
widespread evidence of thin-skinned thrust tectonics (Taira et
al. in press).
However the secular changes in heat production and loss
were able to change the course of development of some igneous
and metamorphic processes at subducting plate boundaries.
(1) There has been a long-term change in the composition of
granitic rocks over Earth history from more sodic to more
potassic (Dewey & Windley 1981), the main cause of which may
have been a change in subduction zone geometry. In Phanerozoic and Proterozoic magmatic arcs high-K magmatism was
derived from dehydration-driven melting of the volatile-fluxed
mantle prism, whereas in the Archaean when subduction zones
were predictably shallower, dehydration melting took place of
the hydrated amphibolites of the downgoing slabs, leading to
more sodic magmas (Arculus & Ruff 1990).
(2) There has probably been a long-term decrease in subduction geotherms (Ellis 1992, and references therein). Newton
(1986) suggested that most Precambrian eclogites equilibrated
at higher temperatures than younger eclogites (Fig. 7). Also
the fact that they equilibrated beyond the stability of glaucophane may explain the absence of early Precambrian glaucophane schists:
Potassic granites of crustal melt origin are rare in the
Archaean, but common in later orogens. This may be related to
the paucity Of Archaean clastic sediments as a result of a
20
B.F.
h'~
WINDLEY
KAAPVAAL CRATON ~
ZIMBABWE CRATON
,,
L..,
<27 G~
Northward Southward ~
thrusting
thrusting
2.7-2.96 Ga -2.7 Ga ',
,..,
..~'.
"~.
J ~ . . . ' "-
0
",/
,,
,
Central zone
~,, ~.
./
40
IN
Low g r a d e
granite-greenstone
terrane
--
',
!
Southern
".
[
--
CRATON
KAAPVAAL
I
IA
CRArON
400 km
i"
," ,"
32oE
.,
60
,- . " :"
80
/\
High g r a d e
continental platform
terrane
.-'.'t.-'..~
1O0
/~"
N
Northern marginal zone
,,
"
120
v-
High g r a d e
granite-greenstone
terrane
e'
",
140 km
"-'-/ '~
,~/"--~"J
Low grade
granite-greenstone
terrane
18S-
_..,."] Northern
~ . . ~ - - m a r 2 i ; al
Sou,horn
ar ina. zone
.'" ," ,"
High g r a d e
granite-greenstone
terrane
ZIMBABWE
,,,..I
Strike ,l,p
post 20 G~
marginal zone
20
a)
LIMPOPO BELT GRANULITES
Strike siip
}
]
predominant intra-oceanic stage of crustal development (de

Wit et al. 1992), compared with later times when more cannibalistic recycling of both crust and sediments took place (Veizer & Jansen 1979). Experimental data show that a high proportion (up to 40%) of S-type granitic liquid can be produced
by melting at about 850 C of pelites (Vielzeuf & Holloway
1988) and greywackes (Patifio Douce & Johnstone 1991). From
the late Archaean/early Proterozoic an increasing number of
continental blocks were available for erosion, and thus more
pelites and greywackes were deposited in accretionary prisms in
trenches. It is speculated here that most crustal melt granites in
Earth history formed in accretionary prisms, many of which
were transported from subduction zones into the deep continental crust (Klemperer 1989) where they underwent adiabatic decompression melting during uplift in extensional
collapse orogens.
Kr6ner (1984) considered that the formation of most Proterozoic orogens did not involve significant oceanic opening or
oceanic subduction tectonics, and instead invoked a model of
orogenesis based on intracontinental A-type continental subduction driven entirely by gravitational instability of lower
crust and upper mantle. This model was adopted by Etheridge
et al. (1987) to account for all the Proterozoic orogens in Australia. However, Ellis (1992) cogently demonstrated that such
Fig, 6. (A) Map showing the position of the Limpopo belt between
the Zimbabwe and Kaapvaal cratons and the south- and
north-dipping thrusts on the north and south sides of the belt
respectively. (B) North-south section across the Limpopo belt (for
line of section see A) based on geological and geoelectric,
magnetic, seismic (refraction and vibroseis reflection) and gravity
data. After de Wit et al. (1992).
a speculative type of orogenesis does not happen. Indeed Myers

(1990) showed that four Proterozoic orogens in Australia do
have the characteristic signatures of modern collisional
orogens. So, as Ellis (1992) pointed out, the explanation for
Australian or other Proterozoic intracontinental orogens that
have no sutures or magmatic arcs is not A-type subduction but
rather the late Cenozoic, post-collisional Tien Shan orogen in
central Asia, which has no suture or arc, and which is 2000 km
from its deformation front, the India/Asia suture zone (Windley et al. 1990).
Uniformitarianism today means that plate tectonics provides a paradigm for understanding the past, but that does not
mean that the present and the past are identical. Many features
of the earliest Precambrian are predictably the result of the
greater heat production at that time. With this thermal caveat it
is possible to say 'It is unlikely that any of the continental
material preserved on Earth today was produced by processes
significantly different from those that operate now' (Burke &
Seng6r 1986). With this Hutton and Lyell would have agreed.
I wish to thank the Geological Society for the invitation to present a

conceptual synthesis of what uniformitarianism means today for the
Earth Sciences. M. Allen made valuable comments on the manuscript.
UNIFORMITARIANISM:
25
20n"
<
Cretaceous-Tertiary
Mesozoic
Eocambrian
'~
Palaeozoic
Proterozoic
.,
..ffS =
15-
03
03
.ee"
omm
(D
O0
13_
"e
10-
5
400
500
600
700
Temperature
(C)
Fig. 7. Calculated P - T equilibration c o n d i t i o n s o f eclogites a n d

transitional eclogites o f different ages, suggesting a possible
decrease in s u b d u c t i o n g e o t h e r m s with time. D a s h e d lines show
core-rim P - T conditions. R e a c t i o n b o u n d a r y o f
g l a u c o p h a n e - q u a r t z to albite-talc f r o m K o o n s (1982). After
N e w t o n (1986) and Ellis (1992).
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-
Extract from the Anniversary address of the President, Sir Charles Lyell, QJGS,6, xxxii.
GENTLEMEN,witis n0W my duty, in accordance with the usual
custom of my predecessors in office, to say something of the scientific
labours of geologists during the past session. It is nearly twenty
years since I announced, in the first edition of my ' Principles of
Geology,' the conviction at which I had then arrived, after devoting
some time to observation in the field, and to the study of the works of
earlier writers, that the existing causes of change in the animate and
inanimate world might be similar, not only in kind, but in degree, to
those which have prevailed during many successive modifications of
the earth's crust. I attempted to adapt the views which Hutton and
Playfair had first promulgated, to a more advanced state of our science,
and to extend their application, by showing, that should the same
causes continue to act with unabated energy, for indefinite periods of
the future, they must bring about revolutions not inferior in magnitude to those recorded in the monuments of past ages. After an interval of twenty years, during which Geology has been enriched by a
vast accession of new facts, and when so many powerful minds, in
every civilized country, have brought their intellectual energies to bear
on the philosophy of our science, I may I think affirm that the idea of
comparing the modem agents of change with those of remote epochs,
as not inferior in power and intensity, appears even to the most sceptical a far less visionary and extravagant hypothesis than when I first
declared my belief in its truth. As, however, tt~ere are not a few original observers, whose opinion I respect, who are still opposed to this
doctrine, I cannot I believe do better on the present occasion than take
a brief view of the bearing of some leading discoveries of modem date
on this much-controverted question. I adopt this course the more
Extract from the Anniversary address of the President, Sir Charles Lyell, QJGS,7, xxxii-xxxiii.
GENTLEMEN,--In my Anniversary Address of last year, I entered
into an examination of the question, how far the leading discoveries
of modem date tend to confirm or invalidate a doctrine which I had
advocated twenty years before, in the first edition of my ' Principles
of Geology,'--that the ancient changes of the animate and inanimate
world, of which we find memorials in the earth's crust, may be
similar both in kind and degree to those which are now in progress.
But in order to keep myself within due bounds, I confined my remarks on that occasion to the revolutions of the inorganic world,
reserving for the present opportunity a comparison of the organic
creation in ancient and modem times, and a consideration of the
light thrown by Pal~eontology on the laws which govern the fluctuations of the living inhabitants of the globe.
Early Precambrian crustal development: changing styles of mafic magmatism

R.
P.
HALL
& D.
J.
HUGHES
Department of Geology, University of Portsmouth, Burnaby Road, Portsmouth P 0 1 3QL, UK

Abstract: The work of Sutton & Watson (1951) was one of the cornerstones in the interpretation of
the evolution of early Precambrian (Archaean and early Proterozoic) gneiss complexes and in the
documentation of mafic dyke swarms that intruded recently accreted Archaean cratons. Since then,
the concept of geological terranes and terrane accretion has been extended back to the Archaean, and
different events can be distinguished by increasingly precise isotopic dating techniques. There is
growing evidence that, with certain clear provisos, the principle of uniformitarianism can be applied as
equally to the early Precambrian as it can through the rest of the geological record. In terms of mafic
magmatism, there are similarities between some ancient and modern suites, both intrusive and
extrusive, but there are also some major differences, such as the presence of komatiites in the
Archaean and the formation of large-scale layered intrusions and extensive dyke swarms at the end of
the late Archaean and in the early Proterozoic. The mantle has evolved continuously with the
progressive extraction of mafic magmas but, allowing for this, continental tholeiites appear to have
changed little with time. Ancient mid-ocean ridge basalts are elusive because of their poor preservation record. The geochemistry of mafic volcanics occurring in many greenstone belts commonly
suggests a continental contamination component and that these volcanic rocks are most closely akin to
those from present-day arc systems. The relative abundance of early Precambrian intrusive mafic
suites parallels the crustal growth curve, reflecting the global crustal accretion-differentiation
superevent towards the close of the Archaean. Bimodal tholeiitic-noritic mafic magmatism associated
with many of these intrusive suites stems from this rapid turnover in the mantle-mafic crustcontinental crust system. This, in turn, gives a possible link between the respective evolutions of
Archaean to Recent komatiitic, noritic and boninitic suites.
One of geologists' most precious tools in deciphering the

geological record is the principle of uniformitarianism--that
the present is the key to the past. However, the reliance on
this principle becomes proportionally weaker with the
increasing age of the rocks under investigation. Clearly, the
earliest formed rocks cannot have developed in precisely the
same way, or at least in response to the same
tectono-magmatic constraints, as those formed most
recently. The Earth's heat production, mantle composition,
tectonic processes and crustal accretion have evolved with
time and so too have the concomitant sedimentary,
metamorphic and magmatic provinces.
Over the past one or two decades, there have been
considerable advances in our understanding of the evolution
of the Earth's crust during the Precambrian. In particular,
our knowledge of major Archaean terranes in, for example,
Greenland, southern Africa and Australia was expanded
very significantly during the late 1960s and early 1970s (e.g.
Viljoen & Viljoen 1969a, b; Anhaeusser 1973; Arriens
1971; McGregor 1973). There have been numerous reviews
since then monitoring the progress in our comprehension of
Archaean tectonics and crustal evolution and the development of Precambrian granite-greenstone terranes (e.g.
Windley 1976; McCall 1977; Condie 1981; Glover & Groves
1981; KrOner 1981; Park & Tarney 1987a; Pharaoh et al.
1987; Hall & Hughes 1990a). It is generally accepted that
the end of the Archaean saw the onset of the development
of supracrustal and intrusive complexes which can be
recognized as having been related to modern-style plate
tectonic processes, and the accretion of Proterozoic tectonic

terranes have been proposed accordingly. By the midProterozoic, geological processes had certainly come to a
state whereby Phanerozoic-type igneous and sedimentary
assemblages were being formed. However, controversy
remains concerning the application of a uniformitarian
approach to the interpretation of Archaean suites (Windley
1993; Rapp 1993).
Some of the earliest and most formative work
unravelling early Precambrian rocks was done in Britain, on
the Lewisian Complex of N W Scotland, and few people
would deny the work of Janet Watson and John Sutton as
being regarded a cornerstone to countless students of
Precambrian geology. Their seminal paper published in the
Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society (Sutton &
Watson 1951) is one of the foundation stones of our
understanding of Precambrian terranes worldwide, and
these authors were still asking questions of Precambrian
complexes (Sutton & Watson 1987) at one of the more
recent conferences on the evolution of the Lewisian and
comparable high-grade tarranes, papers from which were
compiled by Park & Tarney (1987a). Our legacy from the
publications by Sutton and Watson is indeed a considerable
one (e.g. Bowes 1987)
Crustal accretion in the Precambrian

Our understanding of the origin and evolution of large tracts
of what were once referred to as 'undifferentiated gneisses'
25
26
R.P.
HALL & D. J. HUGHES
has, over the past few decades, become quite refined. From
detailed mapping of the various components of the relatively
undeformed parts of gneiss complexes preserved in low
strain zones, and the tracing of these units into more highly
deformed gneissic equivalents, even high-grade 'mobile
belts' can be recognized to have formed from decipherable
and manageable sequences of magmatism, sedimentation,
tectonism and metamorphism. One of the most fundamental
questions in interpreting these sequences is whether or not
equivalents to more recent plate-tectonic related episodes
and products can be identified progressively further back
into the Precambrian record.
Some would argue that modern-style plate tectonics
cannot be postulated earlier than the Archaean-Proterozoic
transition. Proterozoic supracrustal and associated intrusive
suites often bear a close resemblance to sequences
developed in different modern tectono-magmatic provinces.
This is perhaps less often the case in Archaean greenstone
and high-grade belts. The assembly of Archaean volcanosedimentary successions and their apparently inevitable
ultimate demise to produce the almost ubiquitous
syn-tectonic tonalite-trondhjemite-granodiorite suite (Jahn
et al. 1988; Rapp et al. 1991), which forms a major
component of most gneiss terranes, has distinct modern
analogues (e.g. Tarney et al. 1976). However, certain
sediment types (e.g. banded iron-formation) and volcanic
rocks (e.g. komatiites) are far more prominent in the
Archaean. The progressively dubious value of applying
discriminatory geochemical parameters derived from modern volcanic suites to increasingly ancient suites also casts
some doubt on the correlation of Archaean magmatic,
sedimentary and tectonic provinces with those associated
with modern plate tectonics.
The end of the Archaean saw the accretion of extremely
large volumes of continental crust. Classic Archaean
granite-greenstone terranes comprise curvilinear supracrustal belts swamped by dioritic to granitic 'plutons'. The shape
of these belts is variously controlled by unconformable
contacts, intrusive contacts, folding and shear zones. In
other granite-greenstone terranes and higher grade 'mobile
belts', the supracrustal belts are more uniformly linear and
more strongly controlled by ductile shear zones. Isotopic
evidence from some regions supports lithostratigraphic and
structural interpretations that many granitic (s.l.) gneiss
suites are only slightly younger than the relatively thin
supracrustal belts that they envelop. The formation of
mantle-derived basic volcanics and deposition of accompanying sediments was rapidly followed by their subduction
and related metamorphism and by partial melting to give
rise to syn-tectonically emplaced granitoids. This immense
magmatic episode or 'crustal accretion-differentiation
superevent' was commonly accompanied by tectonic crustal
thickening (Moorbath 1977; Moorbath & Taylor 1981).
The oldest rocks of the Lewisian complex of NW
Scotland comprise Scourian (c. 2900Ma) high-grade
gneisses which were variably metamorphosed, some up to
granulite facies, during the deepest Badcallian metamorphism (c. 2660Ma; Pidgeon & Bowes 1972). Soon after,
gneisses from different crustal levels were segmented and
juxtaposed along major retrograde shear zones (Park &
Tarney 1987b). R e f n e d isotopic geochemistry techniques
reveal that, as might be expected, the assembly of Archaean
cratons does not occur as a simple, single event, but that
different components of a craton may differ somewhat in
age, signifying their sequential accretion and long geological

history. Recent Sm-Nd and UoPb isotopic studies have
indicated the possibility of source heterogeneities, and that
the various gneisses from different parts of NW Scotland
represent a diachronous Archaean accretion-differentiation
sequence (Whitehouse 1989, 1990).
Interpretations of the assembly of the somewhat more
extensive portion of the North Atlantic Archaean craton in
SW Greenland have been taken a stage further. Here,
McGregor (1973) demonstrated that the Archaean quartzofeldspathic gneisses could be broadly separated into two
suites, the Amitsoq and Nfik gneisses distinguished by the
presence of abundant amphibolitic relicts of an intervening
mafic dyke swarm (the Ameralik dykes) in the older of the
two. The Amltsoq gneisses are around 3.7 Ga old, and the
Nfik gneisses about 2.9 Ga. Both suites form part of major
accretion-differentiation events (Moorbath & Taylor 1981)
and, at first approximation, possibly represent components
of Wilson-cycle crustal development in that both were
preceded by the deposition of supracrustal volcanicsedimentary associations and followed by the intrusion of
marie dyke swarms. However, it is now clear that the
'younger' Archaean gneisses of this broad region comprise
varied suites ranging from 3.0 to 2.6Ga and, based on
lithostratigraphic, structural, metamorphic and further
detailed isotopic evidence, it has been shown that different
portions of the craton developed at significantly different
times and underwent different tectono-metamorphic events
(Friend et al. 1988; Nutman et al. 1989; and references
therein). The SW Greenland Archaean 'craton' has now
been interpreted to comprise at least five different terranes
assembled during the late Archaean (Friend & Nutman
1994)
Mafic magmatic suites

The importance of understanding in detail not only the
tectonic and metamorphic evolution but also the timing of
emplacement and subsequent paragenetic histories of
quartzo-feldspathic gneiss suites is paramount in interpreting
the way in which they were assembled. However, the honing
of analytical techniques on which these interpretations rest
means that large-scale crustal models rely increasingly on
finer pin-points of information. The ion-microprobe dating
of the cores and the margins of individual zircons can be the
determining factor in the recognition of a 'terrane' (e.g.
Friend & Nutman 1994), although even such highly refined
data as this may also lead only to the question of these
zircons having been derived from yet older rocks.
Compared to granitic intrusives, the style of the mafic
magmatic rocks more readily reflects the environment in
which they formed. Gabbros, pillowed basalts and mafic
dykes commonly retain their distinctive features even in
areas of high deformation and metamorphism. One of the
fundamental questions concerning Precambrian gneiss
terrane accretion models is whether, or to what extent,
modern plate tectonic styles are indicated. In this regard the
character and chemistry of the mafic magmatic rocks (or
their metamorphic equivalents) are clearly very important.
The geochemical comparison of progressively older
magmatic suites with those of different modern tectonic
regimes becomes increasingly tenuous. However, coupled
together with comparisons of different types of Precambrian
suites of the same age and sequentially younger suites, this
E A R L Y P R E C A M B R I A N MAFIC MAGMATISM
gives us some of the only clues as to the similarities and
changes in mafic magmatism with time and, thus, with the
evolution of the Earth's crust. Do styles of mafic magmatism
therefore evolve with time? Is there some logical sequence
of changing mafic chemical characteristics that can be
related to the formation and development of the crust?
In some cases these questions are easily addressed by a
straightforward examination of the stratigraphic relationships of the mafic components and their petrological
characteristics. Marie magmas are derived overwhelmingly
from the mantle and the geochemistry of marie rock suites
thus tells us about the composition of the mantle source, the
degree of partial melting of that source, the composition of
the parental magma and the nature of its evolution by
fractional crystallization, magma replenishment or mixing,
and contamination at high or low crustal levels. These
petrogenetic features have to be deduced paying due regard
to the effects of crystal accumulation, alteration and
metamorphism. It may be argued that even fresh modern
basalts do not exactly correspond to the composition of the
liquid from which they are derived. Analysing metamorphosed Archaean mafic rocks is clearly problematical.
Preservation and characteristics of ArchaeanProterozoic suites

How well do early Precambrian mafic suites represent the
range of mafic rocks actually formed at that time, or do they
better reflect the differential processes of preservation due
to their association with certain tectonic regimes? Two
thirds of the Earth's present-day crust is oceanic and less
than 200 Ma old. Most of this oceanic crust will presumably
no longer exist at the surface in another 200 Ma years time.
Marie volcanic rocks with mid-ocean ridge basalt (MORB)
geochemical characteristics are extremely rare in both
Archaean and Proterozoic metavolcanic sequences, but it is
highly unlikely that early Precambrian assemblages are
genuinely volumetrically representative of the original
distribution of marie volcanic suites, because of selective
preservation (Condie 1990).
Simplistically, the three principle styles of mafic
magmatic suites, lavas, dykes and gabbroic bodies indicate
their depth of formation. This sequence has been logged
recently, for example, in a 2 k m drill hole through the
eastern equatorial Pacific oceanic crust (Dick et al. 1992).
Ophiolitic fragments comprise similar sequences but are
representative mostly of fore-arc or back-arc basin, atypical
oceanic crust, formed over subduction zones and tectonically emplaced into mountain belts. The form of marie
intrusive complexes within continental crust says more about
the rigidity and breakup of that crust, giving rise to either
layered lopolithic, sub-horizontal intrusions or (sub-)vertical
dyke swarms. Because of their intrusive character into
established bouyant crust, these suites are commonly well
preserved. Thus, despite the fact that they are grossly
volumetrically subordinate to oceanic basaltic crust, we have
a far greater abundance of material and data for these
continental suites.
One of the premises that holds true, even in examining
Archaean suites, is that the present is the key to the past
(Windley 1993). Some types of marie magmatism appear to
have changed very little through geological time. Continental tholeiites, for example, are virtually ubiquitous as mafic
dyke swarms in Precambrian cratons throughout the world
27
(Halls & Fahrig 1987; Parker et al. 1990) and the similar
chemistry of young and old continental mafic rocks reflects
simply the similar petrogenetic processes involved in their
formation (e.g. Weaver & Tarney 1983; Tarney 1993). This
shows that not only do these magmas continue to form in
the same way, but that they formed worldwide at certain
broad periods in the geological record. Mafic dykes intruded
into continental crust are a relatively easy case; their
tectonic provenance is seldom in dispute. Comparisons of
their trace element ratios with those used to discriminate
modern basalt types are normally made only to illustrate
and formalize their geochemical characteristics. The reliance
on geochemical discriminant diagrams to determine the
tectonic setting of ancient 'greenstone' belts is perhaps
progressively more tenuous with increasing age, but the
combined evidence of their lithostratigraphy, structural
evolution and geochemical characteristics strongly suggests
that many early Precambrian greenstone belts are analogous
to modern arc-related volcanic belts. However, the
analogies are not absolute. There are some significant
differences between these belts and those forming at the
present day. The relative abundance of komatiites clearly
reflects the higher heat production and mantle temperatures, and increased partial melting giving rise to mantle
plume-related magmatism producing thickened oceanic crust
during the Archaean (O'Nions et al. 1978; White &
McKenzie 1989; Bickle 1990; Campbell & Griffiths 1990).
This does not negate uniformitarianism, it simply means that
there were additional processes and concomitant magma
types in the early Precambrian compared with the present.
Metavolcanic rocks of SW Greenland: Archaean

ophiolites?
Examples of supracrustal suites representing early Precambrian oceanic crust are provided by some of the extensive
Archaean mafic metavolcanic-dominated supracrustal belts
of SW Greenland. Despite their amphibolite facies
metamorphism, this interpretation is clearly indicated by the
stratigraphic and geochemical evidence (e.g. Chadwick
1990; Hall et al. 1990). Metavolcanic rocks in neighbouring
belts, on the other hand, appear to have closer affinities
with island-arc assemblages. These are not dissimilar in
composition to the Ameralik marie dykes which intruded the
. 3.7 Ga Am]tsoq gneisses. These suites may have been
deposited onto a continental marginal gneissic basement
(Chadwick 1981; Nutman & Bridgwater 1983).
Just as Sutton & Watson (1951) recognized in NW
Scotland that the Scourian (c. 2.9-2.7 Ga) and Laxfordian
(c. 1.9 Ga) metamorphic events were separated by a long
gap during which there was a major mafic magmatic
episode--the intrusion of the Scourie mafic dyke swarms-so the early Archaean Am]tsoq gneisses in Greenland were
differentiated from the mid- to late Archaean Nfik gneisses
by the presence of the intervening Ameralik tholeiitic mafic
dykes (McGregor 1973) (various late Archaean gneisses
have since been lithologically and chronologically distinguished from the 'Nfik' gneisses, see Friend et al. 1987, 1988).
However, in SW Greenland the large metavolcanic belts and
Fiskenaesset-type layered gabbro-anorthosite complexes
also fall stratigraphically between the early and mid- to late
Archaean gneisses. Geochemical evidence suggests that it
was probably the subduction and remelting of these types of
marie rocks worldwide, soon after their separation from the
28
R.P.
HALL & D. J. H U G H E S
mantle, that gave rise to the voluminous meta-tonalitic and

trondhjemitic gneisses (Moorbath 1977; Barker 1979;
Martin 1987). The simple question in West Greenland is
whether or not the layered intrusions, the dykes and the
volcanic rocks simply represent plutonic, hypabyssal and
extrusive equivalents derived from the same mafic magmas,
and whether the Ameralik dykes could thus have been
feeders to some at least of the abundant mafic volcanics. If
they were all petrogenetically related, then they should
share common geochemical characteristics, allowing for the
contrasts in crystallization conditions.
The Archaean stratigraphy of West Greenland shows
that, away from the central early Archaean, Arnltsoq
gneisses (the Faeringhavn terrane, Friend et al. 1987; Friend
& Nutman 1991), the various mafic belts clearly represent
the oldest crust. The metavolcanic rocks commonly display
deformed pillow structures and are typically associated with
thick slices of harzburgitic and lherzolitic peridotitic
material, which are here considered to represent tectonically
intercalated, thrusted mantle remnants rather than intrusive
sills (Chadwick 1990). Coarse layering is well preserved
within the Fiskenaesset-type metagabbros and anorthosites
(Myers 1985). The geochemistry of the mafic volcanic rocks
varies from komatiitic to tholeiitic, the closest modern
analogies of the tholeiitic members being MORB-Iike in
character. For example, they have fiat, unfractionated
chondrite-normalized rare-earth element (REE) distribution
patterns, indicative of their primitive nature and of their
having been derived from an undepleted mantle source.
Their petrogenesis was strongly controlled by combined
olivine and clinopyroxene fractionation from a komatiitic
parental magma (Hall et al. 1987). The abundant coarse
plagioclase cumulate gabbros and anorthosites, on the other
hand, reflect the dominance of plagioclase as a controlling
fractionating phase and the relatively aluminous nature of
the parental tholeiitic magma of the layered complexes
(Weaver et al. 1981).
While komatiites to a large extent probably reflect
primitive oceanic crust (Arndt 1983; Nisbet 1987), the
primordial geochemical nature of these Greenlandic mafic
metavolcanic rocks appears, in fact, not to be a common
feature (Cattell & Taylor 1990; Hall & Hughes 1990a).
Although some examples have primary chemical characteristics, many komatiitic-tholeiitic sequences in greenst~ne
belts show evidence of a crustal contamination component,
and the nature of the original magma and mantle source is,
thus, frequently somewhat obscured (Arndt 1986; Arndt et
al. 1986; Jochum et al. 1992).
The relatively high metamorphic grade cannot realistically be held responsible for differences in the geochemistry
between the different mafic units in individual component
Archaean terranes in West Greenland, since these units
have undergone the same metamorphism. Thus, the minor,
though significant geochemical contrasts between the
Malene metavolcanic rocks and Ameralik mafic dykes
within the Arn~tsoq gneisses of the Faeringhavn terrane
cannot be attributed to secondary processes. Although the
compositions of mafic lavas and their feeder dykes can be
slightly different, the higher Mg, Ni, and Cr contents, and
lower Ti, Zr, AI and Fe/Mg in the komatiitic metavolcanic
rocks compared to the Ameralik tholeiitic dykes (Hall et al.
1987) reflect significant geochemical differences between
their respective parental magmas. Only some, if any, of the
Malene-type metavolcanic rocks (McGregor 1973) can have

been fed via the Ameralik dykes through the Arn~tsoq
granitic crust.
The age of the widespread mafic metavolcanicdominated belts is not known, and in many cases cannot be
narrowed to within one or two hundred million years. It is
doubtful whether the belts throughout the Archaean craton
are all of the same age. Nonetheless, their geochemistry and
lithostratigraphy suggest that many of these primitive,
pillow-structured, komatiitic-tholeiitic volcanic belts are
similar in origin, and analagous to oceanic suites. The
structural evidence (Hall & Friend 1979; Friend & Nutman
1991), and the close geochemical similarities between
metavolcanic rocks remote from the older Arn~tsoq
'continental' segment in the centre of the craton, with those
at present intercalated with these gneisses, together suggest
that, the metavolcanic rocks represent oceanic crust,
tectonically juxtaposed with the remnants of the earlier
Archaean continental crustal fragments even within the
heart of the the Archaean craton (Hall et al. 1987).
Many of these belts carry large horizons of coarse
lherzolitic, dunitic and commonly harzburgitic peridotite,
which often show weak relict layering. Some are continuous
for several kilometres and have been used as markers in
defining the structural configuration of the region (e.g. Hall
& Friend 1979; Chadwick 1990). While some of these
ultrabasic lenses may have been intrusive (Chadwick 1990),
most are considered to be mantle residua, their harzburgitic
compositions reflecting the extraction of the voluminous
komatiitic-tholeiitic mafic suites. Their present intercalation
with the metavolcanic rocks probably resulted from oceanic
and subsequent tectonic interleaving (Friend & Hughes
1978; Crewe 1984).
Mafic dykes do occur within some of the metavolcanic
units, although true sheeted dyke swarms have not been
recognized. The overall package of pillow-structured
komatiitic and low-K tholeiitic lavas with mafic dykes,
large-scale layered gabbroic bodies and abundant tectonic
slices of peridotite are considered to constitute the
Archaean equivalent of an ophiolite complex. Because of
their disruption by the voluminous tonalitic, trondhjemitic
and granitic intrusives and subsequent severe deformation,
not all of the belts contain all the ophiolitic components.
However, collectively they constitute a considerable
segment of Archaean oceanic crust and, apparently, are
among the few to preserve so high a proportion of such
material together with depleted oceanic mantle. Perhaps the
most extensive relict oceanic crust represented by a lower
grade, greenstone terrane is in the Belingwe belt of
Zimbabwe (Kusky & Kidd 1992).
The tectonic setting of many komatiite suites remains
uncertain. The Archaean Earth was presumably dominated
by komatiitic oceanic crust (Nisbet 1987). However, many
komatiite-dominated belts show clear geochemical evidence,
for example rare-earth element and isotopic, of a subduction
zone related crustal contamination component (Cattell &
Taylor 1990). High-Mg komatiitic lava would have been
very capable of digesting crustal material (Huppert &
Sparks 1985a, b) and contaminated komatiitic basalts are
commonly encountered (Arndt & Nesbitt 1984; Nisbet 1984;
Arndt & Jenner 1986). Our view of parental komatiitic
magma and its source is, therefore, generally through a
'dirty window' (Arndt 1986), although paradoxically, some
E A R L Y P R E C A M B R I A N MAFIC M A G M A T I S M
komatiites associated with continental crust appear to show
no such contamination (Claou6-Long & Nesbitt 1985; Arndt
et al. 1986).
The question of how confidently the volcanic belts of
Greenland can be correlated chronologically is, of course, a
serious one in terms of establishing a crustal evolution
model. Recent detailed isotopic studies, particularly of Pb
isotopes in single zircons, of various Archaean greenstone
belts in the Superior Province of the Canadian Shield have
shown that what were once regarded as single composite
belts in fact comprise discrete metavolcanic and sedimentary
'panels' which may differ in age by more than 100Ma
(Thurston et al. 1987). These different belts form major
parts of the dominantly E-W-trending tectonic subprovinces (Card & Ciesielski 1986) accreted together in the
mid- to late Archaean (Thurston 1990). Stratigraphic and
geochemical interpretations suggest that individual composite belts, such as those comprising belts in the
Geraldton-Beardmore and Onaman-Tashota terranes in
the Wabigoon sub-province (Williams & Stott 1991) contain
volcanic and sedimentary assemblages indicative of .(i)
shallow platformal, (ii) deep mafic plain, (iii) arc and (iv)
pull-apart basin environments (Thurston 1990). Some of
t h e s e may reflect lateral equivalents formed penecontemporaneously, but there is also isotopic evidence for the
evolution from one type to another with time (Thurston &
Chivers 1990). Thus, while greenstone belts are sometimes
regarded as structural marker horizons, some may
themselves comprise completely different components
(terranes) welded together during subsequent tectonism and
acid intrusive activity associated with the accretion of one
subprovince onto another (Hoffman 1989; Card 1990).
Despite the relatively short time span of crustal
accretion-differentiation super-events, all of the Greenlandic
belts and layered intrusions could not have formed
synchronously. The recognition on structural and metamorphic grounds of the different terranes which make up this
craton (Friend et al. 1988) emphasizes the point that, of
course, the supracrustal belts may have formed in different
environments and at widely different times.
Late Archaean to Early Proterozoic noritic

magmatism
The end of the Archaean is not marked by a common,
contemporaneous event. The boundary between the
Archaean and Proterozoic is normally considered to be
2.5 Ga, but there is no complete uniformity in the nature of
igneous activity at that time. In many parts of the world,
and SW Greenland is no exception, syntectonic tonalitetrondhjemite-granodiorite suite gneisses were derived from
young subducted volcanic and associated intrusive basic
rocks. The final part of the Archaean saw the emplacement
of post-tectonic potassic granites, marking the waning stages
of cratonization. This sequence crudely defines the 'Wilson
cycle'. It did not, of course, happen synchronously
throughout the world. Just as there occurred a diachronous
change in granitic magmatism, so there was a gradual
change in the style of mafic magmatic activity. The birth of
the cratons, and the marked increases in crustal thickening
by the immense mafic to granitic magmatic and associated
tectonic episodes, gave way subsequently to the intrusion of
mafic sills or dykes, as the continents either assembled or
29
rifled (Hatton & Von Gruenewaldt 1990; Parker et al.

1990).
There is an apparent hiatus in oceanic magmatism during
this period of Earth history, from 2.5 to 2.1 Ga (Windley
1984), while the array of major and minor intracratonic
layered marie intrusions and dyke swarms during the same
period is considerable (Halls & Fahrig 1987; Hatton & Von
Gruenewaldt 1990; Parker et al. 1990). Few Archaean
cratons are without early Proterozoic swarms of marie
dykes. This phase of marie magmatism clearly marks the
beginning of a new marie magmatic cycle. The intrusion of
the Great Dyke has, indeed, been used to define the
Archaean-Proterozoie transition in Zimbabwe (Nisbet 1982;
Wilson 1990). Some of the intrusions, and many of the
extensive early Proterozoic dyke swarms, comprise normal
continental tholeiites and have recent analogues (e.g.
Tarney 1993). Others are more complex and their
characteristics are effected by the varying influences of
source composition, lower crustal contamination of the
magma chamber, high-level intrusion contamination, fractionation, crystal accumulation, magma replenishment, and
the mixing of magmas of different compositions.
Intrusion forms fall into three main categories, namely
sub-horizontal sills, sub-vertical dykes, and 'canoe'-shaped
intrusions that have mixed sill and dyke features. These
contrasting forms reflect the different tectonic environments
with which they are associated (e.g. Hatton & Von
Gruenewaldt 1990). The intrusion and mixing of two (or
more) different magmas has been postulated to explain the
formation of contrasting noritie and gabbroie layers within
stratiform intrusions such as the 2.05Ga Bushveld and
2.7Ga Stillwater complexes (Todd et al. 1982; Irvine &
Sharpe 1982; Barnes & Naldrett 1986). Noritic layers are
also encountered in some 'canoe'-shaped intrusions such as
the 2.46Ga Great Dyke of Zimbabwe (Wilson 1982;
Podmore & Wilson 1987), the 2.44 Ga belt of intrusions
between Tornio and Koillismaa in northern Finland (Ga~il
1985; Alapieti & Lahtinen 1986) and the 2.37 Ga Jimberlana
and Binneringie intrusions of Western Australia (McCall &
Peers 1971; McClay & Campbell 1976). The parental
magma compositions of such intrusions are difficult to
decipher, and attention has to be turned to minor satellite
dykes that could represent feeders to, or off-shoots from,
these larger intrusions. That highly variable suites of dykes
and sills are associated with both the Stillwater and
Bushveld complexes (Helz 1985; Sharpe & Hulbert 1985;
Premo et al. 1990), lends support for their heterogeneous
parentage.
Evidence for contemporaneous bimodal marie magmatism comes also from dyke swarms which are not closely
associated with layered intrusions. One of the most clear-cut
examples is given by the various dyke swarms of SW
Greenland, and the probable eastward extension of these
swarms to SE Greenland and the Scourie dykes of NW
Scotland.
Six different sets of dykes have been distinguished in SW
Greenland, based on their geographic distribution, crosscutting relationships, mineralogy and geochemical characteristics (Hall & Hughes 1990b). Three generations of
progressively evolved tholeiitic dolerite dykes (the MD1, 2
& 3 dykes) fan northwards from the southern margin of the
eraton. The oldest ones are chemically primitive and have,
for example, flat, unfractionated chondrite-normalized REE
30
R. P. H A L L & D. J. H U G H E S
distributions and MORB-like incompatible trace element

proportions. The later ones show progressive enrichment in
the incompatible elements and higher and slightly
fractionated R E E distributions (LaN = 15-50; LaN/LUN = 2-4). These traits are fairly typical of continental tholeiites
(Norry & Fitton 1983; Weaver & Tarney 1983). These three
dyke generations appear to represent sequential, progressively evolved batches of the same parental magma.
A younger set of less common plagioclase-phyric dykes
in the southern part of the craton are richer in large ion
lithophile elements (LILE: K, Ba, Rb) and high field
strength elements (Ti, Zr, Nb, P) at a given Mg number and
do not fall on the same petrogenetic trends as the earlier
tholeiitic MD dykes (Hall & Hughes 1990b). They have
characteristically high LaN and LaN/LUN values (up to 150
and 8 respectively), and appear to have been derived from a
separate magma, one possibly more strongly contaminated
by continental crust.
A second, very dense swarm of tholeiitic dolerites (the
Kangamiut dykes) coincides with the Proterozoic (Nagssugtoqidian) mobile belt which marks the northern boundary of
the Archaean craton (Kalsbeek et al. 1978; Zeck &
Kalsbeek 1981). In contrast to the earlier tholeiitic MD
dykes which were intruded into stable continental crust, this
swarm was injected between the two stages of the
Nagssugtoqidian deformation, the late Archaean transcurrent shearing and the early Proterozoic ductile overthrusting, i.e. into a tectonically active zone at the margin of the
craton (Korstg~rd et al. 1987). Despite this major difference
in their tectonic setting, preliminary analysis reveals no
equivalent significant contrast in their respective geochemical characteristics (Hall & Hughes 1990b), although further
work is required to test this more rigorously.
Another set of dykes is also abundant in the north of the
craton, and it fans out southwards away from the
Nagssugtoqidian mobile belt front and parallel to it (Hall &
Hughes 1987). Noritic dykes also occur to the north of the
boundary (Zeck & Kalsbeek 1981), but the northerly extent
of these dykes, into the Nagssugtoqidian belt, is not known.
Some also trend E - W , roughly parallel to the mobile belt.
These dykes (the so-called 'BN' dykes) contrast markedly
with the more normal ophitic and sub-ophitic dolerites in
that they comprise olivine (gabbro)norites in which
forsterite (Fo9o-7o) and weakly zoned bronzite (Eng~6o)
primocrysts are poikilitically enclosed by plagioclase
(An6s_4o) (Hall & Hughes 1987). Rare dykes have preserved
partial quench textures. The geochemistry of the quenched
dykes is not significantly different from that of the coarser
grained ones and the compositions of these noritic dykes is
considered to reflect closely that of their parental magma.
These noritic dykes are geochemically distinctive in that
while they are magnesian (up to 22% MgO), they are also
relatively siliceous and rich in the light rare-earth and LIL
elements, compared to the tholeiitic MD dolerites (Fig. 1).
The immediate question regarding the petrogenesis of these
noritic dykes is whether they could have been related to the
tholeiitic ones by varying degrees of partial melting,
fractional crystallization or crystal accumulation within the
same parental magma, or perhaps the contamination of a
MD-type tholeiitic liquid.
None of these models appears to be tenable; the noritic
BN and tholeiitic MD dykes were derived from different
mafic magmas. While increased partial melting would
produce the higher Mg, Cr and Ni and lower Zr and Ti
i-::.:.:.::%"i!:.
Rb Ba
Nb La Ce Sr Nd
P Z r S m Eu Ti
Y Yb
Fig. 1. MORB-normalized multi-element diagram ('spidergram')
showing the geochemical range of the BN noritic dykes of SW

Greenland (stippled field) compared to an early MD tholeiitic
dolerite dyke from the same region (filled circles), a contaminated
komatiite (asterisks; MgO = 15.6%; anal. 3 of Arndt & Jenner
1986), and estimated bulk crust (C; Taylor & McLennan 1985).
Diagram adapted from Hall & Hughes (1990c).
contents of the noritic BN dykes, it could not at the same

time account for their relatively high Rb, Ba, K, and La
contents. Equally, neither the accumulation within a
tholeiitic magma of the norite dyke primocryst phases,
magnesian olivine and orthopyroxene, nor the separation of
these phases from a BN dyke-type liquid could have given
rise to a tholeiitic liquid with the composition represented
by that of the MD dykes (Fig. 1). To produce the
characteristically high LILE and L R E E geochemistry of the
noritic dykes, a high-level upper crustal contamination
component would have had either to enrich a tholeiitic
basaltic magma also in elements such as Mg, Cr and Ni or,
more reasonably, to have contaminated a magma originally
even more rich in these elements, and to have reduced their
levels by a factor of at least 2. As many of the norite dyke
have MgO values of c. 16 wt %, and Cr and Ni contents of
2000 and 1000 ppm respectively, this model would require
their parental magma to have been ultrabasic (Liang &
Elthon 1990). There would seem to be no justification
whatever for this hypothesis (Hall & Hughes 1987). The
conclusion is that the BN noritic dykes represent a
considerable volume of mafic magma whose composition
was very similar to that of the dykes themselves; magnesian,
siliceous and rich in LIL and light rare-earth elements.
These SW Greenlandic noritic dyke are by no means
unique. A few similar ones outcrop in SE Greenland. In the
central part of the Ammassalik Proterozoic mobile belt they
trend E - W (Hall et al. 1989), and to the south of it rare
norite dykes trend SE (Walton 1987). Norites and picrites
E A R L Y P R E C A M B R I A N MAFIC M A G M A T I S M
GP
Fig. 2. Schematic map showing the distribution of noritic dykes

possibly fanning from the north of the North Atlantic craton in SW
Greenland, through SE Greenland to NW Scotland. Exactly how
the Nagssugtoqidian mobile belt (NMB), the Amassalik mobile belt
(AMB), and the Archaean cratons to the north and south of the
AMB correlate with the Lewisian of NW Scotland is not certain.
Also shown are Ketilidian mobile belt (KMB) to the south of the
Archaean craton; the Churchill province (ChP) and Nain province
(NP) of Labrador, and the Grenville province (GP) and Superior
craton (SC). Adapted from Korstg~rd et al. (1987) and Hall et al.
(1990).
also constitute a part of the Scourie dykes of NW Scotland
(Tarney & Weaver 1987). The noritic BN swarm of SW
Greenland thus appears to extend 500km southwards,
normal to the Nagssugtoqidian mobile belt front and curving
from NNE to N - S and NNW trending roughly parallel to
the coast, and to E - W - and SE-trending dykes in SE
Greenland and NW Scotland, normal to the coast and
roughly parallel to the Proterozoic mobile belt deformation
(Fig. 2). No coast-parallel noritic dykes have as yet been
reported from the Nain Province of Labrador, the N - S
boundary of the Churchill Province having been postulated
as the continuation of the Nagssugtoqidian belt (Korstg~rd et
al. 1987). It is perhaps significant that these noritic dykes
appear to fan from the northern 'nose' of the Archaean
craton in SW Greenland, but it is still not proven whether
these bounding major shear zones are all part of the same
single, composite mobile belt (Chadwick et al. 1989; Hall et
al. 1990).
Similar noritic dykes and sills also occur in several other
parts of the world. Those associated with the Bushveld and
Stillwater complexes have already been mentioned, and
these too share the decoupled geochemical characteristics,
the high Mg, Cr, and Ni in association with high LILE and
LREE, displayed by the dykes of the North Atlantic craton.
They are also to be found in the Laramie and Bighorn
mountains and Hartville uplift of the Wyoming craton
(Snyder et al. 1990; Hall & Hughes 1990c), Western and
South Australia (Hallberg 1986; Fletcher et al. 1987;
Mortimer et al. 1988), South America (Sial et al. 1987) and
Antarctica (Sheraton et al. 1987; Kuehner 1989). The dykes
from these different cratons are, of course, not identical but
their distinctive compositions do show considerable
similarities (Fig. 3).
31
The occurrence of all of these magnesian noritic intrusive

suites at the end of the Archaean and into the early
Proterozoic is not coincidental. Komatiites represent a
characteristic oceanic mafic magma type predominantly of
the Archaean (Arndt & Nisbet 1982; Nesbitt et al. 1982),
reflecting the relatively high heat flow and mantle plume
activity during the early stages of crust formation. Mesozoic
komatiites such as those of Gorgona (Aitken & Echeverria
1984) and the vast increase in oceanic crust formation and
its obduction equally reflect an immense episode of fertile
mantle plume-generated mafic magmatism at this time
(White & McKenzie 1989; Larsen 1991; Brooks et al. 1991;
Storey et al. 1991; Tarney 1993). The norites must represent
either the continuation and the waning stages of this
Archaean komatiitic magmatism, or the start of a new style
of high-Mg magmatism (Fig. 4). The environments in which
the intrusive norite dykes, sills and lopoliths are preserved
are clearly very different to those in which komatiitic lavas
formed. It has already been argued that the crustal
contamination of a komatiitic liquid would not produce the
compositions of the norites (Figs 1 and 3). Contaminated
komatiites and siliceous high-Mg basalts are slightly less
strongly LILE-enriched and have less steeply fractionated
REE distributions (Arndt & Jenner 1986; Barnes 1989; Hall
& Hughes 1990c). Our contention is that it was the
sub-continental lithospheric mantle, previously depleted
from the production of immense volumes of Archaean mafic
komatiitic-tholeiitic volcanic suites, that was contaminated
and replenished by hydrous partial melts from subducted
crust at the end of the Archaean and during early
Proterozoic tectonism, and which partially melted to give
rise to these noritic intrusions (cf. Weaver & Tarney 1981;
Hatton & Von Gruenewaldt 1990). In this respect, there is
an analogy between the formation of these magnesian,
siliceous, LILE- and LREE-rich mafic magmas, and those
which form boninitic suites more recently (Crawford 1989).
A most significant feature of the various mafic-ultramafic
suites of that part of the North Atlantic Precambrian craton
of SW Greenland is that the Archaean komatiites, the
residual depleted harzburgites, and the subsequent early
Proterozoic norites are all present.
Crustal evolution and changing mafic magmatism

There is an apparent anomaly in the nature of mafic
magmatic assemblages formed during the Archaean and
early Proterozoic. There are no obvious extrusive
equivalents to the late Archaean-early Proterozoic noritic
intrusions, and no common intrusive equivalents to
Archaean komatiites. Perhaps this simply signifies a very
considerable change in mafic magmatic styles during this
Archaean-Proterozoic transition (Fig. 4b). There is also no
agreement about the timing of maximum continental crustal
growth (Taylor & McLennan 1985). There is, however,
abundant geological and isotope geochemical evidence for
considerable crustal accretion towards the end of the
Archaean, and the growth and stabilization of cratons at this
time and, therefore, perhaps the most geologically
reasonable crustal growth model should reflect this (Fig. 4;
McLennan & Taylor 1982; Veizer & Jansen 1979), taking
into cognizance several indirect lines of evidence for the
existence of much older crust (e.g. Compston et al. 1986;
Edwards & Nisbet 1986; Harper & Jacobsen 1992).
There are subtle changes in the geochemistry of
32
R.P.
H A L L & D. J. H U G H E S
0.5
1
0.5
Rb
Ba
Nb
La
Ce
Sr
Nd
Zr
Sm
Eu
Ti
Yb
0.t
Rb
Ba
Nb
La
Ce
Sr
Nd
metabasaltic suites from the early Archaean to the late

Proterozoic (Condie 1989, 1990), reflecting in part the
contribution played by changing tectonic conditions under
which these belts formed and were preserved, the evolution
of the mantle from which they were derived (Bickle 1990;
McKenzie & Bickle 1988) and the Earth's evolving thermal
gradient and heat loss (O'Nions et al. 1978; Bickle 1986).
The poor preservation record of oceanic crust, both old and
young, is clear. The change in chemistry and style of
formation from komatiitic to noritic magmatism seems to
represent something even more fundamental than a simple
temporal modification and evolution of the chemical
characteristics of the same type of mafic magmatism with
time. It signifies a major link between changing crustal
states, from Archaean unstable mafic-dominated crust prone
to rapid recycling, to "early Proterozoic stable continental
crust, subject to collision or rifting. It was probably due to
the significant thickening of the crust at this time that there
was melting of the sub-continental lithosphere, which
produced the abundant noritic intrusions that a thickened
crust could also now support.
The supercontinents were being assembled at this time.
In the case of the formation of layered intrusions (Hatton &
Von Gruenewaldt 1990), marginal sediments were subducted and contaminated the the underlying lithosphere,
and further subduction of the ocean basin could have led to
eventual upwelling of the asthenosphere (Damon 1983),
resulting in the melting of the overlying, newly contamin-
Z r Sm
Eu
Ti
Yb
Fig. 3. MORB-normalized multielement diagrams for norite dykes and

sills from: (a) average of 9 sills
associated with the Bushveld complex;
(b) NW Scotland; () South Australia;
(d) Antarctica; (e), (f) and (g)
Beartooth, Bighorn and Laramie mountains, Wyoming craton, USA (open
symbols represent tholeiitic dolerites
with less fractionated element distribution patterns. Data from references
quoted in the text; diagram reproduced
from Hall & Hughes (1990c).
ated sub-continental lithosphere. The rifting of the newly

formed continents gave rise to abundant dyke swarms
worldwide. During this rifting, the ascending asthenosphere
would equally have caused the melting of the sedimentcontaminated sub-continental lithosphere. It is the intrusion
form which perhaps signifies the overall tectonic environment in which these boninite-like magmas intruded. In this
scenario, norites more closely form part of a lineage with
boninitic suites than they do with komatiites (Fig. 4).
Since the seminal work of Sutton & Watson (1951), we
continue to learn a great deal about the accretion of the
Precambrian cratons, in terms of their structural assembly
and their magmatic make-up and evolution. It is now
recognized that cratons comprise discrete components with
different geological histories, juxtaposed by tectonism. In
this respect, they are analagous to composite terranes. The
major crustal accretion event, involving magmatic and
tectonic thickening towards the end of the Archaean saw the
end of significant komatiitic production, and subsequently
the birth of a new style of magnesian but relatively siliceous
magmatism which formed extensive noritic sills and dyke
swarms. Despite the continuance of some magmatic styles
from the early Precambrian to the present day, the onset of
noritic magmatism is another feature which helps define a
petrogenetic break between the Archaean and the
Proterozoic. It reflects and results from the crustal
thickening event, and marks the beginning of the genesis of
boninitic suites.
EARLY
~.\.\
--
\\ ,
(a)
"\ "~
\ ~
/ .."
"~X\
."
\.
..
PRECAMBRIAN
" ..'" ..... . . ' ' " . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
'
'9'
"
Sasalts
~
~
75
*s
~.
50
'o%.NXX',. ..:: ~
"%;~NNx".x"
-n
-o
o
25
..,..'""
r-
~o
03
-~
51
~.\
4
(b)
~\
,<I
-\
. ...................
.
",.
\
........
4
Basalts
75
..." ~,~
.."
..~
%'e. ~
~'.
;....
""
"
/
3
./
50
~orites
~ - "
25
"~ ..~
Bonin tes
"~-
........
1
Age (Ga)
Fig. 4. Schematic rates of production of basalts, komatiites, norites
and boninites with respect to age, continental growth (dotted; from
Veizer & Janson 1979; M c L e n n a n & Taylor 1982) and global heat
production ( d a s h - d o t line; from O'Nions et al. 1978). Model (a)
suggests that norites are a continuation of komatiitic magmatism,
while in the preferred model (b) komatiitic magmatism dies out
towards the end of the Archa~,aa, and noritic magmatism
commences and is preserved as a consequence of crustal thickening
at the end of the Archaean and into the early Proterozoic.
Reproduced from Hall & Hughes (1990c) by kind permission of
Chapman & Hall.
We wish to thank J. Tarney and an anonymous reviewer for their

helpful comments on the original manuscript.
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-
Received 26 February 1993; revised typescript accepted 12 March 1993.
Addendum
Additional references
C o n s i d e r a b l e c o n t r o v e r s y still s u r r o u n d s the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of K u s k y
& K i d d (1992) that the Belingwe g r e e n s t o n e belt of Z i m b a b w e
comprises a mafic o c e a n i c c o m p o n e n t tectonically j u x t a p o s e d with
an ensialic s e q u e n c e ( B l e n k i n s o p p et al. 1993). T h e r e c o g n i t i o n o f
A r c h a e a n oceanic crust thus r e m a i n s e v e n m o r e elusive t h a n is
c o n c l u d e d in this r e v i e w (e.g. Bickle et al. 1994).
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Belingwe greenstone belt, Zimbabwe. Geology, 21, 1135-1138.
Added April 1994.
From QJGS, "10&, 241-242.

THE
PRE-TORRIDONIAN
METAMORPHIC
LOCH TORRIDON
AND SCOURIE
AREAS
HIGHLANDS,
AND
ITS BEARING
ON
CLASSIFICATION
OF THE LEWISIAN
BY
JOB-N S U T T O N ~
PH.D., F.G.S., A N D
HISTORY
OF THE
IN THE NORTH-WEST
THE
CHRONOLOGICAL
JANET
WATSON,
PH.D., F.G.S.
Read 1 February, 1950

[PLATES X V I I - X X ]
CONTENTS
Page
Introduction and previous work ................................................ 241
P A R T l.--The area around Loch Torridon, Ross-shire (J. S.)
......... 243
I. The complex produced in the first metamorphism ............... 243
II. The dolerite dykes
......................................................251
III. The complex produced in the second metamorphism ............ 254
IV. S u m m a r y and conclusions .............................................262
P A R T 2 . - - T h e a r e a a r o u n d Scourie, S u t h e r l a n d (J. W.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
263
][. The Seourian c o m p l e x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
264
I I . The dolerite d y k e s
......................................................
273
I I I . The L a x f o r d i a n complex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
276
P A R T 3 . - - S u m m a r y a n d conclusions (J. S. and J. W.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
291
List of works referred to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
295
SUMMARY
The p a p e r describes the m e t a m o r p h i c h i s t o r y of two areas of Lewisian gneiss in
the N o r t h - W e s t H i g h l a n d s of Scotland. M e t a m o r p h o s e d s e d i m e n t a r y rocks are
described for the first time from the Loch Torridon area. I t is shown t h a t b o t h in
the L o e h Torridon a n d t h e Scourie districts the gneisses have been p r o d u c e d in two
s e p a r a t e periods o f m e t a m o r p h i s m , m i g m a t i z a t i o n and deformation. These two
m e t a m o r p h i c episodes, which are named the Scourian and L a x f o r d i a n episodes, are
s e p a r a t e d in time b y a period of uplift and tension during which a series of uniform
dolerite d y k e s was i n t r u d e d . Since a v e r y g r e a t interval of time appears to have
elapsed b e t w e e n the two m e t a m o r p h i c episodes, it is suggested t h a t the rocks
p r o d u c e d during these episodes should be regarded as members, n o t of a single
f o r m a t i o n as heretofore, b u t of two distinct chronological units.
INTRODUCTION AND PREVIOUS W O R K
In the Northern Highlands of Scotland, between the Moine Thrust and

the west coast, lies an area of crystalline Archaean or Lewisian rocks
unconformably covered by unmetamorphosed Torridonian and Cambrian
strata. The Archaean rocks consist mostly of banded gneisses varying in
composition from ultrabasic to very acid types.
During the course of work carried out in the regions of Loch Torridon
in Ross-shire and Scourie in Sutherland, the writers reached certain
general conclusions as to the nature and mutual relations of the Lewisian
rocks. Confirmatory evidence was sought in the region of Gruinard Bay,
arid the results of the whole investigation are given in the present paper.
The two areas studied in detail are described first, while in the final
section the results obtained are correlated and the conclusions reached
are extended to cover much of the Lewisian of the mainland north of
Loch Torridon.
It has long been realized that the Lewisian complex, as it stands, is the
product of a prolonged series of events in which sedimentation, metamorphism and intrusion have all played a part. In 1907 Teall wrote:
" the Lewisian gneiss is not a geological formation in the ordinary sense
of the word. Even if we exclude from it the later dykes and sills, there
still remains a petrographical complex which future research will probably
separate into its component parts."
Unravelling dates through the ages: geochronology of the Scottish

metamorphic complexes
G.
ROGERS
1 & R.J.
PANKHURST
l lsotope Geology Unit, Scottish Universities Research and Reactor Centre, East Kilbride, Glasgow G75 OQU, UK
2British Antarctic Survey, c/o N E R C Isotope Geosciences Laboratory, Kingsley Dunham Centre, Keyworth,
Nottingham N G 1 2 5GG, UK
Abstract: The paper by Giletti et al. (1961) is seen as a major landmark in the evolution of dating
techniques in polymetamorphic terrains. We consider certain critical issues from each of the main
complexes of the Scottish Highlands studied by Giletti et al. to illustrate how subsequent developments in geochronological methodology have influenced our understanding of metamorphic belts.
Lewisian examples focus on the formation of Archaean crust, and the age of the main high-grade
metamorphism and the Scourie dyke swarm. The antiquity of Moinian sedimentation, its relationship
to the Torridonian sandstones, and the timing of Precambrian metamorphism have been controversial
issues. The timing and nature of Caledonian orogenesis, most clearly expressed in the Dalradian
complex, have been the focal points for the refinement of radiometric investigation. These complexes
have been subject to successive developments in methodology, with ever-tighter constraints from
Rb-Sr and K-Ar mineral dating, through Rb-Sr and Pb-Pb whole-rock studies, U-Pb dating of bulk
zircon fractions, and Sm-Nd whole-rock and mineral investigation, up to the latest technologies of
single-grain zircon and ion microprobe analysis. The rocks have released their secrets reluctantly, and
many of the questions posed in 1961 have still not been definitively answered. However, the hope of
unambiguous solution leads towards greater efforts, ever more reliable data, and a clearer evolutionary picture.
Rb-Sr data and conclusions that, in general terms, have

proved correct. The initial impact on the geological
community may be judged by the six pages of written
discussion following the paper. More importantly, they set
the goals and standards for future work. Only the most
enlightened of observers can have foreseen the growth of
the subject that has followed during the past 30 years, and
the degree to which modern geological theories now hinge
on a reliable geochronological background (or, occasionally,
its absence!).
This paper was so influential in both establishing the
geochronological groundwork, and dictating the course of
subsequent research, that it is all too easy to forget the
relatively primitive technical facilities of the early days. This
is especially true of the mass-spectrometry where the
subsequent advent of digital measurement (instead of the
use of chart-recorders for measuring isotope ratios) was
accompanied by better methodology: Giletti et al. made
empirical corrections for electron-multiplier discrimination,
but not for mass fractionation during ionization,, and were
restricted to Rb-enriched micas for dating, mostly without
control of the initial 875r/86Sr ratio. They were content to
obtain errors of + 5 % on calculated ages, whereas today
errors of +0.5% are possible even on whole-rock isochrons
(with statistical tests for significance), and U-Pb zircon ages
are often quoted to c. 2-3 Ma over the whole geological
time-scale. Nevertheless, they demonstrated the need for
sound practices such as routine measurement of chemical
blanks and inter-laboratory standards. Even after many of
these advances, the geological application of Rb-Sr
The value of radioactive decay as a principle in determining

geological time was recognized almost as soon as
radioactivity was discovered: a brief summary of this
fascinating history is given by Faure (1986), who points out
that Rutherford, about 1905, was the first to make
meaningful measurement of mineral ages (using the U-He
method). Naturally it took further discoveries and much
work before theory and techniques (the work of Nier in the
development of mass-spectrometers was particularly critical
(e.g. Nier 1940)) were developed to the point where
geochronology could be investigated in a practical way.
This occurred during the 1950s, when laboratories were set
up world-wide and the first data were produced, mostly
using K-Ar and Rb-Sr mineral methods. Thus, by 1960, the
foundations of modern radiogenic geochronology had been
laid, although theory was some way ahead of analytical
capability.
The landmark represented by the publication of Giletti,
Moorbath & Lambert (1961) was that of a regional
geochronological study, based upon well-constrained field
relationships--the first in Britain and among the first
anywhere. The metamorphic rocks of the Scottish Highlands
had always been of great importance in the development of
geological interpretation of both Archaean gneiss terrains
and orogenic mobile belts, at times generating heated
controversy. The lack of stratigraphical control, and the
wide span of geological history represented in a relatively
small area, made this a prime target for testing methods that
could provide an absolute time frame. This was addressed
by Giletti et al. (1961) with a significant body of reliable
37
38
G. ROGERS & R. J. P A N K H U R S T
geochronology was hampered by uncertainty over the

half-life of 87Rb (not resolved until the work of Davis et al.
1977 and the subcommission report of Steiger & J~iger
1977), and poorly constrained calibration of the stratigraphical time-scale (that of Holmes 1960 being the most recent
available to Giletti et al.). All the progress made in these
aspects of analysis was stimulated by the demonstration, in
studies such as that of Giletti et al., that radiometric
geochronology indeed had the potential to solve geological
problems.
Our objective in this paper is to use the progress that has
been made in our understanding of the Scottish Highlands
since the pioneering work of Giletti et al. (1961) as a means
of illustrating the evolution of methods of dating
metamorphic events in general. This evolving research has
seen publications which themselves have been amongst the
first of their kind and represent landmark papers in their
own right (e.g. Long 1964; Moorbath et al. 1969; Dewey &
Pankhurst 1970; Pidgeon & Aftalion 1978; Hamilton et al.
1979). We do not intend to provide a comprehensive review
of all the geochronological data or the geology; thorough
and regularly up-dated reviews of Scottish geology have
been provided by Craig (1965, 1983, 1991)--the first of
these already showing the impact of Giletti et al.'s work.
Instead we highlight certain critical issues where the use of
new analytical techniques has helped to elucidate the
complexities of polymetamorphic terrains and crustal
development in orogenic belts (or, in some cases, to present
the challenge of a more confusing story!). All ages referred
to in this paper have been recalculated using the decay
constants recommended by Steiger & J/iger (1977); we have
retained the error estimates quoted by the original authors
in all cases.
Lewisian
Following the basic chronological subdivision of the
Lewisian complex by Peach et al. (1907) the classic paper of
Sutton & Watson (1951) placed Lewisian evolution in an
orogenic context, defining the following episodes. (1)
Scourian: consisting of granulite facies gneisses and late
granitic pegmatites. (2) Intrusion of a suite of basic
dykes--the Scourie dyke suite. (3) Laxfordian: reconstitution of the Scourian gneisses and dykes, mainly to the north
of Laxford Bridge (the northern region) and south of
Gruinard Bay, under amphibolite facies conditions; granite
emplacement. Although a relative chronology had been
erected there was no information regarding the absolute
ages of the orogenic events, and hence it was impossible to
assess the rates of geological processes or the genetic links
between them.
One of the major achievements of the paper by Giletti et
al. was to place firm constraints on the timings of the main
Scourian and Laxfordian events. They used Rb-Sr dating of
muscovites and K-feldspars from late Scourian pegmatites to
assess the age of the Scourian complex, as these
geochronological systems were considered to be more robust
than K-Ar ages or Rb-Sr biotite ages, observations later
encapsulated in the concept of blocking/closure temperatures (e.g. Macintyre et al. 1967; Dodson 1973). The oldest
K-feldspar age obtained was 2460Ma (mean of three
determinations) with others ranging down to 2140Ma.
Biotite dates varied from 2090 to 1480 Ma, in each case
giving a younger age than coexisting K-feldspar. Rb-Sr
K-feldspar and muscovite ages from a Laxfordian pegmatite

were 1600 (mean) and 1500 Ma respectively, with mean
biotite ages from other pegmatites giving 1160-1510Ma.
Giletti et al. concluded that the main Laxfordian
metamorphism occurred between 1500 and 1600 Ma with
the spread to lower ages reflecting mild reheating later than
1100 Ma. The Scourian complex was considered to be older
than 2460 Ma with the lower Scourian pegmatite ages being
due to variable resetting during the Laxfordian. Giletti et al.
therefore established that there was c. 800 Ma between the
two metamorphic events then recognized within the
Lewisian complex.
The subsequent history of geochronology in the Lewisian
has been directed in the main at trying to establish the ages
of: (1) the protoliths to the Scourian and Laxfordian
complexes, (2) the granulite and amphibolite facies
metamorphic events, (3) the intrusion of the Scourie dyke
suite, (4) any regional variations in these events. The
following sections will discuss certain aspects of these
problems in the light of evolving geochronological
techniques and methodology. Detailed reviews of the
chronology of the Lewisian have been presented by Park
(1970), Bowes (1978) and Park & Tarney (1987).
Protolith formation and Badcallian metamorphism
Following Giletti et al.'s study, Evans conducted an

extensive K-Ar investigation in the Lochinver area and,
using hornblende data from ultrabasic gneisses, concluded
that the Scourian granulite facies metamorphism (termed
'Badcallian' by Park 1970) occurred prior to 2600 Ma (Evans
1965). He also identified an amphibolite facies event which
took place penecontemporaneously with the intrusion of the
Scourie dykes, which he called the Inverian (see later). A
major advance was made by Moorbath et al. (1969) who
showed that acid and basic gneisses from the Scourian and
Laxfordian complexes gave a single Pb-Pb whole-rock
isochron age of 2860 + 100 Ma (Fig. 1), interpreted as the
time of major U-depletion during the granulite and
amphibolite facies metamorphism. The data also showed
that both the gneiss complexes had been in existence c.
2900Ma ago, and therefore that evolutionary models
proposing that the gneisses of the Laxfordian complex were
formed of completely reworked Scourian rocks (e.g. Sutton
& Watson 1951; Bowes 1968; Holland & Lambert 1973)
were untenable. Moorbath et al. favoured an interpretation
in which the precursors to the gneisses had separated from
the mantle shortly before 2900 Ma, and consequently that
crustal extraction and metamorphism were part of one
'superevent'. Such ideas led, through further work in
Greenland, to the 'Crustal Accretion Differentiation
Superevent' model of crustal growth (Moorbath 1977).
Evidence for a younger age of Badcallian metamorphism
was provided by a series of U-Pb zircon studies, and
subsequently by Rb-Sr and Pb-Pb whole-rock investigations.
Pidgeon & Bowes (1972) obtained zircon ages of 2663 + 20
and 2648 + 20 Ma for granulite facies gneisses from Kylesku
and Badcall, which they interpreted as dating the Badcallian
granulite facies metamorphism. A zircon age of 2675
20Ma from Rona (Lyon et al. 1973) indicated the
widespread nature of this event, although in this case the
metamorphic grade only reached amphibolite facies. A
zircon upper intercept age of 2 7 0 2 1 0 M a from an
amphibolite gneiss from Harris (Pidgeon & Aftalion 1972)
U N R A V E L L I N G DATES
16.0[-
207pb
/ 204pb
15-51/
Fig. 1. Pb-Pb whole-rock isochron for

granulite and amphibolite facies gneisses
from the Lewisian complex showing that
both types of gneisses were in existence
2900 Ma ago. (Figure reproduced from
Moorbath et al. 1969 with permission
from Elsevier Science Publishers BV and
S. Moorbath).
39
for 11=8"68
,4.5[!
0 M.Y.
1500
" - ~
2 0 0 0 ~
3000
500
1000
Primary Growth Curve
2o6 Pb
2O4p b I~
14'0135001-/ /
12-0
12"5
13-0
was considered to reflect the timing of Scourian granulite

facies metamorphism, with the lower intercept age of
1625 + 60 Ma representing isotopic disturbance during
Laxfordian retrogressive metamorphism. The presence of
euhedral cores in some grains suggested an even older
zircon component, possibly related to igneous crystallization, although Pidgeon & Aftalion (1972) argued that, if
this were the case, the time interval between crystallization
and the early metamorphism was short. However, as the
only granulite facies assemblages on Harris occur in the
South Harris igneous complex and are Laxfordian in age
(Cliff et al. 1983), it is possible that the 2700 Ma age may not
be dating a granulite facies event, but rather either igneous
crystallization or an early amphibolite facies event. Lyon &
Bowes (1977) reported a zircon age of 2826 + 50 Ma from an
amphibolite facies gneiss from the Laxfordian complex near
Durness, and, whereas the date again indicated an
Archaean age for the Laxfordian gneiss complex, the poorer
precision hindered detailed interpretation. Rb-Sr wholerock ages of 2633 + 120 to 2731 + 210 Ma (Lyon et al. 1973,
1975; Moorbath et al. 1975), determined from various areas,
and a Pb-Pb whole-rock age of 2665 + 26 Ma on samples
from a small area near Scourie (Cohen et al. 1991) were
again interpreted as dating widespread Rb and U depletion
during Badcallian metamorphism. A Pb-Pb whole-rock age
of 2680 + 60 Ma was reported by Chapman & Moorbath
(1977) on rocks considered on structural grounds to
represent the oldest components of the Lewisian; the data
did not support a substantial crustal prehistory for these
rocks.
Recent work by Whitehouse has raised important
questions over the interpretation of Pb-Pb whole-rock ages
from metamorphic terrains, and whether they have any
geological significance. On the basis of assumed peak
Scourian metamorphism at c. 2680 Ma a Pb-Pb whole-rock
age of 2950 + 70 Ma from the amphibolite facies gneisses
north of Laxford Bridge was interpreted as seeing through
the effects of the metamorphism to give the date of crustal
accretion (Whitehouse & Moorbath 1986). In the light of his
other Pb-Pb whole-rock ages (Whitehouse 1989a, 1990) he
argued that interpretation of Pb-Pb whole-rock ages from
amphibolite facies and lower grade suites must be treated
with caution due to the effects of incomplete homogenization of Pb isotopes during metamorphism. Consequently the
'age' of 2950 Ma (Whitehouse & Moorbath 1986), although
well-constrained by a low MSWD, was considered spurious.
Whitehouse further argued that the only 'reliable' data
could be generated from pyroxene-granulite facies assemblages. However, in granulite terrains where the
reduction in U / P b ratios has been severe (such as in the
13"5
14-0
14"5
15"0
15-5
16.0
16.5
17-0
17-5
I
18-0
1
18-5
J
19-0
Lewisian), the Pb-Pb ages would have poor precision owing

to the reduction and homogenization of U / P b ratios during
the metamorphism.
Whereas the Rb-Sr, Pb-Pb and U-Pb work had given
ages that were thought to date the Badcallian metamorphism, the advent of Sm-Nd dating in the late 1970s, coupled
with the observation that Sm/Nd does not change during
metamorphism (Green et al. 1969), led Hamilton et al.
(1979) to study the Lewisian complex using Sm-Nd on whole
rocks in an attempt to determine the time of separation of
the gneissic precursors from the mantle. Using samples from
both granulite and amphibolite facies areas they obtained an
age of 2920 + 50 Ma (Fig. 2) which was interpreted as dating
the crustal generation of the complex. As this study used
such widely separated samples and different rock types,
Whitehouse (1988) analysed tonalitic gneisses from the
central region and obtained a Sm-Nd whole-rock age of
i
2600 + 155 Ma (MSWD = 5.7) with an end
of -- 2.4 + 1.9.
Sm-Nd whole-rock isochrons from ultramafic intrusions at
Drumbeg, Achiltibuie and Scourie gave ages of 2910 + 55,
2810 + 95 and 2670 + 110 Ma (MSWD's = 0.2 - 5.0), which,
i
coupled with their end
values of between + 1 + 0.7 and
+ 1 . 9 + 0 . 5 (Whitehouse 1989b), were interpreted as
indicating the dates of crystallization from mantle-derived
I
0.5135
0-5130
Z
0-5125
~0.5120
Z
0.5115
0.5110
/
0"5105
o7
0"10
I
0"15
147Sm/144
I
0-20
0"25
Nd
Fig. 2. Sm-Nd whole-rock isochron for Lewisian gneisses giving an

age of 2920 + 50 Ma, interpreted as dating Lewisian crustal
accretion. (Figure reprinted with permission from Nature (Hamilton
et al. 1979): copyright (1979) Macmillan Magazines Limited, and
from P.J. Hamilton).
40
G. R O G E R S & R. J. P A N K H U R S T
magmas. These results implied that the Nd isotopic

composition of the sub-Lewisian mantle was close to that of
depleted mantle (DePaolo 1981). The data for the Scourie
i
tonalitic gneisses which had low end
were therefore
considered to be due to Nd isotopic homogenization of older
gneisses at 2660 Ma during the Badcallian metamorphism.
Whitehouse (1989b) also dated hornblende-granulite gneisses from Gruinard Bay and amphibolite-facies tonalitic
gneisses from the northern region which gave Sm-Nd
i
__
whole-rock ages of 2965 + 130Ma (MSWD = 3.8; eNd+3.7 + 2.2) and 2970 + 190Ma (MSWD = 7.9; ~ Ni d = +
4.7 + 2.6), but questioned the significance of these ages on
the basis that their eNo
i values were higher than DePaolo's
(1981) depleted mantle "terqa
2970~ +1.8). He argued that as the
mafic bodies studied all appeared to have been derived from
a mantle source similar to DePaolo's depleted mantle, and
that if the gneisses were derived from mafic/ultramafic
precursors, then, given that intracrustal melting and
metamorphism have only limited affect on Sm/Nd ratios,
the TDM
Na ages of the felsic gneisses should give the
approximate timing of crustal accretion of each region.
Thus, the Scourie region was deemed to have accreted at c.
2930 Ma, the Gruinard Bay region at c. 2860 Ma, and the
northern region at c. 2780 Ma. However, if one chooses a
different model for the evolution of the depleted mantle
_2970
(e.g. Goldstein et al. 1984) then the eNa
values for the
tonalitic gneisses of Gruinard Bay and the northern region
are broadly consistent with derivation from such a source,
and both areas could have accreted at the same time.
Therefore, if one defines different boundary parameters-even within the same genre of model--significantly different
conclusions may be drawn. Whereas Nd model ages may
give some insight into the approximate average ages of
components of Nd in rock units relative to a specific starting
composition, great care must be taken in their interpretation. (See Arndt & Goldstein 1987 for a review of Nd
model age applications).
Cohen et al. (1991) have also recently addressed the
problems of the physical extent and timing of depletion by
studying a small area at Scourie. Sm-Nd whole-rock data for
mafic and ultramafic samples gave an age of 2702 + 52 Ma
(eiNd = +1.8) which was interpreted as the time of Sm/Nd
fractionation between these lithologies. This age is identical,
within error, to the best estimates of the time of Badcallian
27(X)
metamorphism. Lower eNa
values for tonalites and
metasediments were taken to indicate that these had had a
previous crustal history, and that there had been minimal
exchange of Nd between the tonalites and more mafic
samples during Badcallian metamorphism at c. 2700Ma,
thus limiting Nd movement to no more than a metre scale.
Consequently, it was concluded that the 2702Ma age
represented the time of igneous differentiation. Cohen et al.
also argued that Whitehouse's apparently older ages of 2850
and 2910Ma for the ultramafic bodies at Achiltibuie and
Drumbeg could be artefacts produced through mixing mafic
magma emplaced at 2700 Ma with older tonalitic material:
this interpretation depends on these ultramafic intrusions
also being c. 2700 Ma old, for which there is no published
geochronological evidence.
Sm-Nd mineral data for basic gneisses around Scourie
were presented by Humphries & Cliff (1982). They obtained
uniform errorchron ages of 2490 Ma, largely controlled by
garnet, which, they argued, implied that the Scourian
complex cooled slowly from the peak of Badcallian
metamorphism at 2660Ma to c. 600C at 2490Ma.

Although Cohen et al. (1988a, 1991) also stated that Sm-Nd
and Pb-Pb mineral isochrons from mafic/ultramafic gneisses
gave ages of c. 2420Ma (supporting data were not
presented) they interpreted the results as dating the final
mineral crystallization of the granulite-facies assemblage
rather than simply the slow cooling of the complex, on the
basis of similar diffusion rates for Sm and Nd to the major
cations in garnet and clinopyroxene. Consequently, whereas
the Sm-Nd whole-rock data give the age of emplacement of
these ultramafic bodies at c. 2700 Ma, Sm-Nd equilibration
at the mineral level was not achieved until about 250 Ma
later. Major regional U, Th and Rb depletion was
accomplished during the peak of Badcallian metamorphism
at 2660 - 2700Ma. This interpretation has a number of
implications and associated problems. Most significantly, the
2420 Ma age of Cohen et al. is identical to the 2418 Ma U-Pb
baddeleyite age of the oldest reliably dated Scourie dyke
(Heaman & Tarney 1989; see below). As the dykes cross-cut
the Badcallian fabrics (see Park 1991) and were intruded
penecontemporaneously with the Inverian amphibolite
facies retrogression, it seems highly improbable that the
granulite facies fabrics could have been produced at
2420 Ma.
Burton & O'Nions (1992) have recently obtained Sm-Nd
and Pb-Pb mineral ages from an amphibolite facies agmatite
complex at Gruinard Bay. The host amphibolites give ages
of c. 3300 Ma whereas the later trondhjemite gneisses are c.
2400 Ma. The date for the amphibolites is the oldest Sm-Nd
age yet reported from the Lewisian complex. As the
amphibolite date is about 650 Ma older than the age of the
Badcallian metamorphism further north, Burton & O'Nions
(1992) concluded that information relating to the timing of
crustal differentiation or of prograde metamorphism would
be unlikely to be preserved in rocks which had suffered
granulite facies metamorphism. Such a conclusion presupposes that the rocks further north in the central region were
formed significantly before the Badcallian metamorphism,
and that Sm-Nd evidence for their original age has been
overprinted.
The geochronological history of Laxfordian activity does
not uniquely serve to illustrate any points we wish to make,
and so is not considered in detail. However, for the sake of
completeness the granite sheets along the Laxford Front
have yielded Rb-Sr and Pb-Pb whole-rock ages of
1650 + 55 Ma to 1754 + 18 Ma (Taylor et al. 1984). Other
intrusive granites have given Rb-Sr whole-rock ages of
1429 + 350, 1645 + 170 and 1713 + 34 Ma (van Breemen et
al. 1971; Lyon et al. 1973; Lyon & Bowes 1977), and a U-Pb
zircon age of l~7~+2Ma,,-H)
(van Breemen et al. 1971).
Lambert & Holland (1972) and Lyon & Bowes (1972)
reported Rb-Sr whole-rock ages for quartzofeldspathic
gneisses from the northern region of 1862+50 and
1713 d:135 Ma, which they interpreted as the time of
Laxfordian metamorphism. Consequently, the timing of the
Laxfordian metamorphism and granite emplacement is
thought to have occurred c. 1700 Ma.
Despite 30 years of effort there are still many major
unresolved problems regarding the chronology of the
Lewisian gneiss complex. This discourse makes it apparent
that unravelling the geochronological evolution of such a
polymetamorphic, high-grade terrain is a complex business.
Not only can the structural geologists not always agree
about which structures are being dated (e.g. Inverian or
Laxfordian), but many of the ages so far produced are by
and large of dubious chronological validity. There are often
major difficulties encountered in the interpretation of
whole-rock ages, and in certain instances the ages may even
be meaningless. K-Ar ages may be largely a function of
thermal resetting or excess Ar; Rb-Sr mineral ages may
reflect post-crystallization effects and are subject, in some
cases, to the choice of initial S7Sr/~'Sr ratio leading to
potentially spurious ages; earlier published U-Pb ages based
upon highly discordant data may be inaccurate; and Sm-Nd
mineral data require a detailed knowledge of the textural
relations in order to interpret correctly the precise 'ages'
that may be obtained. It is likely that only through detailed
mineral geochronology, coupled with perhaps whole-rock
data to obtain information on process length scales, will the
temporal complexities of the processes involved be further
unravelled.
The Scourie dykes
The emplacement of the Scourie dyke swarm presents one

of the most critical and controversial events in the
development of the Lewisian complex. Their generally
fine-grained texture and basic composition and the effects of
post-intrusive tectono-thermal events all militate against
straightforward radiometric dating. The history of study of
the Scourie dykes thus provides an interesting example of
how evolving analytical methodology may be progressively
used to tackle more difficult geochronological problems with
increased precision and accuracy, and hence may be able to
address regional geological evolution.
Sutton & Watson (1951) considered structures that were
cut by the dykes to be correlated with the Scourian orogeny
and those that affected the dykes to be Laxfordian. Such a
model assumed that there was only one phase of dyke
injection, and therefore that it represented a unique time
marker. This interpretation was challenged by Bowes and
co-workers (e.g. Bowes & Khoury 1965; Bowes 1968; Dash
et al. 1974) who argued on the basis of structural evidence
that dyke injection must have occurred over a considerable
timespan. In contrast to the view of Sutton & Watson (1951)
that the dykes were anorogenic and emplaced into a cold
gneiss complex, O'Hara (1961) and Tarney (1963) proposed
that the dykes were intruded at depth into hot country
rocks. It was also recognized that the Inverian deformation
and amphibolite facies metamorphism occurred after the
Badcallian granulite facies event, but prior to and
penecontemporaneous with the intrusion of at least some of
the dykes (Tarney 1963; Evans 1965). It was argued that the
foliated, more deformed, Scourie dykes represented the
earliest members of the suite intruded at higher
temperatures, whereas the unfoliated variants were
emplaced later into cooler crust (Tarney 1963, 1973; Park
1970). The objections highlighted by Bowes were attributed
by Park (11970) to both Inverian and Laxfordian structures
having similar orientations coupled with ambiguities in the
interpretation of early geochronological data.
Although Giletti et al. (1961) did not date any of the
Scourie dykes, their importance in the chronological
framework of the Lewisian was clearly recognized. Shortly
afterwards Evans & Tarney (1964) presented the first K-Ar
whole-rock data for the dykes covering a range of
compositions, which gave ages between 1390-3860 Ma. Due
to an overall cluster of ages Evans & Tarney preferred an
41
age of c. 2200 Ma for the intrusion of the dykes as a whole,

although one fresh tholeiite gave an age of 1950Ma,
suggesting that dyke emplacement may have been a
protracted or pulsed affair. The oldest ages (>2200Ma)
were attributed to the presence of excess At, whereas
younger ages (with the exception of the sample cited above)
were considered to be due to variable Ar loss during
Laxfordian metamorphism.
In contrast to Rb-Sr mineral and K-At studies, which
may be reset by later thermal events, Rb-Sr whole-rock
dating may in certain circumstances see through these later
events to yield information regarding the igneous crystallization of protoliths. Using this philosophy, Chapman
(1979) analysed three dolerite dykes--two from Scourie and
one from Kylesku--using Rb-Sr whole-rock techniques.
Owing to the low Rb/Sr ratios and to the lack of
fractionation of Rb/Sr within each individual dyke the
errors on the ages were high, although it was stated that the
ages and the initial ~7Sr/~'Sr ratios for the individual dykes
were not significantly different. However, each dyke had a
distinct (if restricted) range of Rb/Sr, and so, by combining
the data for the three dykes, a greater spread of Rb/Sr was
achieved and hence a reduction in the calculated error. The
combined age of 2390 + 20 Ma was thought to represent the
emplacement of the Scourie dykes; this date also placed a
minimum age on the Inverian metamorphism. No evidence
was presented to substantiate the c. 1950 Ma age of Evans &
Tarney (1964).
In order to obtain more precise ages from individual
dykes Cohen et al. (1988c) undertook a Sm-Nd mineral
study of Scourie dykes in which an apparently primary
igneous mineralogy was still preserved: the detailed results
of this study were given in Waters et al. (1990). Olivine
gabbro and quartz dolerite dykes gave Sm-Nd mineralwhole-rock ages of 2015 + 42 to 2102 + 77 Ma and 1758 + 7
and 1982 + 44 Ma respectively (Table 1). In the case of the
Graveyard dyke a feldspar datum lay below the regression
line and was therefore excluded from the calculation. A
Rb-Sr mineral-whole-rock age of 1978 + 13 Ma was also
obtained from the Rhegreanoch dyke, within error of the
Sm-Nd age. Rb-Sr mineral-whole-rock ages for the other
dykes generally gave younger ages than the Sm-Nd data. An
exception was the Graveyard dyke which gave a Rb-Sr
amphibole-feldspar age of 2027-1-11 Ma compared to the
Sm-Nd age of 1758-t-7 Ma. This discrepancy was explained
by invoking recrystallization and growth of garnet and
ilmenite during Laxfordian metamorphism; amphibole and
feldspar were deemed to have formed shortly after dyke
emplacement, and to have remained closed systems
throughout the later event. Clearly a primary igneous
mineralogy had not remained undisturbed in this case. No
evidence was found for dyke emplacement at 2400Ma,
which led Cohen et al. (1988c) to state that the Rb-Sr age of
Chapman (1979) was 'erroneous', and probably reflected
contamination with continental crust. Interestingly, the
Graveyard dyke at Scourie was also one of those used by
Chapman in the Rb-Sr study.
Whereas the studies considered so far have either been
prone to post-emplacement thermal disturbance of isotope
systematics, or have had to make assumptions about the
geochronological significance of isotopic equilibration
between minerals and/or whole-rocks, U-Pb geochronology
on phases such as zircon, baddeleyite and titanite,
potentially represent self-contained systems with high
42
Table 1. Geochronological data for Scourie dykes (Waters et al. 1990)
Dyke
Rock type
Phases
Badnaban
Olivine gabbro
Rhegreanoch
Olivine gabbro
Loch Torr
an Lochain
Graveyard
Olivine gabbro
Poll Eorna
Quartz dolerite
Quartz dolerite
Isotope System Age (Ma)
Fsp-cpx-amph-WR
Bi-WR
Fsp-cpx-amph-WR
Fsp-cpx-amph-WR
Fsp-WR
Sm-Nd
Rb-Sr
Sm-Nd
Rb-Sr
Sm-Nd
2031 + 62
1714 + 8
2015 + 42
1978 + 13
2102 + 77
Amph-gt-ilm-WR
Amph-fsp
IIm-WR
Fsp-cpx-ilm-WR
IIm-WR
Sm-Nd
Rb-Sr
Rb-Sr
Sm-Nd
Rb-Sr
1758 + 7
2027 + 11
1738 + 11
1982 + 44
1733 + 7
Fsp, feldspar; Cpx, clinopyroxene; Amph, amphibole; Bi, biotite; Gt, garnet;
Ilm, ilmenite; WR, whole-rock
data of Waters et al. (1990) discussed above. The c. 2200 Ma

K-Ar whole-rock ages of Evans & Tarney (1964) may
therefore represent prolonged cooling following dyke
intrusion at deep crustal levels, whereas the younger K-Ar
whole-rock age of 1950 Ma may indicate more rapid cooling
of later dykes intruded at higher crustal levels.
In conclusion, if the Scourie dykes do, in fact, represent
a unique structural time marker, then the time interval over
which there has to be structural quiescence is about 400 Ma.
The final recognition of such a long interval led Park (1991)
to state that 'in view of the geochronology, it is likely that
such tectonic activity did take place [during the 400 Ma] and
may ultimately be proved by more adequate dating.' The
studies of Cohen et al. (1988c), Waters et al. (1990) and
Chapman (1979) indicate some of the problems of
geochronological techniques which require an assumption of
isotopic equilibration between coexisting phases or wholerocks, and highlight the great care required in determining
which phases are primary and which may be either
secondary or have recrystallized. If incorrect textural
observations are made then isolated results may yield
erroneous interpretations. It is clear, however, that if
suitable material can be found and careful petrographic
analysis undertaken, then both detailed Sm-Nd and U-Pb
mineral studies may yield meaningful emplacement ages for
mafic dyke suites. The significance of such ages in the
structural evolution of the Lewisian complex requires a
closure temperatures to parent-daughter migration. Although material for analysis has to involve the selection of
high-integrity grains in order to avoid the effects of
low-temperature Pb loss, and there is always the possibility
of analysing grains which have experienced multiple
episodes of growth (e.g. Pidgeon & Aftalion 1978), the
presence of two internal U-Pb radiometric clocks enables
departure from simple closed-system behaviour to be
generally readily identified. The development of improved
techniques for the production of accurate and precise U-Pb
data on small samples (e.g. Krogh 1982b; Parrish & Krogh
1987), and the discovery that mafic dykes may contain trace
amounts of zircon and/or baddeleyite (Heaman et al. 1986;
Krogh et al. 1987) enabled Heaman & Tarney (1989) to
obtain ages on three individual Scourie dykes. A bronzite
picrite from Beannach and an olivine gabbro from Strathan
+3
gave baddeleyite ages of 2418_+TMa and 1992_~Ma
respectively (Fig. 3). The latter was interpreted as the time
of dyke emplacement whereas the former, owing to the
slight discordancy of the data, was thought to be the
minimum age of intrusion with the true age being a little
older. Zircons from a norite from Badcall Bay yielded
discordant data but their 27pb/2~pb ages of 2166-2179 Ma
were considered to represent minimum estimates for the age
of the dyke. The U-Pb data provide clear evidence for two
phases of dyke emplacement, the first at c. 2418 Ma and the
second at 1992 Ma, this latter date being consistent with the
0.37
2,420
b
2,000
0.45
j,
co
o
o~
:~ 0 " 3 6
co
Fig. 3. U-Pb concordia diagrams for
tn
IX
J~ 0 . 4 3
IX
co
0
1,992+3/-2Myr I
0"35
-~1,071Myr
0"41
8"6
818
I
9-0
91"2
I
9"4
207pb[235 u
91"6
91-8
034
58
5.9
6.0
2o7pb/235
6 1
6.2'
two Scourie dykes, confirming the

episodic emplacement of the suite.
(a) Beannach dyke. (b) Strathan
dyke. Error ellipses are drawn at the
2a level. (Figures reprinted with
permission from Nature (Heaman &
Tarney 1989): copyright
(1989) Macmillan Magazines Limited, and from L.M. Heaman).
more reliable knowledge of the timing of the igneous and
metamorphic events within the region, without which the
structural debate may continue in sterile argument.
The Moinian Supergroup

The age, metamorphic history and wider affinities of the
Moinian Supergroup have long been contentious issues.
Following the great debates of the last century (see Oldroyd
1990 for a review) two main hypotheses emerged regarding
the evolution of the area: (1) that the Moinian and
Torridonian sediments were of the same age and that
orogenesis was entirely Caledonian (Peach in Peach &
Horne 1930); (2) that the metamorphism was, at least in
part, pre-Cambrian in age (Horne in Peach & H o r n e 1930).
With the advent of radiometric dating techniques Giletti et
al. (1961) set out to address this problem through Rb-Sr and
K-Ar dating of micas from Moinian metasediments and
pegmatites. Biotites from schists covering much of the strike
length of the Moine gave an average age of 420 + 15 Ma
which Giletti et al. interpreted as dating widespread
metamorphism of the region. The age also placed a
maximum age on the movement of the post-metamorphic
Moine thrust. More interesting, however, w e r e Rb-Sr
muscovite ages of 690-750Ma from pegmatites from
Knoydart and Sgurr Breac. Giletti et al. put forward several
hypotheses in which the dates might be a function of later
isotopic disturbance, yet all reasonable solutions required
the pegmatites to be Precambrian in age. This led Giletti et
al. to conclude 'that the Moine sediments, at least in the
Knoydart-Morar area are older than 740 m.y.' and that the
pegmatites were formed 'possibly at the time of the first, or
an early, metamorphism of the Moine sediments', thus
supporting Horne's view of a Precambrian metamorphism.
The Moinian Supergroup has been shown to have
experienced polyphase deformation and two main metamorphic events (e.g. Ramsay 1963; Powell 1974). The timing of
the metamorphism and associated deformational episodes
are largely constrained by dating intrusive bodies which both
pre- and post-date the events. The initial results of Giletti et
al. stimulated further research into the geographical extent
of the Precambrian event and the timing of the early and
late metamorphisms. The results of this work, inextricably
linked with the highly contentious issue of the structural
interpretation of the Moine (see Harris & Johnson (1991)
and references therein), have prompted much heated debate
and several major issues are still unresolved.
Various studies have shown that the late event in the
Moine is dated by: (1) a bulk fraction U-Pb zircon age of
456 + 5 Ma for the Glen Dessarry syenite (van Breemen et
al. 1979) which was deformed during this event (Roberts et
al. 1984); (2) a concordant U-Pb monazite age of
450 + 10 Ma and Rb-Sr muscovite ages of 438-450 Ma for
late pegmatites (van Breemen et al. 1974); (3) concordant
U-Pb monazite ages of 455 + 3 Ma from the Glenfinnan area
(Aftalion & van Breemen 1980); (4) Rb-Sr muscovite ages
from semi-pelitic units of 427 + 8 to 462 + 10Ma (van
Breemen et al. 1978). The high closure temperature of the
U-Pb monazite system (c. 725 C; Parrish 1990) suggests
that the peak of Caledonian metamorphism was c. 455 Ma,
with pegmatite injection and cooling below 500 C following
shortly thereafter.
In a classic piece of work Long (1964) showed that the
Carn Chuinneag granite, which was intruded between the
~k
'Sr
43
CARN CHUlNNEAG
GRANITE
/~
Sr
1
10 I . . . . . . . . . . . . .
o,t
0-8J ~
07
/ f
\ ~ ~ M
1/
~ Mine~l,Isochron
4035Ma
~Y
/
WR~qbm="Isochron
( ./
"WR
10
20
30
750
87Rbl~
86Sr I~
1000
Fig. 4. Rb-Sr isochron diagram for whole-rocks and minerals from

the Carn Chuinneag granite (Long 1964) illustrating isotopic
homogenization of the minerals during regional metamorphism
while the whole-rocks remained closed systems.
two metamorphic episodes (Shepherd 1973; Wilson &
Shepherd 1979), gave a Rb-Sr whole-rock age of
5 4 8 + 1 0 M a , but that the minerals from one of these
whole-rocks yielded an age of 403 + 5 Ma (Fig. 4). These
results were taken to indicate that the granite was intruded
at 548 Ma, but that during the later metamorphism, whereas
the whole-rocks remained closed systems, the minerals
within the whole-rocks isotopically equilibrated to give the
age of the reheating event. The whole-rock data clearly
indicated that the earlier metamorphism had to be
pre-550Ma. Pidgeon & Johnson (1974) performed bulk
fraction U-Pb zircon analyses on three facies of the pluton.
Data from the Inchbae and Lochan a' Chairn phases defined
a reverse discordia with lower intercept ages of 563 + 10 and
502 Ma respectively, whereas the riebeckite gneiss gave a
simple discordia line but also with an upper intercept of
522 -1-20 Ma. All these phases were considered to have been
emplaced at c. 560 Ma, broadly consistent with the Rb-Sr
date. A Rb-Sr whole-rock age of 416 + 15 Ma from the
riebeckite gneiss showed that although the Inchbae and
Lochan a' Chairn facies had remained closed to Rb-Sr
migration on the scale of the whole-rocks during the
Caledonian, the riebeckite gneiss had been open. Consequently, whereas the studies at Carn Chuinneag indicated
the potential benefits of combined mineral and whole-rock
studies, they also sounded a severe note of caution
regarding whole-rock methods in polymetamorphic terrains.
Further work on the older pegmatites of Giletti et al. has
produced Rb-Sr muscovite ages from 647 + 20 to 776 +
15 Ma (Long & Lambert 1963; van Breemen et al. 1974,
1978; Powell et al. 1983; Piasecki & van Breemen 1983). In
a detailed study of the C a m Gorm locality van Breemen et
al. (1974) found that there was probably only minor
disturbance of the Rb-Sr muscovite systematics during the
Caledonian metamorphism. In contrast K-Ar muscovite
dates from the Ardnish pegmatite (Powell et al. 1983) yield
younger ages of 498-410 Ma, indicating partial or total Ar
loss during the Caledonian, in accord with other KoAr
determinations from the NW Highlands (Giletti et al. 1961;
Miller & Brown 1965; Brown et al. 1965a, 1965b). In an
attempt to address the possibility that the Rb-Sr muscovite
ages might reflect partial Caledonian overprinting of
Grenvillian pegmatites van Breemen et al. (1974, 1978)
44
analysed bulk fraction zircons from an MP1 pegmatite lit
from the gneiss which gave a lower intercept age of
556 -t- 8 Ma. Yet again there was no hint of a Grenvillian age
in the data (Fig. 5). Nonetheless, Aftalion & van Breemen,
largely on the basis of the 1028Ma age, constructed
elaborate models of multi-stage Pb loss to account for the
observed zircon discordance in terms of a Grenvillian
crystallization age for the gneiss.
Sm-Nd mineral dating has also thrown a spanner into the
works regarding the presence of a Grenvillian event in the
Moine. Sanders et al. (1984) obtained Sm-Nd g a r n e t clinopyroxene-whole-rock ages of 1082-1-24 and 1010 +
13Ma for eclogites from the Glenelg inlier which are
considered to date the eclogite facies metamorphism. As the
Morar group sits unconformably on the Glenelg inlier
(Clough in Peach et al. 1910; Ramsay 1958) and is only at
low metamorphic grade (e.g. Fettes et al. 1985) it follows
that the Morar group must have been deposited after c.
1000Ma. Given that there is stratigraphic continuity
throughout the Moinian succession, and that the early
Moinian metamorphism is considered to have occurred at
pressures of about 6.5 kbar (Fettes et al. 1985), there is
considerable difficulty in reconciling the Sm-Nd data with
the Rb-Sr data from the Ardgour gneiss (1028 + 46 Ma).
In summary, whereas the ages of the Caledonian
metamorphism and the Knoydartian pegmatite emplacement are now fairly well constrained, the significance of the
Knoydartian event and the timing of the Precambrian
metamorphism are still unclear.
performed U-Pb analyses on monazite and zircon - which

have higher closure temperatures - from two localities.
Monazite analyses were concordant at 780 + 10 Ma whereas
discordant zircon data gave ages of 7 4 0 + 3 0 and
815 + 30Ma. Given that these pegmatites were emplaced
into rocks of low metamorphic grade, van Breemen et al.
(1978) concluded that the ages must represent the time of
pegmatite intrusion rather than reflecting slow cooling.
Furthermore, the field evidence of pegmatite concordance
with the main foliation in the host lithologies suggested that
this was also the time of peak metamorphism (termed the
'Knoydartian' by Bowes (1968) and the 'Morarian' by
Lambert (1969)). In this interpretation they agreed with the
views of Giletti et al. (1961), Long & Lambert (1963),
Bowes (1968) and Lambert et al. (1979) in ascribing the
pegmatites to orogenic activity. Evidence against this
interpretation was provided by Powell et al. (1983) who
showed that the Ardnish pegmatite, which they had dated
using Rb-Sr on muscovites at 776 + 15 Ma, post-dated the
early folding and metamorphism of the Moinian metasediments and was deformed during a later event. The timing of
the early metamorphism, however, remained unclear,
although a Grenvillian age was plausible in the light of other
data (see below).
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Moinian
geochronology has centred on the age of the Ardgour
gneiss. This was originally held to have been produced by in
situ metasomatism during the peak of metamorphism (e.g.
Dalziel 1966), but has since been shown to have been
intruded during the early metamorphism (Barr et al. 1985).
Brook et al. (1976), using large samples, produced a Rb-Sr
whole-rock age of 1028 + 46 Ma which they interpreted as
indicating that the early metamorphism was Grenvillian in
age. Pidgeon & Aftalion (1978) investigated the gneiss using
bulk fraction U-Pb zircon techniques. The data defined a
reverse discordia giving a lower intercept age of 574 + 30 Ma
and an upper intercept age of 1556 ' ~ Ma, which they had
great difficulty in reconciling with the 1028 Ma Rb-Sr age of
Brook et al. (1976). Aftalion & van Breemen (1980) also
--
oso
Torridonian
The dating of unfossiliferous sedimentary successions which
do not contain volcanic horizons or igneous intrusions
presents a considerable geochronological challenge as such
combinations militate against dating strategies such as have
been used in the Moine and Dalradian. The Torridonian
sandstones are one such succession.
Although samples from the Torridonian sandstones
~~
16
li re 206pb' 238 0
-~ Ojo~" /
o 20
1200Ma'x
P ~tlgl~
1 lOOMax
/
,~55.53uNM
R
__ _ _
>d"
/
~ "106+841JNM
GRANITI,,.
b Sr AGE,o,~,..,oo
l OOO~ ~ ~ / /
/
.. . . .' t~ . . . .
0 151
900Ma . ~ ~<"~
~
700Ma /
/"
4SuNM
o 05 300:/
i=oo~/
i.OMa
Primary Age
a
"......
1800M3 .
1400ia.,~"~"
"~> ' ~
1200Ma/"~::~ ~:
E M P L A C E M E N T T1 ~
!
r8 L
......
Calculated
C
| GRANITE-
o 2t
ooM'",~.o#%~ Re,o,
o ~1
61+450NM
~..
600M~'
o lo i
"84.53pM1
~'~
z....
1 0 0 0 M ~ " -"xZ ~-~RC70S ~1161JNM
r 2 ~ / - GLEN DESSARY SYENITE
k '4,7
a. MONAZlTE AGE Or
~/~ ....
R C 9 0 9 and RC 1 5 2 4
10
20
2Lo
r5 = 2 7 p b
Z i r c o n s i z e fractions:
RC1524 Paragneiss Glenfinnan
[J R C 7 0 5 G r a n i t i c G n e i s s
:\ R C 9 0 9 Lit in Granitic G n e i s s
30
40
3'0
235 U
r5
50
6 ~
40 - - - -
Fig. 5. U-Pb concordia diagram for

samples from Glenfinnan. Inset shows
modelled zircon evolution assuming Pb
loss during Caledonian and Grenvillian
times. See Aftalion & van Breemen
(1980) for detailed discussion. (Figure
reproduced from Aftalion & van Breemen 1980 with permission from
Springer-Verlag and M. Aftalion).
UNRAVELLING DATES
which unconformably overlie the Lewisian complex were
not analysed by Giletti et al. (1961), the data they obtained
regarding the age of the Laxfordian led them to conclude
that the Torridonian must be younger than c. 1600 Ma, or
possibly 1160 Ma based on an Rb-Sr biotite age from a
gneiss from Loch Torridon whose interpretation was
problematical. If the Moine and Torridonian sediments were
lateral equivalents (e.g. Sutton 1963) then the latter must be
older than the c. 740 Ma pegmatites in the Moine. However,
given that the Torridonian is unconformably overlain by
Cambrian sediments, Giletti et a l . ' s data permitted the
Torridonian to be younger than the Moine and to have been
derived from it.
In order to assess the age and provenance of the
Torridonian, Moorbath et al. (1967) analysed both detrital
grains and individual pebbles. In the Applecross Formation
muscovites from schistose pebbles gave K-Ar ages of
1659-1802Ma whereas Rb-Sr K-feldspar dates from
microcline and quartz porphyry pebbles ranged from
1320-1637 Ma. Detrital muscovites from the Diabaig
Formation gave a restricted range of Rb-Sr and K-Ar ages
from l160-1190Ma. From these results Moorbath et al.
concluded that the schistose pebbles were not derived from
the Moine metasediments as these had been metamorphosed at least 740 Ma ago, and that some of the pebbles
had a provenance in rocks which had been last
metamorphosed c. 1700Ma, which they equated with the
Laxfordian complex. The ages from the detrital micas
indicated that the Torridonian must be younger than about
1190 Ma.
In an attempt to define the age of the Torridonian more
closely Moorbath (1969) used Rb-Sr whole-rock analyses of
shales to construct isochrons for the Stoer and Applecross
Formations, which gave ages of 968 + 24 and 788 + 17 Ma
respectively (Fig. 6). Moorbath argued that these reflected
isotopic homogenization during diagenesis which would
have closely followed deposition. This interpretation was
questioned by Smith et al. (1983) who suggested, on the
basis of palaeomagnetic results which indicated that the
Stoer and Applecross Formations were c. 1100 and 1040 Ma
respectively, that diagenesis could have occurred significantly later than deposition.
Allen et al. (1974) presented 4Ar-39Ar data on exotic
quartz tourmaline pebbles from the Applecross Formation
0-85
45
which gave ages from 802-2926 Ma. Taking the results at

face value and using known palaeocurrent indicators they
concluded that the data were consistent with a source in the
Preketilidian and Ketilidian belts of Greenland and the
Grenville of Labrador. However, it is now recognized that
tourmalines are prone to excess Ar and give anomalously
old ages (Damon & Kulp 1958); consequently no reliable
information can be gleaned from the data.
Rb-Sr dating of biotites has provided evidence of uplift
and cooling of the Lewisian complex of northern Harris and
Lewis at c. 1100 Ma (Cliff & Rex 1989). By comparing these
data with Rb-Sr and K-Ar ages for detrital muscovites from
the Torridonian and a K-Ar biotite age from a gneiss
boulder in a Lower Torridonian tilloid (Moorbath et al.
1967), Cliff & Rex suggested that the northern part of the
Outer Hebrides could have acted as a source for some of the
Torridonian sediment.
As zircon has a high closure temperature for U-Pb
compared with either K-Ar or Rb-Sr in micas, U-Pb dating
of individual zircon grains can potentially yield information
regarding the ages of formation of the sources of
sedimentary piles rather than later uplift and/or metamorphic ages. Moreover, because they are generally mechanically and chemically resistant they are most likely to survive
sedimentary processes and so provide a full coverage of the
provenance spectrum, provided, of course, that all the
source rocks contain zircon. Rogers et al. (1990) analysed
single detrital zircon grains from the Applecross Formation.
The analyses were generally less than 1% discordant and fell
into three groups: 1088-1193Ma; 1625-1662Ma; 26282857 Ma. These ages provide a maximum age for the the
Applecross Formation of 1088 Ma consistent with both the
palaeomagnetic and earlier geochronological results. Rogers
et al. concluded that the data were more consistent with a
provenance in Labrador than E Greenland. Given the lack
of published evidence for zircons of c. 1150 and c. i650 Ma
from the Outer Hebrides, a source in such an area also
seems unlikely.
Thirty years on, and despite the increasing sophistication
of geochronological approaches, the problems of the age
and affinities of the Torridonian are still unresolved.
Stratigraphical correlation with the Moine is still equivocal
and would appear to require more detailed knowledge about
the age of the Torridonian sediments and the tectono-
26-5
Sr87
Sr 88
0.85
~ . , 26- 7
/
2~6_4
c
26-3
0-80
Sr 87
_ Sr86
12a~/
/-i A
b
/
0-80
26_//~8'26-6
Fig. 6.
Rb-Sr whole-rock isochrons for

siltstones and shales from (a) the Stoer
and (b) the Applecross Formations of
the Torridonian sandstone. (Figure
adapted from Moorbath 1969 with
permission from Scottish Journal of
Geology).
0"75
6_1o ~/~26_12 968-+24Ma

~ 26-11
26-9
0 -7(2
0
-~ 0 . 7 0 8 6 + 0 . 0 0 1 6
Rb87
I
12e~'~12d
12c~12h
0-75 - 12fQ,
,.J U'i29
12b
/3A
'~4A
-,~0.7215+0,0014
0.7C
I
0
5
788+_1 7Ma
Rb87
Srr "~-6II~
I
10
46
thermal history of the Moine. Nonetheless, significant

progress has been made regarding the provenance of the
sediments which points to areas of fruitful research in the
future.
The Dalradian Supergroup

Nowadays we look to geochronology to determine both the
time of metamorphic recrystallization within a complex belt
and its post-orogenic uplift history. These two aspects were
already inherent in the treatment of the Dalradian
metamorphic complex presented by Giletti et al.
following a brief early Ordovician climactic episode of

metamorphism. They drew age contours ('chrontours' or
'thermochrons'), taken to represent lines of synchronous
cooling through the respective closure temperatures, and
proposed early uplift of the low-grade rocks against the
bounding faults and later uplift of the hotter, high-grade
rocks in the central areas (Fig. 7). Their model also related
the cycle of deposition, deformation, metamorphism, uplift
and erosion to the still new ideas for subduction and closure
of the Iapetus Ocean to the south, and they further
suggested that the post-orogenic Newer Granites (which had
mostly given ages of 420-370Ma) were triggered by
pressure-release during the uplift phase.
M i n e r a l ages: cooling histories

Seven Rb-Sr mica model ages from the Grampian Highlands
and three from the Connemara schists of western Ireland
were reported by Giletti et al. By subsequent standards this
is a small body of data, but they were enough to reveal an
unexpected problem. Whereas their data for the Moinian
Supergroup (see above) had suggested a Late Silurian/Early
Devonian metamorphism at about 420 Ma, consistent with
the stratigraphically-controlled age of Caledonian deformation in the Southern Uplands, England and Wales, most of
the Dalradian and Connemara schist ages were significantly
older at about 475Ma. Although this supported a
correlation of the Dalradian and Connemara schists, it also
indicated that both had experienced an Early-MidOrdovician metamorphism. Additionally, three of the
Dalradian biotite ages were younger and within error of the
Moine schist results, suggesting that the later Moinian event
had also affected the Dalradian rocks; consequently, 475 Ma
could be regarded only as a minimum age for the early
metamorphism of the Dalradian.
The idea of mineral phases having different 'blocking
temperatures', with muscovite being more resistant to
overprinting than biotite, was already emerging at the time
of Giletti et al.'s paper, and in their Discussion reply to R.
Rutland, the authors cautioned that the younger age of
420Ma might not represent the real time of prograde
metamorphism but merely that of post-metamorphic
cooling. In this they admitted a fundamental property of
mineral geochronology, but also predicted how this might be
turned to advantage in the interpretation of the thermal
history of metamorphic belts.
The following years saw the acquisition of a great deal
more mineral data in an attempt to resolve this issue (K-Ar:
Miller & Brown 1965; Brown et al. 1965a; Harper 1967:
Rb-Sr: Bell 1968). These showed a wide spread of ages,
from 500 to less than 400Ma in both the Moine and
Dalradian. This was still generally taken to represent the
effects of overprinting of a late metamorphism on an early
one, although authors such as Brown et al. (1965a) carefully
discussed the alternative possibility of slow cooling.
Particularly influential was the idea of Harper (1967) that
low-grade rocks that had only reached their maximum
temperature during a short period prior to uplift, should
give a better estimate for the metamorphic age than
high-grade rocks; he obtained K-Ar whole-rock ages of c.
490-520 Ma from the southern margin of the belt, close to
the Highland Boundary fault. The case for the cooling
hypothesis was advanced by Dewey & Pankhurst (1970),
who interpreted the entire body of data for both the Moine
and Dalradian rocks as representing uplift and cooling
"~
IIW,'
) .'J / o /
~,~ f ~ '
//
. ,'~'" / "
\~_.~"
~//
L//'/
~ / /
//-~--~z~
.} /;11 zx/
,"),11/~1 /;1~
.)//,'I,'/J"
Ii ~
I//
IIi
j / / t " ~ X-~',\
\ ~7.
" ~-~'o..
~.
fl}"
~Oo~ - ~ . \ \ ,
>soo
490-499
480-489
470-479
460-469
450-459
440-449
Q
0
[3
.
4. 2o0-- .49
29
410-419
400-409
> 400
v
v
2 ff
./J~
K-,,.o.m.,.
AA
40 miles
Fig. 7. K-Ar muscovite age-contours ('chrontours' or 'thermochrons') for the Scottish Highlands, as presented by Dewey &
Pankhurst (1970). These were interpreted as representing lines of
synchronous uplift and cooling through the blocking temperature (c.
350 C) following a relatively brief climactic episode of deformation
and metamorphism, 480-500 Ma ago. Early uplift occurred along
the bounding faults in the marginal parts of the orogen (Highland
Boundary fault and Moine thrust), whereas the central high-grade
areas that had been most deeply buried did not finally cool to 350 C
until 80-100 Ma later. Subsequent work has suggested a more
complex pattern of local uplift events, and attainment of peak
metamorphism as late as 455 Ma in the NW Highlands (Figure
adaptation reproduced by permission of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh from Dewey & Pankhurst 1970).
UNRAVELLING DATES
This was a very 'broad-brush' approach to the problem.
Proper control of time-temperature trajectories for metamorphism requires a great deal of high-quality data. The
principles usually applied have been developed from the
pioneering work in the Swiss Alps (e.g. J/iger 1979). K-Ar
hornblende and Rb-Sr muscovite are generally thought to
have relatively high closure temperatures of about 550 and
500C respectively, K-Ar muscovite about 350C and
biotite (Rb-Sr and K-Ar) about 300C. The highest
temperatures of metamorphism require independent control, possibly using Rb-Sr whole-rock or U-Pb zircon
geochronology, whereas fission track data are necessary to
date cooling down to 100C. These methods must be
applied to a volume of rock small enough to have had a
uniform cooling path, and with sufficient precision to
distinguish the separate stages: even then, no direct
time-temperature information can be obtained for the
prograde heating path prior to the maximum temperature. It
is rare that the full set of such measurements is available;
the only case in Scotland is that of the Glen Dessarry syenite
intruded into the Moinian Supergroup (see above). The data
for Glen Dessarry, collated and interpreted by Cliff (1985),
are consistent with a fairly simple pattern, showing an initial
cooling rate of 30 C/Ma, falling to 10C/Ma over the
first 40 Ma, and followed by dramatically slower cooling
from about 300 C (Fig. 8). This last stage is, however,
governed by an apatite fission track age which may reflect
the effect of later re-heating rather than regional
post-Caledonian cooling. In general, closure temperatures
must depend on a variety of factors, such as mineral
composition, grain-size, cooling rate and fluid interactions.
Furthermore, Giletti (1991) has claimed that the variations
in diffusive exchange rates for Sr are such as to cause major
errors in the estimated closure temperature for Rb-Sr in
biotite. Various closure temperatures have been proposed
for Sm-Nd garnet systems (e.g.c. 500-700 C: Humphries &
Cliff 1982; 900 C: Cohen et al. 1988b). Mezger et al. (1992)
Zircon
1000
800
Ik,.
=1
600
E
400
1--
l~
hene
hHornblende
~
Muscovite
\ Muscovite
Apatite
Biotite - - ~
20O
Ap-f-t
(,)
400
I
300
Age (Ma)
Fig. 8. Cooling pattern for the Glen Dessarry syenite showing the
relationship between blocking temperature for each phase and the
age determined for that phase. U-Pb ages shown by circles; Rb-Sr
ages, filled stars; K-Ar ages, squares; Fission track age, open star.
Fission track datum represents mean fission track age north of the
Great Glen fault (Hurford 1977). All other data from van Breemen
et al. (1979). (Figure reproduced from Cliff 1985 with permission
from R.A. Cliff).
47
have recently argued for a closure temperature of c. 600 C

in metamorphic garnets <5 cm in diameter. This implies
that for rocks above middle amphibolite facies the Sm-Nd
ages obtained using garnet will generally record cooling
rather than prograde mineral growth.
The most detailed studies that have been made on the
Dalradian metamorphic complex have suggested that the
cooling history was more complicated than that considered
by Dewey & Pankhurst (1970). Dempster (1985) presented
Rb-Sr and K-Ar data for two transects from the Highland
Border into the Central Highlands, which he interpreted in
terms of thermal modelling and tectonics. He found the
expected decrease in ages northwards with increasing grade,
but with a reversal in Rb-Sr muscovite ages in the area of
the Tarfside Culmination, which he explained by early
uptilting. From the comparison of the various isotope
systems he deduced large fluctuations in cooling rates
(1-25C/Ma) in different sectors, and at different times
within individual sectors (Fig. 9). Dempster also favoured
the idea that the metamorphic climax might have been
reached at progressively later times at greater depths, which
could be seen as a reconciliation of the two hypotheses (one
metamorphism or two?) first proposed by Giletti et al.
(1961).
Consequently, despite uncertainties in absolute closure
temperatures, the mineral dating approach can be used to
explore and elucidate the main elements of orogenic
evolution. It must be emphasized that a painstaking
collection of adequate geochronological data must be
combined with good structural control in order to achieve
this.
Crystallization ages: dating o f specific e v e n t s
The indirect approach to dating metamorphic and structural

events is based upon the accurate and precise dating of
igneous rocks with structurally-defined relationships, such as
was discussed above in relation to the Carn Chuinneag and
Glen Dessarry intrusions. Giletti et al. (1961) presented data
for two such intrusions within the Dalradian tract, the
pre-metamorphic Ben Vuirich granite (600 + 100 Ma) and
the post-tectonic Galway granite (365 + 10 Ma). Although
these ages gave only a very loose constraint for a broad span
of Caledonian activity, the technique was seen to be a very
promising one, and it was applied extensively thereafter in
Dalradian geochronology, as can be seen from the results
listed in Table 2. The age of the Ben Vuirich granite in
particular became a fascinating problem for subsequent
study, and our erratic approach to the truth--as we now
perceive it--is very instructive.
The Ben Vuirich granite is regarded as having been
intruded after nappe formation (regional D1/D2) but prior
to later, more ductile deformation (regional D3) and the
local peak of kyanite-grade metamorphism (Bradbury et al.
1976; Rogers et al. 1989). Giletti et al. (1961) were able to
show that, although Rb-Sr mica systems in the granite were
obviously reset or strongly affected by Caledonian
metamorphism (muscovite and biotite gave ages of c.
500Ma and 420Ma respectively), whole-rock samples
preserved evidence of a pre-metamorphic history. They
argued that the closed-system model age of these samples of
c. 800 Ma, calculated assuming a meteoritic initial 878r/86Sr
ratio, could be regarded as a maximum possible age for
intrusion. Assuming a more typical crustal value of 0.710 for
48
G. R O G E R S
& R. J. P A N K H U R S T
520
"520
V. RAPID COOLING
15-25"C/Ma
500
500
SLOW COOLING
5 "c/Ma
480
480
\R~-SF Mo,~ I
~ - s oo'c
~
"\
460
440
.......
',
~'
...-~"
SL% COOL,N~
,'
f-..
~'~V SLOW COOLING

K-Ar Musc
2-3"C,/~a
""-~O0~-AF
C
420
J /"
-440
400
460
420
400
Fig. 9. Summary of the mineral age data

from a N W - S E transect across the
Dalradian of Angus, showing approximatc cooling rates and assumed closure
temperatures. A, B, C and D are
different structural units. (Figure reproduced from Dempster 1985 with
permission from T.J. Dempster).
Table 2. Geochronology of intrusions with known structural ages

Rocks
Age (Ma)
Method
Reference
600 + 1(~1"
497 37
(1)
(2)
590 2
597 11
Rb-Sr W R model ages

Rb-Sr WR, with other
Older granites
Rb-Sr errorchron
U-Pb zircon population
lower intercept
U-Pb zircon abraded needles
U-Pb zircon, ion microprobe
655
519 +
481
492 +
487
482
49()
477 +
489
456 +
444
Rb-Sr W R
Rb-Sr WR
Rb-Sr WR
Rb-Sr WR
Rb-Sr WR
Rb-Sr WR
U-Pb zircon
Rb-Sr W R
Rb-Sr W R
U-Pb zircon
Rb-Sr muscovite
(6)
(7)
(3)
(8)
(8)
(8)
(9)
(10)
(11)
(12)
(13)
Rb-Sr W R
Rb-Sr muscovite
U-Pb monazite
(6)
(14)
(15)
I. Ben Vuirich granite
552 + 24
51A~
~ 7
(3)
(3)
(4)
(5)
!I. Other key intrusions

a. Pre-/syn-tectonic intrusions
Portsoy granite gneiss

Shetland migmatites
Dunfallandy Hill granitc
lnsch Upper Zone gabbros
Haddo Housc aureole
Minor foliated intrusions
CasheI-Loch Wheelaun
Slieve G a m p h granitc
Ox Mountains granodioritc
Glen Dessarry syenite
Glen Kyllachy pegmatites
17
25
15
26
23
12
1
6
18
5
4
b. Post-tectonic intrusions ?
K e n n e t h m o n t granite
Belhelvie pegmatite
Strichen granite
453 + 4
463 5
475 + 5
* As reported: all other Rb-Sr ages recalculated with Z8TRb = 1.42 10 - t l a 1.

~-Oldest intrusions only; the majority of Newer Granites have given ages of 390-430 Ma by a
variety of methods.
WR, Whole rock.
References: (1) Giletti et al. (1961); (2) Bell (1968); (3) Pankhurst & Pidgeon (1976); (4) Rogers
et al. (1989); (5) Pidgeon & C o m p s t o n (1992); (6) Pankhurst (1974); (7) Flinn & Pringle (1976);
(8) Pankhurst (1970); Jagger et al. (1988); (10) Pankhurst et al. (1976); (11) Max et al. (1976);
(12) van Breemen et al. 1979; (13) van Breemen & Piasecki (1983); (14) van Breemen & Boyd
(1972); (15) Pidgeon & Aftalion (1978).
UNRAVELLING DATES
peak of metamorphism a n d / o r due to variation in initial

STSr/S6Sr ratios during emplacement. The best age that could
be obtained from the data was 552 24 Ma.
The geochronological method now most widely used to
obtain pre-metamorphic ages is U-Pb dating of zircon. This
mineral is highly resistant to open-system behaviour, and in
theory even a single, brief episode involving U mobility or
Pb loss could be corrected for by extrapolation of linear
discordance patterns in the concordia diagram. Zircon
fractions were often separated according to their grain size
and magnetic susceptibility to obtain a spread of data in this
diagram. The Ben Vuirich zircons analysed in this way by
Pankhurst & Pidgeon (1976) were unusual in that they
defined a statistically excellent discordia line with the lower
intercept (514+6Ma) being interpreted as the age of
emplacement and the upper intercept of 1316 +2~
2.~Ma
apparently reflecting the age of the source material (Fig.
10). This type of reverse discordia, due to inheritance of
pre-magmatic zircons, had already been found in the Carn
Chuinneag granite cutting the Moinian Supergroup (see
above). It was subsequently demonstrated to be a general
feature of Caledonian granites north of the Highland
Boundary fault by Pidgeon & Aftalion (1978), who ascribed
this to underlying Proterozoic crystalline basement in
contrast to Palaeozoic basement further south. Thus, at this
time, it was believed that the Ben Vuirich granite was
emplaced only shortly before the climax of metamorphism,
probably in latest Cambrian-early Ordovician times.
the initial ~TSr/SSr ratio, the growth period of radiogenic Sr

in the granite would have been about 500 Ma, and so they
proposed emplacement at 600-t-100Ma. This, therefore,
must also be a minimum age for Dalradian sedimentation.
The procedure that they used is closely analogous to the
calculation of TDM
Nd and Nd
model ages in the Sm-Nd
system discussed earlier, although the assumption of
insignificant parent-daughter fractionation during metamorphism or crustal anatexis is less obviously justified in the
case of Rb-Sr.
The proper treatment of this problem is, of course, the
establishment of a whole-rock isochron for several
whole-rock samples with different Rb/Sr ratios, which
potentially defines both the age of crystallization and the
true initial ~7Sr/gSr ratio. The isochron method was still
being developed at the time of Giletti et al. (Nicolaysen
1961), and its application in the Scottish Highlands followed
within a year or two (Long & Lambert 1963; Long 1964; see
above). In the case of the Ben Vuirich granite this approach
was complicated by a lack of variation in Rb/Sr (as well as
the relative difficulty of collecting a good suite of whole-rock
samples from a rather remote locality!). High-precision
mass-spectrometry and strict statistical treatment are also
essential to the technique, and both were increasingly
developed through the late 1960s (e.g. York 1969). Even
when this was applied to the Ben Vuirich granite (Pankhurst
& Pidgeon 1976), it was found that the isochron model
broke down, either due to open system behaviour during the
TCHUR
0"20
B E N VUIRICH
Euhedral grains
0'15 _
206p b
0-30 ~ ,
~
'
'
0 26 / b B E N V U I R I C H
" ~Subhedralgrains
0 22~- 2 0 6 p b
1250~
' 1
19;i/--"
IO00/A//*~
~ -
28-1
0"10
400/"~ 25"1
0"05
0"00
200/
/
597-+1 1Ma
, u
0"50
0"00
BEN
0"18
0 14[ -16"1
Aqe_+2o
/ ....
61-,
0"6
1-50
~
1 5 0 0 ~
~~-1.~
1-1
,ooo,. 6.1
/ ~ . ~ 15"1
0'10~"
1.00
49
207pb/235U
,
1"2
1"8
2-4
3"0
3-6
4-2
VUIRICH
1000~/'/'//
C
0"16
014
800 , /
0'12
//
oooJ,
0 '10
____
///~2
0 08
207 p b / 2 3 5 0
..... I
0.60
0"85
I
1"10
1-35
1-60
1"85
Fig. 10. Concordia diagrams for zircons from the Ben Vuirich
granite. SHRIMP analyses showing (a) the cluster of data points
around 600 Ma for euhedral grains and (b) the spread of analyses
for subhedral grains to higher ages. Error boxes on (a) are drawn at
the l o level whereas on (b) they are 20. Also shown on (b) as filled
circles are the bulk fraction analyses of Pankhurst & Pidgeon
(1976). (Figure adaptation reproduced by permission of the Royal
Society of Edinburgh and R.T. Pidgeon from Pidgeon & Compston
1992). () High precision, selected grain analyses with the inset
showing the points for abraded, high-integrity needles giving an age
of 590 + 2 Ma. Error ellipses are drawn at the 20 level. (Figure
reproduced from Rogers et al. 1989).
50
Following the work of Krogh (1982a, b), more emphasis

was placed on the selection, cleaning and abrading of only
the most perfect, uncracked, euhedral zircons that had
clearly formed during igneous crystallization. Selection of
just one or a few such high-integrity grains, although
requiring demanding low-blank chemistry and very sensitive
mass-spectrometry, was usually found to yield concordant
data points, with a consequent minimization of ambiguity in
interpretation.
Even though the discordia extrapolation involved in the
Ben Vuirich granite data of Pankhurst & Pidgeon (1976)
was relatively short, and apparently well-controlled, the
zircons which they had analysed consisted of a mixture of at
least two populations: rounded or stubby subhedral crystals
(inherited) and a few clear needles (melt-precipitated). In
order to eliminate the effects of inheritance and obtain an
accurate and precise date for igneous crystallization, Rogers
et al. (1989) carried out U-Pb analyses of only high-integrity
zircons, especially the clearest, needle-shaped, meltprecipitated crystals. The purest, most strongly abraded
fraction analysed was indeed concordant, with two others
defining a small degree of normal Pb-loss discordance (Fig.
10). No evidence of inherited U-Pb systematics was detected
in these fractions, and so the age was determined accurately
and precisely at 5 9 0 2 M a . This result is extremely
significant, both for the timing of Dalradian events and for
the methodology of determining such events in other
metamorphic belts. Firstly, it requires that all preceding
Dalradian events (i.e. sedimentation and nappe formation)
must have been Precambrian, and that the fossiliferous
rocks of the Leny Limestone, previously considered to be
part of the Dalradian Supergroup, and as such to link the
Dalradian to the Laurentian margin, could no longer be
regarded as part of the Dalradian (see also Harris, in
discussion of Rogers et al. 1989). Secondly, it cast even
more doubt on the general ability of other methods to
determine pre-metamorphic ages with any reliability.
The validity of the age determined by Rogers et al.
(1989) has received support from the work of Pidgeon &
Compston (1992), which has also gone some way towards
quantitatively explaining the failure of the earlier attempt at
zircon dating. These authors have used a highly specialized
and still newly-developed method of dating based on
ion-microprobe analysis--direct sputtering of ions from the
sample, followed by high-resolution mass-spectrometry
(Compston et al. 1984). The sensitivity and spatial
resolution of this instrument (SHRIMP), which can measure
the Pb-isotopic composition of material excavated from a
volume of about 10-6mm 3, allows the discrimination of
U-Pb ages between the growth zones of individual zircons.
It is thus a unique tool for potentially obtaining concordant
(crystallization) ages for both the younger igneous and
inherited components in a zircon population. The data
produced by analysis of zircon grains from the concentrates
originally used by Pankhurst & Pidgeon (1976) results in two
major observations (Fig. 10). Firstly, euhedral grains cluster
around concordia at a weighted mean age of 597 11 Ma,
within error of the more precise value of 5 9 0 + 2 M a
obtained by selected-grain zircon analysis. Secondly, the
subhedral grains exhibit two separate, older groups of
concordant or near-concordant ages, interpreted as the
primary crystallization ages of zircons inherited by the
younger magma; three grains form a group at 950-1100 Ma
and two analyses of one grain are close to 1700 Ma. These
dates could potentially correspond to metamorphic recrystallization events in the underlying crust at Grenvillian
and Laxfordian times respectively, regardless of whether the
Ben Vuirich magma were derived by anatexis of such crust
or had merely assimilated it. Alternatively, grains of these
ages may have been eroded into sediments (e.g. Dalradian
Supergroup) and then entrained by the Ben Vuirich magma
either at source or en route through the crust. The data do
not provide unequivocal evidence for the presence of crust
of these ages beneath the Central Highlands. The upper
intercept of the discordia line of Pankhurst & Pidgeon
(1976) may be envisaged as the 'weighted mean' of such a
mixed population, modified by the effects of Pb loss. The
erroneous lower intercept may similarly represent a
compromise between the times of igneous crystallization,
peak metamorphism, multi-aged inheritance and Pb loss
(see also Rogers et al. 1989 for a discussion of this). The
perfect linear alignment of different fractions along the
discordia line is still hard to explain, but must be related to
the way in which this complex mixture of zircons
fractionated during the mineral concentration procedures.
Nevertheless, the warning is very clear: only genuinely
concordant U-Pb zircon data may be used to define
crystallization ages in disturbed or polygenetic systems.
This experience should lead us to caution in interpreting
the data listed in the second part of Table 2, almost all of
which are from pre-1980 studies, even though they support a
consistent story. Many of these rocks are key eventmarkers, some of which are the subjects of on-going precise
modern geochronological analysis. The 655 + 17 Ma Rb-Sr
whole-rock isochron for the Portsoy granite gneiss
(Pankhurst 1974), another pre-metamorphic 'Older Granite'
that gave a 440 Ma Rb-Sr biotite age in Giletti et al. (1961),
seems to have survived the later metamorphic overprinting,
and, at face value, is fully compatible with late Precambrian
Dalradian sedimentation and deformation. However,
Hallday et al. (1989) reported a bulk fraction U-Pb zircon
age of 595 -t- 5 Ma from the Tayvallich volcanic sequence in
the SW Highlands, at the top of the Middle Dalradian and
supposedly correlative with the Portsoy beds. This is thus
inconsistent with the Portsoy Rb-Sr age, and only consistent
with the new age of the Ben Vuirich granite if deposition of
the Upper Dalradian and nappe formation were all
accomplished within less than 12Ma prior to granite
emplacement.
The data of Pankhurst (1970) for the basic intrusions in
the NE Grampians have been very influential in ascribing an
age of about 490 Ma to the peak of metamorphism in the
Buchan area of high-T, low-P metamorphism. This date is
supported by an age of 490 Ma--being the mean 27pb/Z6pb
age of six magnetic fractions of discordant zircon--from the
Cashel-Lough Wheelaun intrusion in Connemara which
occupies a similar structural position (Jagger et al. 1988).
The age for these intrusions compared with that for the
Glen Dessarry syenite ( 4 5 6 + 5 M a ) has been taken as
indicating diachronism of Caledonian metamorphism and
deformation across the orogen with younger times in the
west (e.g. van Breemen et al. 1979; Powell & Phillips 1985).
Van Breemen & Piasecki (1983) reported an average Rb-Sr
muscovite age of 444 4 Ma from late pegmatites associated
with the Glen Kyllachy granite in the NW Grampian
Highlands which they said was intruded late in the local F3
stress field. They argued that this indicated that there was
no significant difference between the timing of deformation
UNRAVELLING
in the NW Grampian Highlands and the Northern

Highlands, and that any major diachronism occurred
between the NW Grampians and the other parts of the
Dalradian block. However, a number of the late- F3
pegmatites analysed by van Breemen & Piasecki (1983) gave
ages down to 422 Ma which they interpreted as being due to
resetting by the later Findhorn granite: this raises doubts as
to whether the other pegmatite dates have also been
partially reset. Moreover, as there is no evidence in the
Northern Highlands for the c. 600Ma deformation and
metamorphism (Grampian orogeny) which affected the
Dalradian block (Rogers et al. 1989), correlation across the
Great Glen must still be considered doubtful. If the Glen
Kyllachy granite really is 444 Ma old, then the fact that the
post-tectonic Strichen granite from the NE Grampians has
given a concordant U-Pb monazite age of 475 + 5 M a
(Pidgeon & Aftalion 1978) suggests that there may be lateral
diachroneity within the Dalradian block. As pointed out by
Dempster (1985), however, such observations could also be
due vertical diachronism exposed by differential uplift.
Consequently, in order to assess the relationships
between the timing of deformation and metamorphism in
differing areas a body of reliable geochronological data is
required based on sound field relationships. Defining the full
chronicle of events during orogeny is still not a simple
matter, more than 30 years after the work of Giletti et al.
Future d e v e l o p m e n t s
The advent of high-precision mass-spectrometry, coupled
with careful mineral geochronology is clearly reaping
significant rewards in our understanding of Highland
evolution, and of orogenic belts elsewhere (e.g. Corfu 1988;
Mezger et al. 1992). Of particular importance is the advent
of multi-isotopic techniques applied to garnet (e.g. Mezger
et al. 1989, 1992) as these may potentially be able to relate
geochronological information to P-T conditions on the same
sample (but see the note of caution in Mezger et al. 1992).
The use of a laser micro-probe for K-Ar and 4mr-39Ar
studies of individual detrital micas (e.g. Kelley & Bluck
1989, 1992) is providing exciting data relating to
sedimentary provenance and regional tectonics. As mentioned earlier, the ability of the SHRIMP instrument to date
multiple stages of growth within zircon grains provides the
potential for determining the age spectrum of inherited
zircon cores within granitoid magmas; moreover, it may
prove a relatively rapid technique for assessing the overall
spread of ages in detrital zircons from a given rock, where
high precision data are not necessarily required. All these
applications should make important contributions to future
research.
Conclusions
The seminal paper by Giletti et al. (1961) did indeed, to
quote J. Sutton's words in the written Discussion of the
paper, 'prove a landmark in Highland investigation'. The
Highlands have been at the forefront of many subsequent
developments in geochronOlogical approach. Using more
precise analytical methodology and diverse isotope systems,
the chronology has been refined somewhat, though as
indicated throughout the text, many fundamental questions
still remain unanswered, though not necessarily unanswerable. The m o d u s operandi for major future progress
DATES
51
lies in detailed mineral studies, allied, of course, to sound

field and textural control of samples.
The manuscript benefitted from c o m m e n t s b y S. M o o r b a t h , R . A .
Cliff and M.J. W h i t e h o u s e
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Received 28 November 1992; revised typescript accepted 21 December 1992.
Addendum
Aspects of the geochronological evolution of the Lewisian complex
have recently been studied using detailed U-Pb techniques (such as
those described in the Ben Vuirich section of this paper) by Corfu et
al. (in press) in an attempt to unravel some of the complexities
outlined earlier in the Lewisian section of this paper. By selecting
high-integrity zircons and zircon fragments of specific morphologies
from granulite facies gneisses and pegmatites Corfu et al. (in press)
documented the importance of a major event at c. 2480 Ma (early
Inverian?) within the Scourian complex. This event included: (1)
pegmatite emplacement (the suite of potash pegmatites dated at
2220-2550 Ma by Giletti et al. (1961) and regionally considered to
be between 2325 and 2555 Ma by Evans & Lambert (1974) on the
basis of Rb-Sr whole-rock data); (2) strong resetting of zircons
within the gneisses; (3) the development of zircon overgrowths in
some of the gneisses. Similar U concentrations and T h / U in the
overgrowths and cores of zircons from both mafic and felsic gneisses
implied an isochemical process which Corfu et al. (in press)
attributed to high-grade granulite facies metamorphism. Because of
the intensity of this 2480Ma event, the exact timing of protolith
formation and early metamorphism remain uncertain, though the
data suggested that these occurred prior to 2710MR. The previous
age of c. 2660 Ma for Badcallian metamorphism (Pidgeon & Bowes
1972) is probably too young due to rotation of the discordia line as a
result of later Pb loss, and to the averaging of the complex age
distribution pattern of the zircons in the gneisses by using large
sample sizes. Corfu et al. (in press) also showed that a banded
gneiss from the Scourian complex contained zircon growth at
>2716Ma and <2482 MR. In contrast to the other gneisses studied,
however, Corfu et al. (in press) argued that, on the basis of zircon
morphology and the T h / U of the grains, the younger zircon growth
was due to melt infiltration and not to isochemical metamorphism;
consequently some of the leucocratic bands in this gneiss were
formed during the Inverian, coeval with the pegmatites which
intrude the gneiss complex. It thus appears that there were two
periods of granulite facies metamorphism within the central region
of the Lewisian complex: one at ->2710MR and the other at
2480-2490 MR. Such a late high-grade event would help to explain
the Sm-Nd mineral ages of 2490Ma of Humphries & Cliff (1982)

which would thus reflect more rapid post-metamorphic cooling
rather than slow cooling over 150-200 MR.
By using U-Pb techniques on other minerals Corfu et al. (in
press) were able to more fully document the thermal history of the
area. Titanites from a metasedimentary layer at Scourie More were
shown to have grown during the early Inverian (2480Ma) and to
have uffered Pb loss and probable regrowth during Laxfordian
events (1750Ma). Titanites from other gneisses indicated
Laxfordian growth, but also isotopic disturbance and new growth at
c. 1670MR. This late event was also reflected in rutile growth
(HeRman & Tarney 1989; Corfu et al. in press).
Within the Laxford Front zone, but within gneisses of the
Laxfordian complex, Corfu et al. (in press) found a completely
different pattern of zircon discordance to that of the Scourian
complex. One near-concordant zircon fragment gave a 27pbF7pb
age of 2882 MR, but despite detailed picking and air abrasion, the
other data were all strongly discordant. The intense early Inverian
event of the central region was not evident in this sample.
These new detailed U-Pb studies have revealed the importance
and varied nature of early Inverian events (c. 2480Ma), have
highlighted the occurrence of a late event (c. 1670MR), and have
indicated contrasting thermal histories between the Scourian and
Laxfordiancomplexes. However, the complexity and intensity of
processes occurring repeatedly in such a high-grade terrain have
obscured the timing of the earlier events, such that definitive ages
for protolith formation and early Badcallian metamorphism are still
uncertain. Despite the application of increasingly sophisticated
techniques many fundamental questions are still unanswered.
CORFU,F., HEAMAN,L.M. & ROGERS,G. 1994. Polymetamorphic evolution of
the Lewisian complex, NW Scotland, as recorded by U-Pb isotopic
compositions of zircon, titanite and rutile. Contributions to Mineralogy
EVANS, C.R. & LAMBERT, R.ST.J. 1974. The Lcwisian of Lochinver,
Sutherland; the type area for the lnverian metamorphism. Journal of the
Added November 1994.
From QJGS, 1 17, 233-234.

A GEOCHRONOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE METAMORPHIC
COMPLEXES OF THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS
BY BRUNO J. GILETTI~ PH.D.~ STEPHEN MOORBATH~ M . A . D . F t t I L . F.G.S.
AND RICHARD ST. JOHN LAM'BERT~ M.A. P H . D . F . G . S .
S u b m i t t e d 19 October 1960 ; revised m a n u s c r i p t received 13 F e b r u a r y 1961 ;
read 4 J a n u a r y 1961
[PLA~ I X ]
Co~m~rs
I. I n t r o d u c t i o n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I I . SnmrniEry of geological d a t a on t h e age of t h e m e t a m o r phic complexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(a) The Lewisian complex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
,.
(b) The Moine a n d D a l r a d i a n Series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
III. Analytical methods .................................
IV. Geochronological d a t a a n d discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(a) T h e Scourie area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(b) L a x f o r d i a n m e t a m o r p h i s m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(c) The Moine Series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(d) T h e D a l r a d i a n Series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(e) R o c k s f r o m C o n n e m a r a , I r e l a n d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
V. Correlations w i t h o t h e r areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
VI. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
V I I . A p p e n d i x . Localities a n d descriptions of a n a l y s e d samples
V I I I . L i s t of references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
PAGE
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249
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253
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262
SUMM~RY
R u b i d i u m - s t r o n t i u m a g e - d e t e r m i n a t i o n s are p r e s e n t e d for m i n e r a l s a n d whole
rocks from the Lewisian, Moinian a n d D a l r a d i a n m e t a m o r p h i c complexes o f Scotland
a n d from the C o n n e m a r a schists of western I r e l a n d .
Ago d a t a from the Lcwisian eoml)lex confirm t h a t it was affected b y two m a j o r
periods of m e t a m o r p h i s m . P e g m a t i t e s associated w i t h the Scourian p a r t of t h e
Lowisian complex are s h o w n to be a t least 2460 m . y . old, whereas t h e L a x f o r d i a n
m e t a m o r p h i s m occured a b o u t 1600 m.y. ago. T h e effect of t h e L a x f o r d i a n m e t a m o r p h i s m on t h e Scourian p e g m a t i t e s is to p r o d u c e a s c a t t e r of ages in which coexisting p o t a s s i u m feldspars a n d biotites show the p a t t e r n potassium-feldspar
age > biotite age.
Six biotites, a microcline a n d a m u s c o v i t e from t h e Moine Series h a v e ages in t h e
range 435 to 405 m.y., showing t h a t a widespread Caledonian (sen~u atr/c~) metam o r p h i s m affected the Moine Series 420 4- 15 m . y . ago. Two p e g m a t i t e s f r o m t h e
K n o y d a r t - M o r a r a r e a yielded m u s c o v i t e s w i t h ages of 740 m . y . a n d 665 m . y . ; a
s u r v e y of the geochemical possibilities a n d consideration of the geological s e t t i n g of
the p e g m a t i t e s suggest t h a t the Moine s e d i m e n t s in this area are older t h a n 740 m . y .
a n d m a y h a v e u n d e r g o n e an e a r l y m e t a m o r p h i s m before this date.
Specimens from t h e D a l r a d i a n Series of P e r t h s h i r e suggest a m a j o r m e t a m o r p h i s m
a t 475 -t- 15 m . y . ago, i n t e r p r e t e d as L o w e r or Middle Ordovician in age. Two
whole-rock a n d t h r e e mineral a n a l y s e s f r o m the p r o - m e t a m o r p h i c B e n Vuroch
granite-gneiss suggest t h a t the intrusion was f o r m e d 600 4- 100 m . y . ago a n d t h a t
a partial r e c o n s t i t u t i o n occurred 415 -[- 10 m . y . ago. T h e Ben V u r o c h g r a n i t e complex as a whole appears to h a v e b e h a v e d as a closed s y s t e m w i t h respect to r u b i d i u m
a n d s t r o n t i u m d u r i n g later m e t a m o r p h i s m .
Three specimens of m u s c o v i t e a n d biotite from the Cormomara schists of western
I r e l a n d have a m e a n age of 475 m . y . ; this finding t e n d s to s u p p o r t t h e generally
supposed e o n t e m p o r a n e i t y of t h e I ) a l r a d i a n a n d C o n n e m a r a m e t a m o r p h i s m s .
B i o t i t e f r o m t h e G a l w a y g r a n i t e h a s a n age of 365 10 m.y., which suggests t h a t
this granite m a y be c o n t e m p o r a n e o u s with o t h e r d a t e d Caledonian granites of the
British Isles.
F o u r p o t a s s i u m - a r g o n ages s u p p o r t the conclusions on the age of t h e L a x f o r d i a n
a n d Caledonian-Moinian m e t a m o r p h i s m s .
From Le
Bas, M. J. (ed.), 1995, Milestonesin Geology, Geological Society, London, Memoir No. 16, 57-65
W. Q. Kennedy, the Great Glen Fault and strike-slip motion

B.
J.
BLUCK
Department of Geology and Applied Geology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
Abstract: At the time it was written, Kennedy's paper on the Great Glen Fault had clear evidence for
a known lateral displacement, and the evidence was so well presented that it convinced a sceptical
geological world that such movements were possible. The acceptance of large scaled lateral movements led to the concept of great fundamental fractures and, with the advent of plate tectonics and a
climate of mobilistic thinking, many of these great fractures were later recognized as plate or terrane
boundaries.
Along with this thinking, new criteria evolved for recognizing those fractures that had been
involved in major displacements--in fact the concept of throw became replaced by the concept of role.
Role was identified from the history of the blocks on either side of the fracture, and where that history
was incompatible with them being together, then a large role was possible for the fault itself.
Taking a new look at the Great Glen Fault in these terms, it becomes clear that there are
insufficient data on the rocks on either side to allow any conclusions about the nature and timing of its
role to be deduced. If the later, displacements, which are at present the main concern of researchers,
are the sum of the movements on the fracture then it is ironically the least significant of the four
NE-SW fractures in Scotland.
There can hardly be a student who graduated in the 1950s

and 1960s who either did not read or was not aware of the
paper by W. Q. Kennedy (1946) on the Great Glen Fault.
Its impact lay in two areas: he raised the possibility of large
scale lateral movements within continental crust, a concept
not highly regarded in the fixist days before plate tectonics;
the other in the masterly way in which evidence from a
range of disciplines was mustered to focus on a single
solution. In both these areas lay the future of a large
segment of geological thinking. Lateral displacements along
faults had been described in New Zealand (McKay 1890)
and subsequently in Japan and California. But, as Sylvester
(1988) pointed out, there was a reluctance on the part of
geologists to apply the clear evidence for lateral movements
in recent earthquake zones to the geological record. This
reticence was partly lodged in the difficulty in understanding
how the crust at either end of the fault accommodated the
movement.
Kennedy grew up geologically in an environment which
was making much of the concepts of faulting. H e was born
in Scotland, where, at that time, there was not only the
greatest concentrations of faults on the ground, but where
obvious large scaled structures, with clear geomorphological
and structural signature cut the country from shore to shore
(Fig. 1). It was the country where controversy over major
structural features had been in existence for, and
occasionally raged for, some 80 years. During his
undergraduate days with Gregory at Glasgow he would have
no doubt been introduced to these controversies and also to
the concept of rifting (and the excitement aroused by
Africa). Subsequently at the Geological Survey, he was
introduced to the concept of wrench faulting by such fellow
officers as Anderson who he readily acknowledges as a
stimulus to his own paper of 1946. More apposite to the
culmination of these ideas in the geographical region of the
Great Glen, he would almost certainly have read
Cunningham Craig (in H o m e & H i n x m a n 1914) who had
already discussed the existence of strike slip movements in
the vicinity of the Great Glen Fault.
The 1946 paper (originally given in 1939) was sufficiently

rigorous and convincing to justify its publication in
geological climate unsympathetic to strike-slip faulting on
anything but the smallest scale. Although it may not have
overcome the prejudice of the larger geological community
against strike-slip movements of some magnitude, it released
a number of important papers describing large scaled lateral
movements on fault systems throughout the world.
Kennedy's paper had, as daring papers so often do,
crystallized a whole undertow of feeling that there was more
to seen in the world of strike-slip faulting than the prevailing
climate of prejudice would allow to be seen. In these
ensuing papers, and to some extent in his own paper of
1946, there were faults described which had a long and
variable geological history of movement: they had greatly
different displacements on them at different times (e.g. the
San Andreas Fault by Taliaferro 1941). The concept of the
great fundamental fault, as De Sitter (1956) was later to call
them, was born; and along with its birth came a change in
geological thinking towards a more mobilistic view of
geology.
There was much discussion on the nature of fundamental
fractures, and Bailey & McCallien (1953) pointed out that
there were a group of major fractures which were associated
with serpentinites and may, for that reason, be tapping
magmas from great depths. As more of these large fracture
zones were described throughout the world, so grew the
numbers of papers which recorded or estimated that blocks
of crust could move hundreds of kilometres instead of a few.
The 100km lateral displacement estimated for the Great
Glen and Dead Sea Rift faults was followed by 450 km for
the Alpine fault in New Zealand (Wellman in Benson 1952);
> 5 6 0 k m for the San Andreas (Hill & Dibblee 1953)
amongst many others.
Yet there still remained a whole gamut of faults being
described having all the characteristics of fundamental
fractures but for which no lateral movement could be
determined. These faults were marked by a lack of
correlation on either side of them: the Highland Bounday
57
58
B . J . BLUCK
ol)hioliteaml)hibolite
sole 490Ma
thrusting &
orl)hism c . 4 6 0 M a
ges 4 6 0 - 3 9 0
ROCKS
Cover
t Dalradian
] Grampian
t Central Highland
Granulites
t
Crust
c.2.0
S. of
Moine
Foreland
Km
100
J
Fig. 1. Outline of the major fractures in Scotland, the distribution

of the basement units and some important features along the Great
Glen Fault. MT, Moine Thrust; GGF, Great Glen Fault; HBF,
Highland Boundary Fault; SUF, Southern Upland Fault; SL, Solway
line; BV, Ben Vuirich; CC, Carn Chuinneag.
Fault, as described by Anderson (1946) was such an

example.
A n e w role for f u n d a m e n t a l fractures

At the same time as there was a change in attitude towards a
more mobile earth, triggered by Kennedy's 1946 paper, so
another Celt working in another Celtic realm had challenged
another geological dogma. Although Dana (1873) and
Bertrand (1897) had impicitly or explicitly invoked a
tectonic control on sedimentation, it was O. T. Jones (1938)
who revived and redefined the notion at a critical time,
pointing out that in the Lower Palaeozoic rocks of North
and Central Wales, tectonics had an influence on
sedimentation. Accepting this was the first step towards
rejecting a view of geological history which saw it as
comprising long periods of quiescence when sedimentary
rocks were laid down punctuated by short periods of
world-wide change during which time these rocks were
deformed and thrown into mountain chains. The mountains
were then slowly eroded down to yield sediment for the next
cycle. Even Krynine (1945) who was a vigorous proponent
of the tectonic control on sedimentation still produced a
cycle in which shelves were converted to orogens. The
mobilistic view, as presented by Gilluly (1949), effectively
brought to an end the concept of punctuated orogeny.
Following on the recognition of the nature and diversity
of fundamental fractures and the close relationship between

tectonics and sedimentation, came the recognition that faults
had an essential role in controlling sedimentation and
stratigraphy. Their movements were not accomplished in an
instant nor always associated with a stratigraphic void, but it
became clear that they exerted a strong control on the
nature of the sedimentary record, they often defined
source-basin margins and some of the history of their
activity could be read from the rocks they helped to
generate. It was in this atmosphere of tectonic control on
sedimentation, and with the newly described models for the
genesis of the Swiss molasse where there was a direct
influence of faulting on sedimentation, that the role of great
fundamental faults was extended in this country, again by
Kennedy (1958) when he turned his attention to the big
fractures to the south of the Great Glen.
Seemingly detached from his view of the Great Glen
Fault, Kennedy again entered the scene of fundamental
fractures with postulating that the evolution of Midland
Valley of Scotland was largely controlled by the Highland
Boundary Fault to the north and Southern Uplands fault to
the south. As with the Great Glen Fault, Kennedy had a
dynamic view of Midland Scottish geology. Here he traced
the long history of the Faults, particularly the Highland
Boundary Fault, recognizing activity stretching back to the
Arenig when he saw its earliest inception. During Early
Devonian times he envisaged that a developing graben had
been bounded on the north by the Highland Boundary Fault
and to the south by the Southern Uplands Fault, and clearly
saw the Highlands and Southern Uplands as the sources of
the sediments which filled the rift. The mid-Devonian
folding he read as the closing of the 'jaws' of the rift as the
Southern Uplands and Highlands closed on each other and
folded the rocks of the Midland Valley between. In this
account of Kennedy, we see that him interpreting
fundamental fractures, such as the Highland Boundary fault,
as having differing roles at different times, but he never
suggested that either the Southern Uplands or the Highland
Boundary faults as having a history of substantial strike-slip.
It is instructive to view now the repost by George (1960)
who, in strong contrast to Kennedy came from a background
of stratigraphy worked out on horizontal or gently folded
rocks in South Wales and the Borders. It was the
stratigraphy rooted in sequences of events through time
rather than sequences through space and time. He saw the
stratigraphy of the Midland Valley much more in a
layer-cake form (although Kennedy himself was not free of
such a view) with no evidence for the bounding faults having
anything like the history of control on sedimentation as
envisaged by Kennedy, but recognized and extended the
concept of multiple movement along the fractures. In
addition he pointed out that there were faults within and
bounding the Midland Valley which had a control on
sedimentation during the Carboniferous.
A n e w e r still role for f u n d a m e n t a l fractures

The advances in understanding the nature of fundamental
fractures in the interval from 1946 to 1966 were minimal
compared with the advances which followed in the next 15
years. An acceptance of plate tectonics had the effect of
releasing geologists from the constrains of limited movement
of crustal blocks. Movements of continental masses were
W. Q. K E N N E D Y & THE G R E A T GLEN F A U L T

proposed which were so large scaled as to make the
propositions of Kennedy over 20 years earlier seem trivial.
However, of more direct relevance to the interpretation
to fundamentral fractures such as the Great Glen was the
discovery in 1970s of exotic terranes which had accreted to
the west coast of North America but which had a
provenance in the east coast of Asia. These blocks had
accreted during subduction at various points along the
western edge of N America and had migrated northwards
along the coast towards Alaska, their probable final home
(Jones et al. 1972; Howells 1989). In order to achieve these
large scaled movements they had to be bounded by large
scaled faults, and one of the identified Earth's fundamental
fractures of earlier times, the San Andreas Fault, was
identified as such a terrane-bounding fracture.
Workers in other regions were quick to see the
importance of the terrane concept and, freed from the old
constraints of limited lateral movement, began identifying
many terranes and boundaries with varying degrees of
lateral movement. But in any case the scales of movement
now conceived were greater than the lateral persistence of a
recognizably similar geology on either side of the fault. The
old criteria used to identify major strike-slip displacement
(i.e. the distance between correlatable elements across the
fault) changed to one where there was no expected
correlations across faults. A new set of criteria evolved by
which large scaled faulting was determined and t h e y had
very little to do with those used by Kennedy on the Great
Glen Fault.
After Dewey (1969) had demonstrated that the Lower
Palaeozoic rocks of northern Britain had formed on a
destructive plate margin, there was a significant change in
the climate of thinking amongst those working in Palaeozoic
geology. Discoveries in Cyprus and Newfoundland of
oceanic crust sited on continental blocks prompted much
discussion about the mechanics and scales of movement at
destructive margins of this kind. When, later, the nature of
the Ballantrae Ophiolite was clearly determined (Church &
Gayer 1973; Dewey 1974), the problem came to Scotland
and it became clear to those working in the Caledonides, as
it had to those in the Mediteranean and Appalchians, that
there was considerable tectonic significance in having
oceanic crust lying on the continent: it implied that there
was an enormous displacement of crust, and the faults which
bounded the ophiolite were of unimaginable throws. Even
the most conservative thinkers had eventually to concede
that if the origin of the ophiolite was indeed in an oceanic
setting, then from the growing background of what we
understood from the oceans and their continental
boundaries, its emplacement implied substantial structural
activity. In this we see the development of a new argument:
the geological nature of two blocks; their origin, associati~on
and history of genesis have far more significance to nature of
their boundaries than the visible structure of the boundary
itself. And it left structural geologists who look closely at the
fabrics of fault zones with a new challenge and wider
boundaries within which to work.
In the Ballantrae Complex this logical demand for
substantial displacement was further compounded when,
following Williams & Smyth (1973), Spray & Williams
(1980) and Treloar et al. (1980) were able to determine that
there was a depth of provenance for lithological elements of
the metamorphic aureole which exceeded 12 kbar (36 km)..
In this, as in many other examples along major tectonic
59
boundaries where many kilometres of displacement can be

demonstated, the preservation of the history of movement is
recorded only in fragmentary evidence along the lateral
extent of the fault zone. Subsequent movement along this
critical thrust at Ballantae has, in places, obscured these
metamorphic rocks and placed unmetamorphosed spilite in
contact with serpentinite with only a minor shear between.
The lessons are clear: faults and the rocks in fault zones
may only partly record the history of movement between
blocks; subsequent movement may cut-out a critical earlier
history so it is dangerous to read the history of a fracture
from any one point or sector of its length. As already stated,
the magnitude of movement must be seen in the context of
the history of the blocks on either side of the fault as well as
the fault zone itself. The acceptance of this type of evidence
for large scale movement, paved the way for the more
mobilistic views that followed in the immediately succeeding
years.
Barber (1985) and Bluck (1985) followed with the view
that the major fractures of Scotland, including the Great
Glen Fault, bound allochthonous blocks which were suspect
terranes i.e. they were blocks which had no direct evidence
to indicate that they were adjacent to each other for their
entire history. The presence of large faults which bounded
deformed blocks with apparently different histories was
sufficient proof of suspect terranes, and the analogy with
Mesozoic terranes of the American west set a new thinking
going in the British Palaeozoic.
Blocks and boundaries: the way forward

There are now clear indications in the Tertiary and Recent
history of areas like SE Asia and western North America
that continents are growing by the continual addition of
discrete terranes with a history quite different from that of
the block to which they are accreting. Taking this concept a
stage further, Dalziel (1991, 1994) has attempted reconstructions of the 1.0 Ga continent and its subsequent
break-up and re-assembly into Pangaea. In this reconstruction the re-arrangement of continents requires them to move
great distances so that regions now quite remote from each
other (western South America and UK for example) may
have been juxtaposed in the Neoproterozoic. In the
Wilsonian cycle of megacontinent growth and dispersal,
there is therefore great potential for bringing together
blocks with totally different histories and provenances to
amalgamate onto continents with a history quite different
from any of the blocks accreted to it.
This dispersal of continents is achieved by ocean
spreading, but it is the repeated change in the direction of
spreading (as can be ciearly demonstrated on most
destructive margins today), which makes it probable that
continental blocks of all sizes are spread widely before they
are re-assembled. But within this regime of widespread
dispersal, there is a lower order of lateral movement which
is of considerable significance. Tectonic elements, such as
arcs, fore-arcs etc. on a single destructive margin, may be
broken up and move laterally to re-assemble along the same
continental edge as has been demonstrated for areas of the
western Pacific such as the Phillipines (Karig 1983). The
boundaries between these major tectonic elements on
destructive marginsare often zones of weakness, so that
fore-arcs can be detached from arcs and back-arcs and
60
B.J.
independenly move along continental margins far from their

position of genesis.
C a l e d o n i a n terranes a n d their b o u n d a r i e s
It follows from this discussion that a most important step to

take in the Caledonides was to define the tectonic elements
and terranes and locate their limits. By 1977, following
closely on the work of Dewey (1974) and Church & Gayer
(1973), McKerrow et al. (1977) made a major step forward
in interpreting the Southern Uplands as an accretionary
prism. England and Wales was now firmly regarded as a
fragment alien to Laurentia, and in looking for the southern
limit to the Southrn Uplands, there grew mounting evidence
for the presence of another fracture in the Caledonides
which had not been recognized by either Kennedy or
George: the Solway line.
The Solway line is a major fracture sitting alongside the
others in Scotland. It owes its birth in the geological
literature to the same sort of reasoning which was applied to
terranes in the Mesozoic of the American west and to the
Ballantrae Complex--it had to be there to satisfy the
juxtaposition of an Ordovician arc in the Lake district with a
fauna in its sediments quite different from the accretionary
prism to the north. In terms of what can be seen in
present-day plate regimes, the Lake District Borrowdale arc
would have had a fore-arc in front of it and a southerly
dipping plate beneath it: the Southern Uplands was a
fore-arc, but its structure and stratigraphy supported the
palaeontology in suggesting it to be a fore-arc above a plate
that was subducting towards the north. There was a lot of
ground clearly missing between the two tectonic elements.
There was yet another turn in the thinking about major
faults: throw was not a meaningful concept any more. An
ocean plate of uncertain width had been consumed along the
zone where now lies the Solway line. In addition, the
presence of a fault that had yet to be seen, was accepted as a
necessity because without it a section drawn from southern
Scotland to northern England did not make sense in terms
of the present-day distribution of tectonic elements. In this
way a new form of critical thinking was used in evaluating
major tectonic boundaries; a form of thinking used so
effectively along the west coast of North America.
So great was the role of this previously undiscoverd fault
that the meaning of the known and fully exposed fractures
had to be questioned in this new light. As with terrane
workers elsewhere in the world, the stratigraphy, sedimentation, palaeontology, igneous and metamorphic history and
tectonic history all had to be evaluated and rigorously
examined for any mismatches or evidence of missing ground
across the known major fractures.
The Southern Uplands Fault. As an example of the new
approach to the evaluation of blocks and boundaries, the
case of the Southern Upland Fault is taken. The fault
terminates the accretionary prism of the Southern Upland
on its northern margin. The Southern Uplands, through the
meticulous work of Walton and his many students over the
years (Kelling 1962; Walton & Oliver 1991), was demonstrated to have a provenance in a metamorphic block which
was associated with volcanic and plutonic rocks and an
ophiolite. A fore-arc (accretionary prism) should have an
arc to the north of it and it seemed safe to assume that the
BLUCK
volcanic rock fragments in the greywackes of the Southern
Uplands came from such a source.
In the area around Girvan there is a proximal,
fault-controlled sequence which overlaps in age with the
finer grained turbidites of the Southern Uplands. Age
determinations from boulders of granite in the conglomerates at Girvan showed them to have come from a
contemporary igneous province which was clearly only a
little distance to the north (Longman et al. 1979). This
implied that the source of the Southern Uplands sediment
was within the region of the Midland Valley or its lateral
equivalent. It then became clear that the nature of that
igneous source" was almost certainly a dissected arc and the
Girvan sequence was its fore-arc.
On the assumption that the Southern Uplands was a
trench sequence, and there were many doubters (Murphy &
Hutton 1986; Stone et al. 1987), there was now a problem
that the gap beween the trench and the arc was only a few
kilometres wide, so it was proposed that the Southern
Uplands block was allochthonous, having been thrust over a
continental basement and the gap thus reduced (Bluck
1985). Geophysical investigations have shown shallow
continental basement beneath the Southern Uplands (Hall et
al. 1983) but this can be regarded only as supportive of the
view that they have been displaced northwards if the
hypothesis of them being an accretionary prism is correct: a
back or fore-arc for instance can be founded on continental
crust.
As with the Solway line, the history of the Southern
Upland Fault is determined from close reasoning over the
history of the blocks on either side: the fracture is only
poorly exposed and very little of its history is likely to have
been preserved in the fault itself. It is easy to imagine that
after their initial suturing, movement continued between the
receiving continent and the donated terrane and that later
movement was likely to overprint or somehow obscure the
earlier record of initial suturing. Interpretation of the
geological history of terrane boundaries which has
undergone this type of accretion is therefore likely to be
thwart with potential problems of an incomplete structural
record of the amalgamation.
The Highland Boundary Fault zone. This boundary differs
from the two previously discussed fractures in that there is
comparatively good exposure of the margins of the blocks
on either side of it. In addition, there is a range of rock
types and ages (from Cambrian to Carboniferous) which are
available to record the history of movement and for these
reasons it is discussed in a little detail (Fig. 2). The Highland
Boundary Fault has a sinuous trace across Midland Scotland, bifurcates at its southern end and variably dips to the
northwest (Dentith et al. 1992), southeast, or is vertical. To
the north lies the metamorphic basement of the Dalradian,
and to the south it bounds rocks of Cambrian, Ordovician,
Silurian, Devonian and Carboniferous age.
The Dalradian block is a polyphase folded, late
Proterozoic (Halliday et al. 1989) metamorphic sequence of
passive margin style rocks which have been metamorphosed
at least once. A n early phase of folding (Tanner & Leslie
1994) and possibly a phase of metamorphism is cut by the
Ben Vuirich granite which is 590 2 Ma (Rogers et al. 1989)
or 597 = +11 Ma (Pidgeon & Compston 1992), and a later
phase of folding, metamorphism and uplift occurred in the
interval 515 to c. 430 Ma. (Dempster 1985).
W. Q. KENNEDY & THE G R E A T GLEN FAULT

DALRADIAN
MIDLAND
TERRANE
Ma
Carboniferous
-~c-~- ~
STATE
OF
TERRANES
VALLEY
TERRANE
HBFZ
AMALGAMATED
Carboniferous overstep
\
c=,o,.
Peneplain
Devonian
Igneous activity
Silurian
~+ * \
Peneplain
450
, . , 0 , o o 0
]~,~...
~
~ / ' ~ ~ ~
-~ ' ~ ~
Valley (UORS)
Thrust convergence:
Strathmore syncline
AMALGAMATION
Strike-slip basins
Ordovi
I cia~500
rapid uplift
61
\
\
APART
arc, back arc basin

~,~/~.-,~,.,~~/~ ~,~ a.~, -
The history of the south side is particularly revealing and

is traced from Cambrian times.
(1) C a m b r i a n is represented on the Island of Bute by a
sliver of metamorphic rock associated with serpentinite
which resembles the sole to an ophiolite (Henderson &
Robertson 1982). A cooling age of 540 Ma was reported
from the amphibolite suggesting an obduction at about that
time (Dempster & Bluck 1991). Near Callander, a sliver of
distal, shelf-type Lower Cambrian limestones, overlaps in
age with this cooling age. The association and relationship to
the fault history of both these slivers is uncertain but is
likely to be related to the convergence of the Midland
Valley and Dalradian terranes (see Fig. 2).
(2) Ordovician. Undoubted rocks of Ordovician age
have been described (Curry et al. 1982) and these are
overlain by sedimentary rocks which are themselves overlain
by Old Red Sandstone rocks. The latter, formerly regarded
as approximately Devonian are now thought to be well into
the Silurian (Thirlwall 1988; Richardson et al. 1984). This
part of the Highland Border Complex is therefore likely to
be essentially Ordovician in age and comprises limestones,
black shales, metamorphic rocks and basic-ultrabasic
igneous bodies.
The juxtaposition of the Highland Border Complex with
the Dalradian block is incongruous in that the Dalradian
block which was being uplifted in Ordovician time should
have been yielding sediment to a coeval basin now
preserved in the Highland Border Complex (Bluck 1985).
The fact that it did not, suggested that the two blocks were
not near each other in Ordovician times. This in turn
suggested that there was a substantial displacement on the
Highland Boundary Fault and one or both were displaced
terranes in the sense used by workers on the W USA.
Tanner (1994) has recently suggested that the earlier
work of Johnson & Harris (1967); Harris & Fettes (1972)
and others in having the Highland Border Complex or part
of it belonging to the Dalradian, may be correct. This would
therefore remove the evidence for the Highland Boundary
Fault being a terrane boundary of any significance. This
would appear to be the classical case of weighing the
evidence from the fault zone itself against the evidence from
Fig. 2. Diagram illustrating the history

of the blocks on either side of the
Highland Boundary Fault zone (HBFZ)
and how this is recording the interaction
of the blocks north and south of the
fault. Peneplain 1, refers to the Late
Silurian peneplain as recorded for
example in the Lorne area where Late
Silurian lavas rest on a flat Dalradian
surface; Peneplain 2 is the Late
Devonian-Carboniferous peneplanation.
the history of the blocks on either side. However, if it is

agreed that there is a major break between the Dalradian
and Highland Border Complex then it is instructive to see if
younger rocks at the Highland Border have recorded the
amalgamation of the two disparate blocks.
(3) S i l u r i a n - D e v o n i a n rocks of this age occur in the
asymmetrical Strathmore syncline which runs parallel with
the outcrop of the Highland Boundary Fault. On the steep
northern limb of the syncline, the Highland Border Complex
provided the basin floor for the Old Red Sandstone south of
the fault as the Dalradian does to a few outliers of Old Red
Sandstone to the north. The Highland Border Complex was
therefore flat lying or gently dipping at the begining of Old
Red Sandstone time.
The provenance of the sediment of this age in the basins
north and south of the faults is very different despite being
of roughly the same age: Dalradian clasts dominate the
sequences to the north and polycyclic quartzites and
volcanic rocks dominate the very much thicker sequences to
the south. These basins south of the fault have no
unequivocal Dalradian clasts in them, but the Dalradian
block could not have been far away from the Strathmore
basin on its southern side as an ignimbritic flow overlies
both Dalradian and Strathmore basin sediment. Clearly this
was a time of terrane amalgamation, when the Midland
Valley and Dalradian blocks were joining together but not
clearly exchanging sediment. The two basins north and
south of the fault are clearly not displaced margins of one
single basin, but are distinctive basins which have been
brought together by subsequent fault movement and
intervening ground has been lost in this convergence. One
stage of that convergence history occurred before the
deposition of the Upper Old Red Sandstone when the
Lower ORS was folded into the asymmetrical Strathmore
syncline. The axis of this syncline runs parallel to the
Highland Boundary Fault and indicated a thrust convergence in this zone (Fig. 2)
By Upper Old Red Sandstone times, in a coarse
fanglomerate near the Highland Boundary Fault in the SW
Midland Valley, the first clasts of unequivocal Dalradian
provenance entered the Midland Valley sequence (Fig. 2). A
62
B.J.
Ma
450
--
NW HIGHLANDS
500
DALRADIAN
BLOCK
Reburial
Cambro-Ordovician
Erosion of mountain b e l t
550
Torridonian
Collapse of Dalradian basin
600
650
Dalradian basin
700
750
--
800
Torridonian basin
Gondwanan b a s e m e n t
Fig. 3. Diagram showing the nature of the late Proterozoic history

of the foreland (west of Moine thrust) and Dalradian blocks. When
there was a passive margin on the west of the Moine Thrust, there
was the large expanse of ductile folded and at least partly
metamorphosed rock lying to the west. Bluck & Dempster (1991)
point out this paradox.
slight relative uplift of the Dalradian is probable at this time,
possibly as a result of further convergence of the Midland
Valley and Dalradian terranes.
(4) Carboniferous. Carboniferous volcanic and sedimentary rocks transgressed the fault to rest on Dalradian, but
subsequent movement in the fault zone alternately threw
Carboniferous rocks down to the northwest and to the
southeast.
The Highland Boundary Fault has a fairly complete
record of the movements along it and from reading these in
terms of the history of the blocks on either side a
convergence history can be reconstructed. But this has to be
read from the a study along the fault: any one locality may
record only its latest (post-Carboniferous) movement. In
this respect it is similar to the many terrane boundary faults
seen elsewhere in the world.
Back to the Great Glen

Armed with the degrees of freedom which the concepts of
plates and terranes have given and in the light of the more
intensive examination of faults which these concepts have
stimulated, the Great Glen Fault can be now approached
with a very different mind from the one which took
Kennedy there some 50 years ago. But a bigger framework
of knowledge brings with it a wider range of prejudice.
Examination of terrane boundaries, such as the Highland
BLUCK
Boundary Fault, has taught the geological community to be
suspicious of reading the history of fundamental fractures in
terms only of the displacements which we can now observe:
these may be young modifications produced on reactivation
of the older fractures. The magnitude and role of the fault is
often demonstated by critically examining the whole history
of the rocks which lie on either side of it. Moreover some of
that history is often written in the slivers which occur along
its entire length.
The Great Glen Fault is thought to extend into the
Shetland Isles where it is identified as the Walls Boundary
Fault (Flinn 1992). Its extension to the southwest is far less
certain but it is clear that its great length through Scotland
can be matched only by its poor exposure compared with
the other large fractures. A critical line of evidence, the
composition and history of the blocks within the fault zone
as used in the Highland Boundary Fault, is not widely
available on this fracture. However, there is ample exposure
of the rocks on either side over a considerable lateral
distance, and Kennedy made dramatic use of them in his
original work.
Since Kennedy's time there has been much work done
on attempting to establish the nature, timing and magnitude
of the movements on the Great Glen Fault. Palaeomagnetic
measurements have led to a view of unusually large
displacements (Van der Voo & Scotese 1981; Storetvedt
1987) which are usually unacceptable because of the
constraints of the existing geology on either side of the fault
and more rigorous palaeomagnetic studies (Torsvik 1984).
But others have estimates which vary greatly amongst
themselves in timing, amount and nature of displacement.
Rogers & Dunning (1991) and Hutton & McErlean (1991)
show clear evidence for sinistral shear in the region of the
Great Glen at c. 425 Ma. Hutton & McErlean (1991) see
further evidence for sinistral movements contemporaneously
with the intrusion of dykes at 410-395 Ma. The main source
of this evidence comes not from the fault itself but from
shears thought to be related to it. Although movement along
the fault itself is difficult to establish, Donovan & Mayerhoff
(1982), Parnell (1982) and Rogers et al. (1989) have
appealed to displacements of the Old Red Sandstone
outcrops in the Moray Firth region. Rogers et al. (1989)
suggest post-Frasnian to pre-Permain dextral movements of
2 5 - 1 2 0 k m movement, but Flinn (1992) deduces a
pre-Carboniferous sinistral net movement of c. 100 km and a
dextral 65 km movement in Jurassic times.
Most of the discussion of the Great Glen Fault, both
recently and at the time of Kennedy, has concentrated on
establishing the magnitude of its throw. In the light of
terrace accretion tectonics the whole emphasis with respect
to major faults has changed: the throw of the fault is now
subordinate to its role. From the more recent work on the
three major Scottish fractures to the south, and particularly
illustrated by the Highland Boundary Fault (Fig. 2), major
fractures are evaluated on the following criteria.
(1) Degree of separation of the two blocks on either side of
the fracture: were they great distances apart? At this
stage oceanic crust normally separates the blocks.
(2) The history of amalgamation of the blocks.
(3) Their post-amalgamation history.
Magnitudes or throws of displacement have relevance
only to the third and possibly to part of the second of these
criteria. The work on the Great Glen Fault so far, including
Kennedy's, has addressed only the third and possibly second
W. Q. K E N N E D Y & THE G R E A T GLEN F A U L T

of these criteria: it is clear that the fault, in Silurian and
post-Silurian, times can be regarded as undergoing relatively
minor adjustments. In order to establish if it is a
terrane-scaled fracture satisfying the first of the above
criteria, it is necessary to examine the pre-Silurian history of
the blocks on either side and evaluate the compatiblity of
their histories.
The pre-Silurian Great Glen fault

The pre-Silurian rocks on either side of the Great Glen fault
are basements of various ages and associations (Fig. 1). The
ways of reading basement history are very different from
ways of reading the Palaeozoic history as it has been applied
to the ground further south. Although the basement history
may not be subject to the same degree of rigour, its
evaluation should not be based on no rigour at all, and if
one considers that the Scottish Highlands are amongst the
most intensively worked basement areas in the world, there
should emerge some substantial criteria by which to evaluate
the role of the Great Glen fault in terms of the basements
on either side of it. As with the analysis of the Scottish
terranes to the south, it is important first to establish the
blocks and then their boundaries.
There are four recognized basement blocks to the south
of the Great Glen Fault.
(1) The furthest south is the Dalradian block which
comprises a passive margin type sequence (Anderton 1985)
which has been repeatedly folded up to four times. An early
phase of folding (Tanner & Leslie 1994) and possibly a
phase of metamorphism is cut by the Ben Vuirich granite
which is 590 + 2 Ma (Rogers et al. (1989) or 597 = +11 Ma
(Pidgeon & Compston 1992), and some of the subsequent
fold phases are seen to post-date the intrusion. After a
substantial gap of c. 75Ma, a major cooling event was
recorded so the Dalradian block, if the data relating to Ben
Vuirich are accepted, was probably subject to two periods of
metamorphism.
(2) To the northwest of the Dalradian lies the Grampian
Group that comprises, as far as can be read, a shelf-like
sequence which is apparently cut by the c. 750 Ma suite of
pegmatite sheets. Many workers (e.g. Harris et al. 1978)
include the Grampian Group within the Dalradian sequence
and point out, along with Treagus (1987) and Winchester
(1992), that there is a transition between them. These rocks
are, in turn, at least partly in shear contact with rocks of the
Central Highland Division
(3) The Central Highland Division comprises migmatitic
gneisses the age of which is uncertain but which have been
correlated with Moine rocks on the north side of the Great
Glen fault (Piasecki & Van Breemen 1982). Southwest,
along the Great Glen, the Central Highland Division is cut
out of the sequence, and rocks of the Grampian Group lie in
contact with faults near to and parallel with the Great Glen
Fault (Phillips et al. 1993).
(4) Further to the southwest, on the islands of Colonsay
and Islay rocks previously thought to be Lewisian have now
been shown to be Ketilidian (Marcantonio et al. 1988).
The Central Highland Division has many similarities
with the Moine rocks to the north and most workers accept
them to belong to the same group. This view of continuity
across the Great Glen is supported by the presence of the
c. 750 Ma group of pegmatites along some of the notable
shears within both the Moine on the northern side and the
63
Central Highland Division to the south. There is therefore

no evidence for post-750 Ma displacement of terrane scale
along this zone.
There are however a number of important points to bear
in mind before assigning the Great Glen fault to the
category of a minor fracture.
(1) There is a considerable similarity in late Proterozoic
sediments throughout areas of the world, and to some extent
the distinctiveness of sedimentary sequences is often
variably obscured when they are metamorphosed. In
addition dykes and sheets can be intruded over a wide area
in extensional regimes, although this applies to basic more
than to acid ones. These considerations may still leave room
for considerable displacement along the fault.
(2) There is an ophiolitic assemblage in the Feltar mass
in the Shetland Isles, and at the SW Scottish end of the
fault, is Ketilidian crust which does not have clear
associations with much else in Scotland. Terrane-scaled
movement most commonly take place on oceanic crust
which often gets preserved somewhere along the fracture.
(3) The history of the rocks on the northern side of the
Great Glen is also puzzling and not easily related to those
on the south. They are thought to rest on gneisses
considered to be Lewisian and are now recognized to be
polymetamorphic. The earliest metamorphic episode was
thought to be pre-750 Ma, the age of a suite of pegmatites
which are found in some of the slides (Piasecki & van
Breemen 1982). The later, c. 460 Ma metamorphic event was
accompanied by at least three folded thrust sheets (Barr et
al. 1986) which involved ductile translation towards the
WNW at temperatures estimated to be c. 600 C (Barr et al.
1986). Retrogression began at c. 440 Ma with cooling ages
down to c. 400 Ma. There are three problems raised by these
data.
(1) The Moine at 460 Ma (Caradoc) and at its present
level would need to have a cover of c. 20 km to maintain the
temperatures prevailing at that time (Soper & Barber 1982),
and even at 420 Ma (Ludlovian) the rocks were at c. 350 C
implying, at reasonable geothermal gradients, a cover of at
least 10km. The nature, source and the means of
post-Caradoc disposal of this cover are uncertain.
(2) This type of deformation and metamorphism implies
plate-scale interactions, but the Dalradian block lies beween
the Moine and the paratectonic zone. Along with the
cooling of the Moine the Dalradian also cooled rapidly at
460 Ma--as did many metamorphic blocks southwest along
strike in the Appalachians.
The provenance of the cover to the Moine can only be
speculated, but there are a number of possibilities (see
Bluck & Dempster 1991). It could either:
(a) have been rooted in the area now the Great Glen fault;
(b) have come over both the Dalradian and the Moine and
be rooted to the south of the Dalradian outcrop;
(c) the northern margin of the Dalradian (no longer visible)
covered the Moine.
Only in (1) above needs there have been any large scaled
movement on the Great Glen Fault.
(3) Whilst this ductile folding and metamorphic history
was taking place east of the Moine thrust, there was a
passive margin sequence being deposited to the west. Bluck
& Dempster (1991) has pointed out the paradox of this
situation (Fig. 3), and there may therefore be good reason to
examine in detail the role of the Great Glen Fault and its
subsurface relationship with the Moine Thrust.
B.J.
Conclusions
There exists no compelling evidence for the the Great Glen
Fault to have been a terrane boundary: the later history
shows throws which are not in the mega-shear class.
H o w e v e r there are anomalies in the history of the
basements on either side of the fracture, but a great deal of
work needs to be done on refining the significance of these,
the boundaries to a n o m a l o u s ground as well as on the
details of the timing of events before anything can be
resolved from them.
If ground so well k n o w n as this in Scotland can throw up
anomalies of this kind which are not resolvable with the
current state of information, then large b a s e m e n t areas the
world over must have m a n y problems yet to be discovered.
I wish to thank B. E. Leake for pointing out some details of the life
of W. Q. Kennedy, and T. Dempster, G. Rogers and N. J. Super for
valuable discussion.
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-
From
QJGS, ] 0 2 , 41-42.
THE GREAT GLEN FAULT
BY WILY.TAM QUARRIER KENNEDY, D.SC. F.G.S.
Read 8 February, 1939

[PT,AWm I I I ]
CONTENTS
I. I n t r o d u c t i o n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I I . GeneraI features of t h e dislocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(a) S t r u c t u r a l c h a r a c t e r s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(b) Topographic effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(c) Seismic a c t i v i t y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I I I . S u m m a r y of fault-line geology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
IV. The n a t u r e of t h e displacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(a) General discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(b) E v i d e n c e of lateral displacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
V. I n t e r p r e t a t i o n of m o v e m e n t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(a) Age of t h e m a i n (lateral) displacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(b) D y n a m i c s of m o v e m e n t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(c) Tectonic significance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
VI. List of works to which reference is made . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Page
42
43
43
46
46
47
52
52
54
64
64
67
70
71
S~r~ARr
The powerful dislocation which intersects Scotland along the line of the Great Glen
has, in the past, been r e g a r d e d b y most geologists as a n o r m a l or dip-slip fault with
a p r e d o m i n a n t vertical d o w n t h r o w to the south-east A reconsideration of the
~atire problem n o w suggests t h a t this view is no longer tenable and t h a t the dislocation is, in reality, a lateral-slip or wrench fault with a horizontal displacement of
approximately 65 miles. Such an interpretation is s u p p o r t e d b y several independent
lines of evidence, as follows : - (1) The dislocation possesses physical characters unlike those of most n o r m a l
faults b u t similar to the g r e a t strike-slip shears of the California Coast Range.
(2) I t belongs to t h e same s y s t e m as the S t r a t h c o n o n , E r i c h t - L a i d o n a n d Loch
Tay faults, all of which h a v e p r o v e d lateral displacements of up to 5 miles.
(3) I t displaces t h e g r e a t belt of regional injection which affects the Moine Schists
of the n o r t h e r n a n d G r a m p i a n Highlands, the n a t u r e a n d a m o u n t of the displacement
being consistent w i t h lateral shift b u t not with vertical d o w n t h r o w .
(4) I t similarly displaces t h e m e t a m o r p h i c zones of t h e H i g h l a n d s in an equally
significant m a n n e r .
(5) I t t r u n c a t e s t h e S t r o n t i a n Granite, the southern p o r t i o n of which, according
to the detailed s t r u c t u r a l evidence, is missing. The missing portion, moreover, can
be identified in t h e F o y e r s mass which outcrops on the o t h e r side of the fault-line
some 65 miles to t h e n o r t h - e a s t a n d is similarly t r u n c a t e d b y the fault. These two
m a j o r Caledonian intrusions consist of identical rock t y p e s a n d are s t r u c t u r a l l y
homologous.
(6) Finally, t h e occurrence of Lewisian a n d Torridonian rocks in I s l a y and Colonsay
and t h e presence of t h e Moine Thrust-plane in the former island are more readily
explained on the a s s u m p t i o n of a lateral r a t h e r t h a n a vertical displacement along
the fault.
A l t h o u g h the dislocation is still active, the available evidence indicates t h a t the
mare lateral m o v e m e n t was accomplished prior to t h e deposition of the Upper
Carboniferous s e d i m e n t s of LochaHne a n d subsequent to t h e intrusion of the S t r o n t i a n
and F o y e r s (Lower Old R e d Sandstone) granites. Middle Old R e d Sandstone s t r a t a
along t h e G r e a t Glen h a v e , moreover, suffered intense crushing and d e f o r m a t i o n
during t h e faulting, w h i c h m u s t , therefore, be referred p a r t l y if n o t wholly to a postMiddle Old R e d S a n d s t o n e epoch.
The sinistral n a t u r e of t h e displacement, i.e. t o w a r d s the south-west on the northwest side of t h e f r a c t u r e a n d t o w a r d s the north-east on its south-east side, implies
t h e o p e r a t i o n of a stress s y s t e m involving regional compression a c t i n g in a general
n o r t h - a n d - s o u t h direction a c c o m p a n i e d by an east-and-west relief of pressure. This
is r e g a r d e d as evidence of the fact t h a t the Herc).~ian forces, to which the f o r m a t i o n
of t h e G r e a t Glen F a u l t is ascribed, were a l r e a d y m o p e r a t i o n during Upper Old R e d
S a n d s t o n e or L o w e r Carboniferous times.
P-T-t
evolution of orogenic belts and the causes of regional metamorphism

MICHAEL
BROWN
Department of Geology, University o f Maryland at College Park, College Park, M D 20742, USA
Abstract: Barrow (1893) introduced three important ideas that furthered understanding of metamorphic processes: (i) the use of critical index minerals in argillaceous rocks to define metamorphic zones
and elucidate spatial features of regional metamorphism; (ii) the concept of progressive metamorphism; and (iii) the concept of magmatic advection of heat as a possible cause of regional metamorphism. This article expands upon these themes by reviewing our understanding of the dynamic evolution
of orogenic belts as interpreted from the P-T-t paths of metamorphic rocks, and by considering the
likely causes of the different kinds of regional metamorphism that we observe within orogenic belts.
Understanding metamorphic rocks allows the distinction of two fundamentally different types of
orogenic belt defined by relative timing of maximum T and maximum P. Orogenic belts characterized
by clockwise P - T paths achieved maximum P before maximum T, the metamorphic peak normally
post-dated early deformation within the belt and additional heating above the 'normal' conductive flux
has been related to the amount of overthickening. By contrast, orogenic belts characterized by
counterclockwise P-T paths achieved maximum T before maximum P, the metamorphic peak
normally pre-dated or was synchronous with early deformation within the belt and additional heating
above the 'normal' conductive flux has been related to the emplacement of plutons. Techniques used
to constrain portions of P-T-t paths include: the use of mineral inclusion suites in porphyroblasts and
reaction textures; thermobarometry; the use of fluid inclusions; thermodynamic approaches such as
the Gibbs method; radiogenic isotope dating; fission track studies; and numerical modelling. We can
utilize specific mineral parageneses in suitable rocks to determine individual P-T-t paths, and a set of
P-T-t paths from one orogenic belt allows us to interpret the spatial variation in dynamic evolution
of the metamorphism. Recent advances are reviewed with reference to collision metamorphism,
high-temperature-low-pressure metamorphism, granulite metamorphism, and subduction zone metamorphism, and some important directions for future work are indicated.
of zones to include, in order of decreasing metamorphic

grade below the staurolite zone, a garnet zone, a biotite
zone and a zone of digested clastic mica, bounded at lower
grade by a local margin with clastic mica, and to formalize
the sillimanite zone on the map.
In the discussion of Barrow's 1893 paper, Teall
commented that 'It appeared p r o b a b l e . . , that the line
separating the sillimanite zone from the cyanite zone was an
isothermal'. This point was picked up by Barrow in his 1912
paper which included a description of how a metamorphic
zone is defined, as follows: 'Proceeding across Zone i we
reach rocks in which biotite is developed; this marks the
commencement of Zone ii. But no matter how far to the
north-west we go, brown mica is usually present in many of
the rocks; so that the distance to which it extends has no
zonal value; it is the line marking the first oncoming or the
'outer limit' of the mineral that gives the zonal line. Farther
north-west the common (non-calcareous) garnet is met with;
this, too, extends into the highest zones, so that again the
line showing its first oncoming or 'outer limit' is the zonal
line . . . . It gradually becomes clear that these 'outer limit'
lines correspond with isothermals; i.e., they indicate the
point where the rocks have been raised to a sufficiently high
temperature to develop the index-mineral of the zone'.
In the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society for
1924, Tilley proposed the replacement of Barrow's 'local
margin with clastic mica' and 'zone of digested clastic mica'
by the zone of chlorite. Tilley argued that chlorite is a
typical mineral of the lowest zone of metamorphism and
This review takes as its starting point the classic article

published in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society
in 1893 by George Barrow 'On an I N T R U S I O N of
MUSCOVITE-BIOTITE
GNEISS
in the S O U T H E A S T E R N H I G H L A N D S of S C O T L A N D , And Its
A C C O M P A N Y I N G M E T A M O R P H I S M ' . It is instructive
to note, in the centennial year of this paper, that one of the
questions still debated in metamorphic geology was its
underlying theme, namely what is the principal cause of
regional metamorphism, as reflected in Barrow's introductory statement 'It is proposed to show in the present
communication that this area contains several masses of
intrusive rock which are probably connected underground,
and that the highly crystalline character of the surrounding
schists is mainly the result of thermometamorphism'. That
paper represents the first attempt to bring precision to a
study of regional metamorphism by publishing a 'map of a
portion of North-East Forfarshire embracing the area of
outcrop of the muscovite-biotite-gneiss, and showing the
zones of occurrence of the silicates of alumina which are
connected with the intrusion'. The map (Barrow 1893, plate
XV) illustrated a staurolite zone, a cyanite [sic] zone and
indicated an area where sillimanite occurs, referred to as a
sillimanite zone in the text. In the explanation of plate X V
Barrow wrote 'The zones of staurolite- and cyanite-gneiss or
schist really represent the variation in height above the
upper limit of the underlying gneiss'. Nineteen years later
Barrow extended the area of his zonal metamorphic map to
the Highland fault, at the same time increasing the number
67
68
M. BROWN
that it generally decreases in amount as successive

higher-grade zones are entered, interpreted to reflect its
consumption during synthesis of higher-grade index
minerals. Furthermore, as Tilley pointed out, white mica
persists throughout, and is often very abundant in the
higher-grade zones. Finally, it was Tilley who explicitly
made the point that rocks of restricted chemical composition
must be utilized for such zonal mapping, as follows 'The
widespread distribution of sediments of argillaceous t y p e . . .
at once marks o u t . . , these rocks as a suitable group in
which to study successive and progressive mineral changes.
Such are the rocks which Barrow used in his zonal
m a p p i n g . . . ' . Thus was established the classic sequence of
index minerals that commonly develop in pelites during
'normal' regional metamorphism, widely referred to as
'Barrow's zones of progressive regional metamorphism'; this
particular sequence of index minerals is diagnostic of
medium-P regional metamorphism which traditionally has
been referred to as 'Barrovian metamorphism'.
In addition to producing a map of metamorphic zones
characierized by specific index minerals, Barrow (1893)
considered the reasons for the great extent of the area
affected and the intensity of the alterations produced by
what he called the 'thermometamorphism of the Southeastern Highlands.' Barrow wrote '... we are led to the
conclusion that these gneisses occur in huge sills or laccolites
[sic] having approximately horizontal upper s u r f a c e s . . , it
follows that one of the chief factors in increasing or
decreasing metamorphism of rocks affected must be the
variation in depth of the sills below the surface.., the
intensity of the metamorphism is doubtless largely due to
the great depth below the surface of the rocks affected by
the intrusion.' Finally, Barrow commented that ' . . . these
special features m a y . . , be due to the depth in the earth's
crust at which the metamorphism took place, rather than to
any physical conditions peculiar to early geological t i m e . . .
and strengthens Dr. Barrois's conclusion that 'regional metamorphism and contact-metamorphism are much the same
thing". Barrow's depth of geological understanding is
reflected in his interpretation, in his 1912 paper, of his
regional metamorphic map (Barrow 1912, folding map), as
follows 'A key to the form of the zones of this area of
regional metamorphism is given by the 'outer limit' lines of
the sillimanite zone (6) and of the biotite zone (2).
. . sillimanite-bearing rocks occur over an area of, roughly,
200 square m i l e s . . , roughly t r i a n g u l a r . . , but the line
marking the outer limit of biotite is almost s t r a i g h t . . . (3)
defining the limit of garnet, slowly diverges from the (2) just
described. The divergence is more marked in the case of
staurolite (4); its boundary begins to assume a rude
parallelism with (6), defining the outer limit of sillimanite.
The parallelism is still closer in the case of cyanite (5) . . . .
It thus gradually becomes apparent that while the line
marking the lower zones is almost straight, the intermediate
zones surround lenticles of the most highly altered rocks
containing sillimanite; further, the whole masses of
crystalline rocks are somewhat lenticular in f o r m . . . It thus
appears that the Highland a r e a . . , is essentially built up on
the lines of an aureole of metamorphism around a granite
intrusion; but instead of aureoles we have zones or belts
which diverge more and more from a lenticular, highly
crystalline nucleus, until the lines bordering the lower
temperature zones are nearly straight.' Thus, Barrow was
firmly convinced that this regional metamorphic terrane is
nothing more than a large-scale contact aureole around

numerous small granitic intrusions; he saw no essential
difference between regional and contact metamorphism
Although Barrow's work is widely known today, at least
through the naming of medium-pressure regional metamorphism and associated metamorphic field gradients as
'Barrovian', it was not well known early during this century
in Europe, possibly because of the rather non-informative
title of his 1893 paper (above). Indeed, Goldschmidt (1916,
summarized in Mason 1992), was able to map zones of
progressive metamorphism in the Trondhjem district of the
Norwegian Caledonides marked by the index minerals
chlorite, biotite and garnet in argillaceous sediments,
unaware of the earlier work of Barrow in the southeast
Highland of Scotland. In a clear example of the parallel
development of ideas in science, Goldschmidt had
summarized the aim of his research in his inaugural lecture
as Professor of Mineralogy at the University of Stockholm
on 28 September 1914 (quoted in Mason 1992, from a
translation by G. Kullerud) with the following 'It is . . . of
great i n t e r e s t . . , to determine the physical conditions under
which an individual mineral has been formed It is of much
greater i m p o r t a n c e . . , to study thoroughly a sizeable area
in order to investigate the temperature-pressure distribution
during a certain geological era. Such an investigation, no
doubt the first of its kind, is being performed by myself in
the Norwegian mountain areas, from Ryfylke (near
Stavanger) to Trondhjemsfjorden, in order to determine the
temperature and pressure conditions in this part of the
earth's crust during the formation of the Norwegian
Caledonides at the beginning of the Devonian . . . the sum
of all observations gives us a picture of the temperaturepressure distribution during the formation of a mountain
chain.' Indeed, Goldschmidt could not have described better
the aim of modern metamorphic petrology.
During the 100 years since publication of Barrow's
seminal paper, Scotland has proven to be a fertile ground
for the development of ideas in metamorphism. With
respect to the zonal distribution of metamorphism and the
quantitative estimation of P and T, the reader is referred to
Chinner (1966), Atherton (1977) and Harte & Hudson
(1979). Metamorphic reactions in the higher grade zones of
the Barrovian type area have been investigated by McLellan
(1985), who has emphasized also the importance of both
sub-solidus and anatectic processes in the generation of
migmatite leucosomes (McLellan 1983, 1989) interpreted by
Barrow (1893) to be related to the granites by fractionation.
Orogeny and regional metamorphism

Orogeny is characterized by a distinctive relationship
between sedimentation, tectonic deformation, regional
metamorphism and magmatism. It leads to structural
inversion of sedimentary basins, mountain building and
eventual exhumation of metamorphic belts, either during
the same cycle or subsequently. Modern orogenic belts are
located at convergent plate boundaries and along lines of
continental and/or arc collisions. Orogenesis is responsible
for crustal differentiation through anatexis and transfer of
granitic magma from the lower crust to the upper crust,
leaving behind a depleted residuum.
Large tracts of the continents of the Earth are formed by
rocks that have been metamorphosed on a regional scale,
that is, their secondary mineral assemblages indicate that
P-T-t
E V O L U T I O N OF O R O G E N I C BELTS
these regions have been subjected to elevated temperatures

and pressures at some time in their past. Generally accepted
tectonic settings for regional metamorphism are continental
margins associated with subduction, such as the west coast
of South America; island arcs, such as those of Southeast
Asia; and zones of continental collision, such as the Alps
and Himalayas. Traditionally, such regional metamorphism
has been separated from metamorphism that occurs in
aureoles surrounding intrusives, so-called contact metamorphism, because of the scale of the area affected on the
one hand and because of the spatial relationship to the
intrusive heat source on the other hand. However, to
maintain that metamorphism of regional extent shows no
apparent relation to intrusive rocks as heat sources is to
deny one of the main conclusions of Barrow's 1893 paper.
Indeed, magmatic arcs at convergent plate boundaries are a
locus for plutonic magmatism and, as a consequence,
contact metamorphism, and such a relationship occurs on a
regional scale (e.g. Barton & Hanson i989). The
observation that belts of regional metamorphism typically
contain abundant intrusive rocks leads to the postulate
implied in Barrow's paper that intrusive rocks collectively
increase the regional thermal gradient and might be a
primary cause of some regional metamorphism, even though
in the particular case discussed by Barrow the 'intrusive
rocks' are sub-solidus and anatectic migmatites (McLellan
1983, 1989). On the other hand, Harker (1932) emphasized
that regional metamorphism is characterized by both a wide
areal extent and a regional-scale temperature distribution,
as shown by mineral zones, independent of the distribution
of individual plutonic masses. It is plausible that medium-P
regional metamorphism may grade with decreasing crustal
depth into regional-scale contact metamorphism; an
example, likely representing such an oblique crustal section,
may be the New England Appalachians from Connecticut to
Maine (Tracy & Robinson 1980; Armstrong et al. 1992; De
Yoreo et al. 1989a, b).
69
values of mantle heat flux, thermal conductivity and heat

production.
Progressive regional m e t a m o r p h i s m
In detail, regional metamorphic terranes have been

classified by their mineral assemblages into facies series
types such as andalusite-sillimanite, kyanite-sillimanite and
jadeite-glaucophane (Miyashiro 1961). It is implicit in this
classification that an entire metamorphic terrane can be
described by a single geothermal gradient and that
higher-grade mineral assemblages develop from lower-grade
ones similar to those now found along the present erosion
surface. This view derives directly from Barrow (1893) who
argued that the sequential development of a coarse-grained
sillimanite-gneiss from a kyanite-gneiss, and the kyanitegneiss from a staurolite-schist within one continuous
stratigraphic horizon, presented a conclusive proof of
progressive metamorphism. However, metamorphism is not
a static process but an evolutionary one. With our
acceptance of a dynamic tectonic environment for regional
metamorphism, we realize now that rocks follow more
complex routes in P - T space, reflecting burial, heating and
exhumation. This does not negate the concept of progressive
metamorphism, and it is likely that, with the exception of
circumstances in which heating rates are relatively rapid, the
progressive model for medium- to high-grade segments of
P - T paths is essentially correct, but the sequential change is
not simply the one observed by following the sequence of
assemblages along the metamorphic field gradient. The
traditional view has been replaced by one in which
individual rocks (e.g. Thompson & England 1984) and
minerals (e.g. Spear & Selverstone 1983) can be used to
derive paths in P - T space, that can be related to the
tectonic setting (e.g. England & Thompson 1984). The
derivation of such paths along the length and breadth of an
orogenic belt enables us to unravel the three-dimensional
reality of orogenic processes.
Paired m e t a m o r p h i c belts
Some metamorphic terranes have developed as paired belts,

in which one member is characterized by high-temperature
metamorphism and the development of migmatites and
anatectic granites, and is interpreted as having been
developed at a site of high heat flow such as that beneath an
associated volcanic arc; the other member is characterized
by blueschists and eclogites that indicate relatively low
geothermal gradients and relatively high-pressure conditions, interpreted as having been developed at a site of low
heat flow such as a subduction zone. Commonly, the first
member is referred to as a low-pressure-high-temperature
metamorphic belt, although many such belts exhibit a
high-pressure history prior to the development of the final
low-pressure mineral assemblage as in the Abukuma Plateau
(Kano & Kuroda 1968; Hiroi & Kishi 1989) and in Southern
Brittany (Cogn6 1960; Jones & Brown 1990). Intrusions
advecting heat are commonly proposed as the cause of the
thermal anomaly for these high-temperature metamorphic
belts because of the abnormally high geothermal gradients
implied (De Yoreo et al. 1991; Furlong et al. 1991).
However, Treloar & Brown (1990) have shown that
moderate overthickening of sedimentary basins during
structural inversion may lead to high-temperature metamorphism at mid-to-lower crustal depths for reasonable
P - T - t paths of metamorphism
Two fundamentally different types of orogenic belt are
distinguished by relative timing of maximum T and
maximum P, as revealed by metamorphic rocks within the
belt. One type of orogenic belt is characterized by an
evolutionary path in P - T space that is clockwise (Fig. 1;
CW paths). Orogenic belts of this type are generated by
basin inversion or crustal thickening followed by erosional
exhumation and/or extensional thinning and/or lithospheric
delamination and orogenic collapse (Oxburgh & Turcotte
1974; Bird et al. 1975; Houseman et al. 1981; Thompson
1981; Thompson & England 1984; Thompson & Ridley
1987). Orogenic belts characterized by clockwise P - T paths
achieved maximum P before maximum T, and the
metamorphic peak normally post-dated early deformation
within the belt. Such an evolutionary path will lead to
decompression dehydration-melting of common crustal rock
types (Thompson 1982, 1990; Jones & Brown 1990), and
may lead to granite magmatism which is a consequence of
the regional metamorphism (e.g. Patin6-Douce et al. 1990).
Experiments on natural rock compositions (Le Breton &
Thompson 1988; Rushmer 1991) and the results of thermal
models (De Yoreo et al. 1989a) indicate significant volumes
of crustal melt can be generated through crustal thickening.
70
M. BROWN
500
700
900
1100
70
CW
17.5
15.0
CWa
50
12.5
N
.{3
10.0
~[_
09
30
7.5
5.0
2.5
Ms(ss) Ab Q t z / \ a5 ~1 ~3 ~
CCW
for
500
/ BA
10
TC
AIs V
700
900
Indeed, significant amounts of melt are generated for

overthickening as small as 10-15 km (see De Yoreo et al.
1989a) and De Yoreo (1988) has shown that partially molten
(>0.3 melt fraction) sections of crust substantially thicker
than 1 km may be generated in less than 40 Ma. Crustal
anatexis may be a normal consequence of some types
of high-temperature metamorphism, particular those which
involve decompression at high temperature (e.g. Jones &
Brown 1990). The relationship between anatectic migmatites
and higher-level granites has been considered by D'Lemos et
al. (1992), and the thermal consequences of crustal melting
have been considered by Haugerud & Zen (1991) who make
the point that the complement of a high-level zone of
heating by magmatic injection is a zone of retarded heating
in the middle-to-lower crust because melting buffers the
geothermal gradient. The issue of magmatic advection
driving high-temperature metamorphism v. crustal melting
to derive granites subsequently emplaced into the
high-temperature metamorphic belt needs to be resolved on
an individual basis.
-1"he other type 0i~ orogenic belt is characterized by an
evolutionary path in P - T space which has a counterclockwise direction (Fig. 1; CCW path). In such an evolution,
heating preceded crustal thickening or the two may have
1100
Fig. 1. Pressure-temperature diagram

to show: (1) Some of the initial melting
reactions in metapelites (from Thompson 1990, and primary references
therein). (2) Initial melting reactions for
amphibolites, including the H20saturated solidus for olivine tholeiite and
an approximate H20-saturated solidus
for quartz tholeiite based upon albite +
quartz + H20 (after Thompson 1990 and
primary references therein). (3) P - T - t
paths (CW; 50 km and 70 km depth after
thickening) for thickening of continental
crust from 35 km to 70 km, followed by
erosional thinning in 100 million years,
after a post-thickening isobaric metamorphism of 20 million years for an
initially 'hot' geotherm that certainly
reaches granulite facies conditions (after
Thompson 1990 and primary references
therein). (4) P - T - t path (CCW) for
heating followed by crustal thickening
and near isobaric cooling (after Thompson 1990 and primary references
therein). CW, clockwise path in P - T
space; CCW, counterclockwise path in
P-T space; GWS, granite wet solidus;
BWS, basalt wet solidus; IAT, island arc
tholeiite; BA, alkali basalt. Reactions
and processes that occur as a consequence of evolution along these paths
(a-j and p-y) are discussed in Brown
(1993).
gone hand-in-hand. Models to generate such counterclockwise paths include intraplating of mantle-derived magmas
(Bohlen 1987, 1991; Bohlen & Mezger 1989) and crustal
thickening with concomitant mantle lithosphere thinning
(Loosveld & Etheridge 1990; Sandiford & Powell 1991).
Orogenic belts characterized by counterclockwise P - T paths
achieved maximum T before maximum P, and the
metamorphic peak normally pre-dated or was synchronous
with early deformation within the belt. Once again, such a
process will generate dehydration melting (Thompson 1990)
and may lead to granite production as a consequence of
regional metamorphism (Collins & Vernon 1991). Clockwise
and counterclockwise paths may occur in adjacent parts of
the same orogenic belt, as exemplified by the Acadian
orogenic events in the northern Appalachians (Tracy &
Robinson 1980; Schumacher et al. 1989; Armstrong et al.
1992), and illustrated in Fig. 2.
In order to unravel the history of an orogenic belt we
n e e d knowledge of the change of pressure and temperature
with time, and on the relationship of these to deformation.
Information that will enable us to address this issue
potentially includes the following: data on the type and age
of protolith lithologies and if possible the tectonic
environment of their formation; data on the P - T evolution
P-T-t
71
14
12
Western Acadian
10
L_
0
0
200
400
600
800
T (C)
Fig. 2. P - T diagram to show postulated typical P - T trajectories for
each of the metamorphic realms discussed by Armstrong et al.
(1992) from central and western New England, USA. The patterned
ovals indicate the approximate part of each trajectory at which the
peak P - T conditions were recorded. Note: for broad metamorphic
realms such as the Western Acadian and Taconian, what Armstrong
et al. have shown is only one typical path from a nested family of
similar paths.
of the metamorphic rocks; data on the relationship between

metamorphic mineral growth and deformation; age data to
constrain the timing of prograde and peak metamorphic
conditions; age data from pre-, syn- and post-orogenic
plutons; data on cooling and exhumation using various
mineral geochronometers; and the unroofing history of the
belt as reflected in the erosional debris deposited in its
foreland. Although a complete understanding of the
evolutionary history of an orogenic belt requires much or all
of this information, studies to date are rarely so complete.
Nevertheless, our understanding of the relationship between
metamorphism and tectonics has increased dramatically
during the past few years through the combination of several
of these types of field, analytical, and numerical
investigations of metamorphic P - T - t paths.
M i c r o s t r u c t u r a l studies a n d the use o f textures
The identification of clockwise v. counterclockwise paths

requires the relationship between mineral growth and
deformation to be established from textural relationships; an
example is given in Fig. 3. In effect, we need to recognize
both a sequence of overprinting metamorphic events and the
relationship between a particular mineral assemblage and
the deformation phases that have affected the rock during
thickening and exhumation. Textural analysis enables us to
establish relative timing of metamorphic and deformational
events (see Fig. 3), which may then be quantified using the
increasingly sophisticated isotopic techniques that can be
applied to individual minerals. Pioneering work on
microstructural studies, in particular the relationship
between porphyroblast growth and matrix development, was
undertaken by Zwart in the Pyrenees (1962) and Johnson in
the Scottish Highlands (1963). Careful petrographic analysis
Fig. 3. Relatively straight inclusion trails in the centre of kyanite

(Ky) porphyroblast curve through the rim (lines emphasize trail
orientation) and are consistent with early syn-foliation growth, a
conclusion supported by the overall shape of the porphyroblast
which exhibits small 'tails' that have grown into the foliation at the
top and bottom. The dominant schistosity which encloses the
kyanite porphyroblast is $2 in this particular rock, which is from the
Port aux Basques Complex in Southwest Newfoundland, Canada.
Long dimension of field of view is 4.5 mm, crossed polars.
is critical, yet many metamorphic textures are ambiguous,

and interpretations consequently may be subjective; for
example, we cannot yet agree on whether or not
porphyroblasts rotate during deformation or, more likely,
accept that in some cases porphyroblasts have rotated, but
in other cases they have not (see the debate between
Passchier et al. (1992) and Bell et al. (1992), and primary
references therein).
Suitable textures to elucidate P - T - t paths include relict
and replacement features, porphyroblast-inclusion-matrix
relationships and high strain zones cutting through
metamorphic belts that may have developed during the
exhumation part of the P - T - t path. Further, it is important
to decide which minerals, if any, might represent
equilibrium assemblages that can be used in quantitative
calculation of P - T conditions at points on the P - T - t path.
Minerals of particular growth stages can be used to elucidate
t at points on the P - T - t path. Thus, a combination of
microstructural, thermobarometric and geochronological
studies will allow the identification of a well-constrained
P - T - t - d e f o r m a t i o n path. Particularly important, but largely
unknown, is information on the rates of processes such as
heating, mineral reactions, partial melting and tectonic
72
M. BROWN
deformation; one example of such information is given by

Mezger (1990).
Equilibrium v. disequilibrium
The main development that has occurred in metamorphic
petrology during the past twenty years is the realization that
our previous obsession with 'equilibrium' ignores the
evidence of a dynamic evolution represented by mineralogical and chemical 'disequilibrium'. Equilibrium is the basis of
the metamorphic facies concept, proposed by Eskola in 1914
and developed by Goldschmidt and Eskola, in particular
during a visit by Eskola to work with Goldschmidt in Oslo
during 1919-1920 (Eskola 1920); and it is the sequence of
metamorphic facies exposed along the erosion surface
through a metamorphic belt that represents the metamorphic facies series of Miyashiro (1961). The thermodynamic
basis for the metamorphic facies concept was provided by
Thompson (1955) which set the ground for quantitative
geothermobarometrical work that has proven so profitable
in the quantification of metamorphic P and T over the last
three decades. One basic aim of modern metamorphic
petrology is to relate observed mineral assemblages to
P - T - t history and to utilize this information to distinguish

between various possible tectonic processes that may
operate in orogenic belts. To assess 'peak' P - T history, we
have relied on thermodynamics and phase equilibria, and we
have made t h e assumption that either the mineral
assemblages, through use of a petrogenetic grid, or the
mineral chemistries, utilizing thermobarometry, will reveal a
P and T that are geologically significant. If equilibrium is
achieved and preserved over significant portions of the
mineral assemblage, as reflected by completely homogeneous mineral chemistry and straight boundaries between
adjacent grains, then this procedure will be valid; but by the
very nature of equilibrium, the effects of any previous or
subsequent processes are lost completely. Thus, the
dynamics or history of a rock are relegated to a secondary
role. It follows from this discussion that a study of a whole
series of samples from a single metamorphic belt that are
thought to reflect equilibrium can only yield individual
points on each of a set of P - T - t paths and can yield no
information about the dynamic aspects of the tectonic
processes involved. Disequilibrium features in rocks,
however, reveal dynamic history because features such as
inclusions in porphyroblasts, replacement textures and
12
Fig. 4. (A) Partially resorbed garnet (Grt) from granulite facies metapelite, Sharyzhalgay complex, Lake Baikal, Russia, exhibits a partial
orthopyroxene necklace (Opx) that outlines the original garnet porphyroblast (dashed line). Inside the orthopyroxene necklace, a symplectite
(Sym) cdmposed of cordierite, orthopyroxene and biotite has partially resorbed the garnet. This delicate texture often is interpreted to
represent decompression, and indicates further that any deformation associated with decompression was concentrated in rocks other than this
one since the texture would not have survived significant ductile strain. Long dimension of field of view is 13.5 mm, plane light.
(B) Detail of rock shown in (A) to illustrate two reactions preserved by the textures. First, garnet (Grt) and quartz (Qtz) reacted to give
granular orthopyroxene (Opx) and plagioclase (PI), orthopyroxene nucleated against quartz and plagioclase nucleated against garnet (now
replaced by subsequent symplectite development). Second, during decompression garnet and quartz, probably in the presence of melt, have
reacted to cordierite (Crd), orthopyroxene and biotite (Bt) intergrown as a symplectite. This reaction has not gone to completion which
suggests that decompression was relatively rapid. Long dimension of field of view is 2.0 mm, plane light.
P-T-t
EVOLUTION OF O R O G E N I C BELTS
mineral zoning reflect a succession of changing conditions

along a P - T - t path; an example is given in Fig. 4. These
features have been utilized in an increasing number of
studies during the past ten years; see, for example,
information in Tracy (1987) and Peacock (1991b) and the
many examples of P - T - t paths collected together in the
book 'Evolution of metamorphic belts' (Daly et al. 1989).
M o d e l l i n g studies
Possible causes of temperature change in the crust include

variation in the conductive heat flux from the mantle,
advection of heat through emplacement of mantle-derived
magma into the crust, variation in the heat productivity
from radioactive decay, physico-chemical processes that
involve thermal energy such as metamorphic reactions and
melting, including magmatic transfer of heat from the lower
crust to the upper crust, depression of the crust through
thickening and elevation of the crust through thinning. The
dependence of the temperature field upon dynamic
processes and the consequent pressure-temperature-time
evolution of metamorphic rocks have been investigated
through thermal modelling of orogenic belts (for a review of
early work see Thompson 1981). This modelling has shown
that the P - T - t path a rock follows is the result of a complex
interaction between tectonic processes and heat flow/heat
generation/heat transfer mechanisms. The regional scale
complexity of metamorphic belts reflects a variety of factors
that include lateral cooling at depth along major tectonic
boundaries (Harte & Dempster 1987) and spatial variation
in thermal conditions and structural history (e.g. Jaupart &
Provost 1985; Allen & Chamberlain 1989; Sonder &
Chamberlain 1992). These variations were recognized by
Turner (1981) and Richardson (1970) and are acknowledged
in most subsequent modelling studies, which by their nature
are inherently simplified, either because of our incomplete
knowledge of the physical properties of rocks, or by
reduction of the number of dimensions from three to two, or
even to one, or by regarding certain kinds of geological
processes as instantaneous, such as thrusting during crustal
thickening (England & Thompson 1984; Shi & Wang 1987;
Haugerud 1989; Chamberlain & Sonder 1990; Peacock 1990,
1991a). Nonetheless, we are approaching a first-order
understanding of those heat and mass transfer processes that
drive metamorphism, exemplified by the saw-tooth geothermal profile that results from models of crustal thickening by
instantaneous thrusting and its subsequent evolution with
time to a new stable geothermal gradient (e.g. Thompson
1981; England & Thompson 1984).
The tectonic history of a region, the thermal history of
rocks within that region, and the P - T - t evolution of those
rocks are related. In a one-dimensional analysis, by which
we mean that the crust is regarded as composed of columns
of rock with equal physical properties and between which
there is no lateral heat transfer, this relationship can be
represented as a surface in P - T - t space. The tectonometamorphic histories of rocks are represented by lines
on this surface (Haugerud 1989, fig. 1). The projections of
such rock histories onto the three two-dimensional planes of
the P - T - t box represent the T-t paths described by the
geochronologist, the P - T paths studied by the metamorphic
petrologist and the P - t paths inferred by the tectonicist. Of
course, the strict correlation of T and t refers to the cooling
paths of a metamorphic belt; minerals that grow below their
73
blocking temperatures for which an estimate of pressure of

formation can be made may be used to relate P and t. One
approach to understanding the P - T - t evolution of rocks in
particular tectonic settings and for particular heat-transfer
mechanisms is that of forward modelling of the thermal
response to tectonism, as demonstrated, for example, by
England & Thompson (1984), Haugerud (1989) and
Chamberlain & Sonder (1990). However, the metamorphic
petrologist investigates the inverse problem, that is the
determination of P, T and t from rocks, and from these data
infers a tectonic history. A combination of the forward
approach used by the modeller and the inverse approach
used by the petrologist in understanding the P - T - t
evolution of rocks will lead to a better understanding of the
history of orogenic belts than either alone. Further, thermal
modelling allows us to determine the potential for reaction
by giving us rates and duration of overstep of particular
equilibrium boundaries, it allows us to predict when
reactions should be frozen-in and to determine the amount
of bulk difusional resetting of phases such as garnet that are
commonly compositionally zoned.
Outcomes
A variety of different techniques has been used to constrain

portions of P - T - t paths. These techniques include: the use
of mineral inclusion suites and reaction textures, for
example, in the Wopmay orogenic belt of northwest Canada
(St-Onge 1987), in Southern Brittany (Jones & Brown 1990)
and in British Columbia and New Hampshire (Selverstone
& Chamberlain 1990); thermobarometry, for example, in
Antarctica (Harley et al. 1990; Harley & Fitzsimons 1991)
and in the Arunta Complex in central Australia (Goscombe
1992); thermodynamic approaches such as the Gibbs
method, for example utilizing garnet (Spear et al. 1984;
Spear 1988, 1989); radiogenic isotope dating, for example in
the Himalayas (Zeitler 1989), the Pikwitonei granulite
domain in the Canadian Shield (Mezger 1989) and in the
New England Appalachians (Wintsch et al. 1992); the use of
fluid inclusions to constrain physical conditions during
exhumation (for example, Hollister et al. 1979); and
numerical modelling (for example, Thompson & England
1984; Chamberlain & Sonder 1990; Peacock 1990). A
number of recent reviews address methods of obtaining
P - T - t path information from metamorphic terranes, with
many examples, to which the reader is referred for more
detailed information (.Ghent et al. 1988; Daly et al. 1989;
Harley 1989; Spear & Peacock 1989; Haugerud & Zen 1991;
Hodges 1991; Jamieson 1991).
Our ability to separate partially overprinted 'equilibrium'
mineral assemblages in 'disequilibrium' rocks has enabled
the use of thermobarometry to determine different sets of
P - T data for individual rocks, although one must proceed
with due caution (Selverstone & Chamberlain 1990). The
locus of peak or slightly post-peak P - T conditions as
preserved by the mineral assemblages--the metamorphic
facies series (Miyashiro 1961), metamorphic geotherm
(England & Richardson 1977), piezothermic array (Richardson & England 1979), P - T array (Thompson & England
1984), metamorphic field gradient (Spear et al. 1984) or set
of metamorphic zones (Harte & Dempster 1987)--results
from the intersection of P - T paths for individual rocks with
the erosion surface (England & Richardson 1977). Thus,
each location along the metamorphic field gradient
74
M. B R O W N
represents a unique point of pressure, temperature and

time. Since these points generally will not be contemporaneous, the metamorphic field gradient is necessarily the
locus of diachronous P - T conditions. P - T - t paths deduced
from petrographic, thermobarometric, fluid inclusion and
geochronometric data can be the result of a single orogenic
cycle or may be the cumulative effect of several orogenic
cycles, in which case the apparent P - T - t path determined
from evidence in the rocks may have no real meaning, being
a composite of information partially preserved from more
than one path. Additionally, single-cycle P - T - t paths are
commonly represented as simple smooth curves, whereas in
reality they are likely to have a more complex form because
rates of burial and uplift, with or without magmatic heating,
vary during the orogenic cycle or because of the effects of
progressive deformation (e.g. Hames et al. 1990; Dempster
1985; Dempster & Harte 1986). An example of the
complexity that occurs in nature and of our increasing ability
to resolve such complexity is provided by Goscombe (1992)
who has separated an earlier counterclockwise P - T - t
evolution from a subsequent clockwise P - T - t evolution
within the polymetamorphic Arunta Complex in central
Australia.
One rapidly advancing area is in the development and
application of a wider range of mineral geochronometers;
this has proven particularly important in the elucidation of
prograde parts of P - T - t paths and exhumation processes.
For example, Mezger et al. (1989) have utilized the U-Pb
system on garnet to date points during the prograde
evolution of parts of the Pikwitonei granulite domain in the
Canadian Shield. With respect to the exhumation process,
the Adirondack Mountains of New York cooled at
time-integrated rates of c. 1.5 C/Ma for at least 150 million
years following the last phase of high-grade metamorphism
(Fig. 5), suggesting only limited vertical tectonic displacement and approximate isostatic equilibrium (Mezger et al.
1991). By contrast, the Southern Brittany Migmatite Belt
T (C)
700
Central
x \ \Highlands.,,.
G~u'net~,]
_ ~
600
\x
Titanite
500
Homblende
Southern
Highlands
400
-- ..
Biotite
Rutile #
Rutile
300
200
Cooling History
Adirondack Highlands
1050
1000
950
900
850
800
time (Ma)
Fig. 5. A possible temperature-time cooling path for the

Adirondack Highlands based on mineral ages of garnet, monazite,
titanite, hornblende, rutile and biotite. The solid vertical bars and
shaded areas indicate the mineral ages or range in mineral ages and
the range in estimated closure temperatures. The closure
temperatures used for the different minerals are as follows: garnet,
U-Pb, >800 C; monazite, U-Pb, 700-650 C; titanite, U-Pb,
670-500 C (depending on grain size); hornblende, 4Ar-39Ar,
500-400C; rutile, U-Pb, 430-380 C; and, biotite, 4Ar-39Ar, c.
300 C. Data from Mezger et al. (1991) to which the reader is
referred for further discussion.
900
800
700
' ~ 1
600
Cooling history
Southern Brittany
500
Monazite
~-]
Hornblende
Muscovite
400
300
Zircon
--]
Toc
Biotite
200
100
time (Ma)
i Apatite
I
I
I
I
400
350
300
250
Fig. 6. A possible temperature-time cooling path for the Southern
Brittany Migmatite Belt based on mineral ages of garnet, monazite,
hornblende, muscovite, biotite, and apatite. The boxes indicate the
range of mineral ages and the range in estimated closure
temperatures, based upon likely peak metamorphic temperatures
for zircon and fast cooling for hornblende, muscovite, biotite and
apatite. The closure temperatures used for the different minerals
are as follows: zircon, U-Pb, c. 775 C; monazite, U-Pb,
730-640 C; hornblende, 4Ar-a9Ar, c. 500 C; muscovite, 4Ar39Ar, c. 400 C; biotite, Rb-Sr, c. 325 C; and, apatite fission track,
c. 125 C. Data are from Peucat (1983) and Dallmeyer & Brown
(1992).
0
(Jones & Brown 1990) exhibits extremely rapid cooling with

time-integrated rates of c. 50C/Ma. during 10 million
years. (Fig. 6), suggesting tectonic exhumation (Dallmeyer
& Brown 1992).
Barrow's 1893 paper was concerned with spatial variations
in metamorphic grade across an orogenic belt and the
underlying causes of regional metamorphism. Much of
modern work, however, deals with evolving P-T conditions
within individual rock samples or within small parts of
orogenic belts. This contrast reflects a change in emphasis,
but we are beginning to return more to the spatial variation
in P - T - t evolution as the methodology becomes more
routine and its application more widespread across orogenic
belts. As examples, regional variations across the Scottish
Highlands have been summarized succinctly by Harte &
Hudson (1979; see also Dempster 1985 and Dempster &
Hafte 1986), and regional variations in depth of burial and
the implications for denudation history of the southern New
England Appalachians have been discussed by Zen (1991;
see also Hames et al. 1990). A major feature of European
orogenic belts is the great variety of facies types side-by-side
or superimposed. For example, the Variscan belt contains
very-high-pressure rocks over a wide area, from Poland to
Portugal, some of which have been overprinted by a
low-pressure-high-temperature metamorphism, reflected in
orthopyroxene-bearing assemblages that overprint eclogitefacies mineralogies. The spatial relationships may reflect
tectonic dismemberment of a paired metamorphic belt, and
even though the structural history may be locally complex,
the overall thermal pattern remains deeply ingrained.
R e c e n t a d v a n c e s in r e g i o n a l m e t a m o r p h i s m
Any attempt to 'cubbyhole' regional metamorphism into
types will produce some overlap between tectonic setting,
P-T-t
metamorphic processes and metamorphic rock-types.

Nonetheless, it is convenient to highlight recent advances in
our understanding of different aspects of regional metamorphism by considering four particular types of metamorphism, acknowledging that the distinction between them
is not perfect and that my selection of both types and
highlights is a personal one.
Collision metamorphism
Metamorphism that is a result of substantial crustal

thickening due to collisions between continental elements
and/or arcs dominates the literature on regional metamorphism. P - T - t
paths that result from collision
metamorphism are clockwise in P - T - t space and their
general characteristics are well understood, both from the
standpoint of actual examples, such as the Appalachians
(Armstrong et al. 1992, and references therein), the
Caledonides (Anderson et al. 1992, and references therein)
and the Himalayas (Searle et al. 1992, and references
therein) and from a theoretical standpoint in terms of the
heat transfer processes involved (England & Thompson
1984, and references therein). Recently, there has been a
dramatic increase in the use of 4Ar/39Ar methods to
determine the polymetamorphic and exhumation histories of
these metamorphic terranes (e.g. McDougall & Harrison
1988). Also, during the past decade the emphasis has shifted
from the Appalachians and Caledonides to the Himalayas;
although the former remain important both historically in
the development of ideas and in terms of ongoing research,
some of the most exciting advances have resulted from
detailed work in the Himalayas.
The Himalayan mountain chain developed as a result of
the Eocene to Recent collision between India and Eurasia;
the ongoing convergence has led to the exhumation and
exposure of the high-grade metamorphic core of the
Himalayan orogen. These high-grade metamorphic rocks of
the Greater Himalaya lie above the north-dipping Main
Central Thrust system, a major intracontinental thrust
system that accommodated a significant proportion of the
total shortening across the orogen (Le Fort 1975). The
thrust system separates the high-grade metamorphic rocks
from generally lower grade metasedimentary rocks of the
Lesser Himalaya, although the metamorphic grade of this
unit increases to the east (e.g. Swapp & Hollister 1991).
Further, metamorphic studies along the Himalayan mountain chain show that high-grade rocks occur at structurally
shallower levels than lower-grade rocks, a phenomenon
referred to as 'inverted metamorphism' (Gansser 1964). One
of the issues that remains unclear is the extent to which
polyphase metamorphism is reflected in the observed
mineral assemblages in the high-grade metamorphic core of
the Himalayan orogen (Hodges et al. 1988; Inger & Harris
1992), and the degree to which the metamorphism is
diachronous, propagating to the south (Searle et al. 1992).
Syn-metamorphic displacements on fault systems result in
thermal decoupling across such systems and the Main
Central Thrust system probably was active during
high-grade metamorphism and anatexis of the Greater
Himalaya rocks (Hodges et al. 1988; Hubbard & Harrison
1989; Searle et al. 1992). This high-grade metamorphic core
is .truncated by north-dipping, low-angle normal faults and
shear zones of the South Tibetan detachment system (Burg
et al. 1984; Burchfiel et al. 1992), structures that developed
75
under the influence of gravity to moderate the extreme

topographic and crustal thickness gradients produced by
displacement on contractional structures (Burchfiel &
Royden 1985). Recent work suggests that displacement on
the South Tibetan detachment system was penecontemporaneous with contractional deformation on the Main
Central thrust zone (Burchfiel et al. 1992; Hodges et al.
1992; Searle et al. 1992); the thermal consequences of this
complex tectonic activity are described by Inger & Harris
(1992) and Hodges et al. (1993). Further, Hodges et al.
(1993) emphasize that radically different P - T - t paths can
be found at different structural levels beneath such
extensional structures; this leads them to suggest that P - T - t
paths in collision belts may be complex and thus not
uniquely diagnostic of the unroofing mechanism, particularly
in regions characterized by penecontemporaneous extension
and shortening. To the north of the South Tibetan
detachment system, in the Tibetan zone, Neogene
metamorphic core complexes occur within the Tibetan
sedimentary sequence. One example, the Kangmar dome,
has been studied in some detail by Chen et al. (1990). On
the basis of structural analysis, they infer that the domal
structure formed as a consequence of extensional deformation; this draws inevitable comparisons with the Tertiary
metamorphic core complexes of the northwestern American
Cordillera.
High-temperature-low-pressure
metamorphism
High-temperature-low-pressure metamorphic terranes have

been explained in a number of different ways; however, a
common cause for this type of regional metamorphism is not
going to be established because fundamentally different
tectonic processes result in similar P - T conditions.
High-temperature-low-pressure metamorphism is perceived
as a problem because of the extreme thermal anomaly
implied by calculated geothermal gradients, commonly in
the range 60-150 C/km (De Yoreo et al. 1991), hence this
type of metamorphism is a 'freak of nature'. As a direct
consequence of this, the role of advective heat transfer in
the formation of high-temperature-low-pressure metamorphic belts has been over emphasized and tectonic transport
of heat to change the thermal gradient with time, quite
plausible given deformation at reasonable rates and the poor
thermal conductivity of rocks, has been underestimated.
There are three endmember processes that result in
high-temperature-low-pressure metamorphism: (i) contractional deformation and crustal thickening, for example
structural inversion of a sedimentary basin developed on
thin lithosphere, which results in a clockwise path in P - T
space and subsequent tectonic exhumation that produces
high-temperature-low-pressure metamorphism as a consequence of high-temperature decompression (e.g. Jones &
Brown 1989; Jones & Brown 1990; Treloar & Brown 1990;
Dallmeyer & Brown 1992; Thompson 1989); (ii) regionalscale contact metamorphism which results in isobaric
heating and cooling (e.g. Lux et al. 1986; Barton & Hanson
1989; De Yoreo et al. 1989a, b); and, (iii) magmatic
advection of heat during crustal thickening, which results in
a counterclockwise P - T path and either isobaric cooling
from the high-temperature-low-pressure peak or even
increasing P during cooling (e.g. Wells 1980; Bohlen 1987;
Vernon et al. 1990; Collins & Vernon 1991).
Metamorphism associated with crustal extension has
76
M. BROWN
become widely recognized in the past decade, both in

metamorphic core complexes and in collision belts, and the
role of extension in the generation of high-temperaturelow-pressure metamorphism should not be underestimated;
Peacock (1991b) gives a good summary. As we have seen in
the section on collisional metamorphism, a hightemperature-low-pressure metamorphic event is commonly
superimposed on an earlier higher pressure metamorphism
as a consequence of extensional collapse of an overthickened orogenic belt (Dewey 1988; Inger & Harris 1992;
Hodges et al. 1993). Variscan massifs of the Pyrenees are
characterized by high-temperature-low-pressure metamorphism that provoked much discussion in the 1980s (e.g.
Wickham & Oxburgh 1985; Lux et al. 1986; Wickham 1987;
Wickham & Oxburgh 1987). Ironically, many of these
massifs have been shown to have followed P - T - t paths that
involved decompression under prograde and retrograde
conditions, that is to say they are clockwise, such as the
Bosost and Lys-Caillaouas massifs of the central Pyrenees
(Pouget 1991; Kriegsman et al. 1989), the Canigou massif in
the eastern Pyrenees (Gibson 1991), and the Trois Seigneurs
and Saint Barth616my massifs of the North Pyrenean Zone
(Kriegsman 1989; de Saint Blanquat et al. 1990). Further all
of these authors have shown that the Variscan hightemperature-low-pressure metamorphism of the Pyrenees
occurred in an extensional tectonic environment that
produced the subhorizontal regional foliation; this followed
only moderate overthickening evidenced by earlier tectonic
structures.
Granulite m e t a m o r p h i s m
This topic of regional metamorphism has proven intellectually productive during the past few years, and much
information can be found in two recent books (Vielzeuf &
Vidal 1990; Ashworth & Brown 1990). Some granulite facies
terranes clearly are the result of collisional metamorphism,
such as the Grenville Province in North America (Anovitz
& Chase 1990); these terranes exhibit little variation in
metamorphic conditions over large areas, and apparent
disequilibrium textures, such as symplectites of orthopyroxene and plagioclase after garnet and quartz, may be
preserved in rocks of the same bulk composition over
thousands of square kilometres. Such metamorphic terranes
followed clockwise paths in P - T space but have remained
incubated as the post-orogenic lower crust to generate a
long, nearly isobaric cooling history from high temperatures.
Other granulite facies terranes appear to be related to
extensional tectonics, and such an example has been
described by Armstrong et al. (1992) from central
Massachusetts, where a component of advective heat
transfer from the mantle also is thought to be important.
Finally, granulite facies metamorphism may be driven
substantially by advective heat transfer, exemplified by the
Proterozoic low-pressure granulites of southwest Finland
(e.g. Schreurs & Westra 1986).
The extreme conditions characteristic of granulite-facies
terranes are of two kinds: high-temperature, such as found
in the Enderby Land granulite terrane (e.g. Ellis 1980;
Sheraton et al. 1987); and high-pressure, such as found in
the European Variscides (e.g. Carswell & O'Brien 1992).
With respect to the high-pressure granulites, such rocks may
well represent the exposed roots of collisional mountain
belts, metamorphism being the result of burial during crustal
overthickening. However, high-temperature granulites require a gross perturbation of the normal continental
geothermal gradient, and many of these terranes preserve
evidence of prolonged residence in the middle-to-lower crust
after deformation and metamorphism. In spite of the debate
in the literature during the 1980s concerning the origin of
granulite-facies terranes (e.g. Bohlen 1987; Ellis 1987), the
general cause of granulite-facies metamorphism in many
high-temperature terranes may be external to the rocks that
we observe, and possibly external to the crust (Vernon et al.
1990). Much of the argument during the 1980s about the
origin of granulite-facies terranes stemmed from two
particular kinds of incomplete P - T - t paths, derived largely
from evidence preserved from the retrograde rather than the
prograde metamorphic history, which has allowed the
division of many high-grade metamorphic terranes into two
types (Harley 1989): those which show near-isobaric cooling
and those which show near-isothermal decompression.
Isobaric cooling paths have been identified from many
granulite terranes (see reviews by Bohlen 1987 and Harley
1989) but the tectonic setting in which they are generated,
either crustal thickening or magmatic accretion (Ellis 1987;
Bohlen 1987; Bohlen & Mezger 1989; Harley 1989; Bohlen
1991) or, possibly, lithopheric extension (Sandiford &
Powell 1986), remains a matter of debate. Furthermore,
since evidence for the prograde path is generally lacking,
rocks which exhibit isobaric cooling paths can have followed
either a clockwise or a counterclockwise path in P - T space.
As an example, the granulite facies rocks of the Grenville
province are best modelled by early high-pressure conditions
followed by exhumation to lower-middle crustal levels and
then slow cooling (Anovitz & Chase 1990). Isothermal
decompression paths occur as part of clockwise P - T
evolution but have steeper d P / d T s l o p e s than those
generated by the erosion-controlled exhumation of the kind
discussed by England & Richardson (1977) and England &
Thompson (1984). The model of Albar~de (1976)
corresponds closely with many of the petrologically
determined P - T - t paths, as by Hollister (1982) in the
Coastal Range of British Columbia, Canada, Brown &
Earle (1983) in Timor, Droop & Bucher-Nurminen (1984) in
the Alps, and Harris & Holland (1984) in the Limpopo
mobile belt of Southern Africa. Such 'fast exposure paths'
(Harley 1989) can be generated by rapid exhumation and
probably reflect tectonic thinning by extension of previously
thickened crust (e.g. Sonder et al. 1987; Ruppel et al. 1988).
Subduction zone metamorphism
Advances in our understanding of subduction zone

metamorphism have been achieved through field and
petrologic investigations of ancient and modern subduction
zones and through numerical modelling of heat and mass
transfer at convergent plate margins. Again, this type of
metamorphism grades into collisional metamorphism because arcs and continents will be transported to subduction
zones where they will slow subduction and generate
intracontinental deformation. Recently, an increasing
number of localities with evidence of very high pressure,
reflected in coesite or coesite pseudomorphs and other
exotic minerals, has been identified; this demonstrates that
crustal material can be subducted to, and exhumed from,
depths greater than 100 km in collision zones, for example
in the Alps (Chopin 1984, 1987; Schreyer 1988), in the
P-T-t
Caledonides of Norway (Smith 1984), and in the Dabie

Mountains in central China (Wang et al. 1989). Further
evidence of such extreme pressures is the occurrence of
diamond-bearing metamorphic rocks derived from crustal
protoliths (Sobolev & Shatsky 1990; Xu et al. 1992). The
structural and metamorphic features of such very highpressure metamorphic rocks require rapid exhumation that
is likely tectonic, effectively involving transport as
fault-bounded tectonic slices. Without rapid tectonic
exhumation the very high-pressure mineral assemblages are
thermally consumed, hence slow erosion-controlled exhumation allows this type of metamorphism to be
overprinted under lower-pressure/higher-temperature conditions because it is 'time, that devours all things!'.
In terms of P - T - t paths, Ernst (1988) has divided
subduction zones into two different types according to the
retrograde legs of the P - T - t paths. One type comprises the
collisional blueschist belts, such as the Western Alps, which
undergo widespread retrogression in the greenschist and/or
epidote amphibolite facies during near isothermal decompression associated with the collision of a continental
fragment, oceanic plateau, or arc with the subduction
complex. Other high-P belts, such as the Franciscan
Complex of California in the USA, in which continued
subduction results in exhumation P - T - t
paths that
approximately retrace prograde paths, exhibit minimal
retrogression and the preservation of metamorphic aragonite. A correlation evidently exists between the nature of the
retrograde metamorphic trajectory and continued underflow
that inhibits back-reaction, in comparison with collision and
abrupt deceleration of convergence that allows pervasive
back-reaction. Thus, retrograde blueschist parageneses can
help to constrain the tectonic history of the subduction zone.
Quo vadimus?
Further resolution of problems in metamorphism requires
advances in a number of different areas. These include, but
are not limited to, the following.
(1) The continued development of an accurate thermodynamic data base for minerals that occur in metamorphic
equilibria through an improvement of our thermodynamic
knowledge of individual minerals, and in particular the
activity-composition relations in the P - T range of interest.
The data on thermodynamic properties of minerals are
becoming more accurate and precise with time and the
importance of using internally consistent data sets has been
realized; however, thermodynamically calibrated thermobarometers must continue to be evaluated against
experimentally based equilibria and natural occurrences.
More accurate and precise determination of metamorphic
P - T conditions will place tighter constraints on modelling
studies and advance our ability both to understand
metamorphic processes and to identify different tectonic
settings through their characteristic metamorphism.
(2) The development of a better understanding of the
kinetic response of minerals to changes in P and T, and in
particular improvement of knowledge of diffusion rates and
closure temperatures in minerals that are useful geochronometers. The past ten years have seen significant
improvements in our understanding of processes such as
intracrystalline diffusion that can modify significantly
mineral compositions from their peak metamorphic values
and thus obscure the peak conditions (e.g. Spear & Florence
77
1992, and references therein). However, the recent

discovery of oxygen isotope zoning within garnet (Chamberlain & Conrad 1991) reminds us how poorly we understand
the kinetics of diffusion, although it should be noted that
this provides an additional record, or 'tape recording' of
events in the evolution of the rock that are likely to have
been completely obliterated in the matrix.
(3) The further development of radiogenic isotope dating
methods for a wider range of minerals to improve our ability
to measure time at different points on the prograde and
retrograde segments of P - T - t paths, and the increasingly
widespread use of the laser 4mr/39Ar method and the ion
microprobe as geochronological tools. Uranium-lead mineral dating is the best source of high-precision ages. The
relatively high U/Pb ratios of widely occurring accessory
minerals such as zircon, titanite, monazite, rutile and
ilmenite, the relatively rapid change in the 27pb*/26pb*
with time, and the relatively short half-lives of 235U and 238U
all contribute to the potential of small age uncertainties;
uncertainties of less than + 0.1% relative are possible for
concordant U-Pb ages. Increased use of high-precision U-Pb
ages will improve our understanding of the time involved in
the high-temperature parts of P - T - t paths.
The usefulness of garnet to the future quantification of
rates of tectonometamorphic processes in metamorphism is
exemplified in a number of recent papers. Christensen et al.
(1989) have utilized the Rb-Sr method in single garnet
crystals from schists in southeast Vermont to study the rates
of petrological processes, such as growth rate, estimated at
1.4 +0.92/-0.45mm per million years, and average time
interval of growth, c. 10.5 + 4.2 Ma. Garnet and its mineral
inclusions provide a sequential record of P - T change, strain
and chemical reactions during metamorphism; therefore, the
technique offers the potential for determination of the rates
of those processes as well. In the Vermont example, the
growth interval and the observed amount of rotation
recorded by inclusion trails, assuming that the porphyroblasts have rotated with respect to the matrix, indicate that
the average shear strain rate during garnet growth was 2.4
+ 1 . 6 - 0 . 7 x 10 -14 per second. By contrast, Burton &
O'Nions (1990) have used a combination of the Sm-Nd,
U-Pb and Rb-Sr systems to give whole rock isochron and
mineral isochron ages that have revealed in detail the
chronology of processes in small-scale granulite formation
from Kurunegala in Sri Lanka. Finally, the Sm-Nd system
offers the possibility of dating different zones within
minerals such as metamorphic garnet (Burton & O'Nions
1991).
Epilogue
The past 100 years have produced significant and dramatic
progress in our understanding of metamorphic processes,
even though the relative contribution of some processes
remains unresolved. Recently, we have begun to recognize
and appreciate the importance of extension in collisional
mountain belts, interpreted previously largely in terms of
contraction. Most of us now accept that clockwise and
counterclockwise P - T - t paths occur in nature and reflect
substantially different tectonic and magmatic processes. It is
apparent that high-temperature-low-pressure metamorphism can be generated by different tectonic processes.
Granulites not only represent extreme conditions of both
pressure and temperature but also are produced by tectonic
78
M. B R O W N
processes that result in both clockwise and counterclockwise

P - T - t paths. The causes of regional metamorphism are
multiple and may occur individually or in unison, in addition
to the 'normal' conductive heat flux from the earth's
interior; they include internal radiogenic heat production in
thickened continental crust and structurally inverted
sedimentary basins, magmatic advective heat transfer both
from the mantle into t h e crust and from the lower crust into
the upper crust, and lithospheric extension resulting in an
enhanced conductive heat flux from the underlying
asthenosphere.
It is often alleged that serendipity plays a large part in
research. Perhaps George Barrow was lucky to be born in
the UK during the period when the Geological Survey was
at its peak mapping the Scottish Highlands, but without his
ability to make careful observations and his insight in their
interpretation he could not have written the perspicacious
paper that has provided much of the foundation for
metamorphic geology today. It is an unfortunate measure of
progress in science that some of what Barrow wrote about in
detail in the Scottish Highlands has been reinterpreted. The
pegmatites, critical to the model of thermal metamorphism
preferred by Barrow, represents sub-solidus and anatectic
migmatites and the tectonic setting of the metamorphism
was one of plate collision. Nonetheless, his work will be
remembered in perpetuity as the type example of
medium-pressure or 'Barrovian' metamorphism.
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40
39
Brittany, France: New A r / Ar age data and tectonic implications
I acknowledge the contribution made to my metamorphic education

by all the participants in IGCP Project 235 (1984-1990). Rapid,
critical and constructive reviews that substantially improved this
article were provided by T.R. Armstrong, G.T.R. Droop, E.J.
Krogstad, E.L. McLellan, K. Mezger, P.J. O'Brien, J.C.
Schumacher, R.J. Tracy and two anonymous reviewers. I thank K.
Mezger for the provision of Fig. 5 and R.J. Tracy for the provision
of Fig. 2, and J. Martin for proficient word processing; however, I
take responsibility for those misperceptions and infelicities that
remain.
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81
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Received 22 October 1992; revised typescript accepted 11 November 1992
Addendum
Our understanding of high-temperature-low-pressure metamorphism has been advanced recently by new work from the Ryoke Belt
in Japan and the Chugach Metamorphic Complex in Alaska, USA.
In the case of the Chugach Metamorphic Complex, observation of
the relative timing of deformation, metamorphism and plutonism
leads to a model of ridge subduction followed by plate
reorganization to account for the abnormally high geothermal
gradients in the forearc at the subduction zone separating North
America from the Pacific Ocean Basin during the Eocene (Sisson &
Pavlis 1993). Perhaps more significant, is the recognition that the
Ryoke Belt in Japan also might be a consequence of ridge
subduction (Nakajima 1994).
The metamorphism of ~he Ryoke Belt has been considered
typical of Miyashiro's (1961) low-pressure facies series (andalusitesillimanite type). It is the type example of the high-temperature
component of a paired metamorphic belt, with the Sanbagawa Belt
to the oceanward side being the high-pressure m e m b e r of the pair.
The main part of the Ryoke Belt extends for a length of c. 1000 km,
but has a width of only 30-50 km. Metamorphic rocks occupy about
one-third of the total area of the Ryoke Belt, because of the large
amount of granitic rocks that also occur and which are characteristic
of this belt. Higher grade metamorphic zones within the Ryoke Belt
exhibit evidence for both fluid-conserving melt-producing reactions
and fluid-absent-melting reactions, in particular reactions that
involve biotite with aluminosilicatequartz. A t the highest
metamorphic grade exposed, biotite-K-feldspar-cordierite-garnetbearing assemblages are characteristic in rocks with a migmatitic
layering. A n upper limit on temperature is provided by the absence
of hypersthene-bearing assemblages, which indicates that the
stability of biotite + quartz was not exceeded at the crustal level
now exposed. Peak metamorphic conditions in the highest grade
zones of the Ryoke Belt metamorphism likely correspond to
c. 4 kbar and c. 750 C (Brown & Nakajima 1994). The sequence of
mineral assemblages developed in pelites that cover a range in
Mg/(Mg + Fe) suggests that the prograde P - T path may be close to
isobaric, at least in the higher grade zones, and that P may not vary
significantly along the belt (Brown & Nakajima 1994). A t present,
there are insufficient data to assess the exhumation P - T path, but
the fine-grained nature of the rocks suggests rapid cooling, and
some replacement of garnet by biotite may indicate that the

retrograde P - T path also may be close to isobaric.
K-Ar and Rb-Sr ages of Ryoke granitoids and metamorphic
rocks indicate that the metamorphism is older in the west and
younger in the east, following the same systematic eastward
younging identified in the San-yo granitoids immediately to the
north of the Ryoke Belt (Nakajima et al. 1990). The San-yo and
Ryoke granitoids and the Ryoke metamorphic rocks were formed
during approximately the same interval of time, and the magmatism
and metamorphism shifted eastward between 105 Ma to 65 Ma from
Southwestern to Central Japan. Cooling rates are high at
40-80 C Ma -1. The along-arc age variation is incompatible with a
tectonic model based on steady-state subduction, and the
metamorphic and granitic rocks are interpreted to have formed by
subduction of a single ridge segment that migrated along the
Eurasian trench margin with time. Observations consistent with this
interpretation include: the narrowness of the belt and the
diachronous nature of the metamorphism; the approximately
isobaric prograde P - T path; the fine-grained nature of even the
highest grade metamorphic rocks; high temperatures at middle
crustal depths; and the rapid cooling rates. This model requires the
juxtaposition of the Sanbagawa Metamorphic Belt against the
Ryoke Metamorphic Belt to be a younger event as a consequence of
sinistral strike-slip displacement on the Median Tectonic Line,
which raises questions about the usefulness of the concept of
'paired' metamorphic belts (Brown & Nakajima 1994).
BROWN, M. & NAKAJIMA, T. 1994. High-T-low-P metamorphism in the
Ryoke Belt of Japan: consequences of ridge subduction. Geological
Society of America, 1994 Annual Meeting, Abstracts with Programs, 26, 7,
A-214.
NAKAJIMA,T. 1994. The Ryoke plutono-metamorphic belt: Crustal section of
the Cretaceous Eurasian continental margin. Lithos, in press.
- - , SHIRAHASE,T. SHIBATA,K. 1990. Along-arc variation of Rb-Sr ages of
Cretaceous granitic rocks in southwest Japan. Contributions to
SISSON, V.B. & PAVL1S, T.U 1993. Geologic consequences of plate
reorganization: An example from the Eocene southern Alaska fore arc.
Geology, 21, 913-916.
From QJGS,47, 330, 343.

29. On an IN~RUSI01~ of MUSC0VITE-BIOTITE GlWglSS ~n the SOUTHEA.STERlffHIOHLA'NDSof SCOTLAND,and it$ ACCO~tPAI~IINO METAmORPHISm. By G~OSa~ BARROW,Esq., :F.G.S. (Communicated
by permission of the Director-General of the Geological Survey.
Read March 22nd, 1893.)
[PLATES X~r. & XVI.]
CONTENTS.
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
III.
IX.
Introduction .....................................................................
Distribution and Mode of Occurrence of the Igneous Rocks .........
Petrological Characters oF the Igneous Rocks ...........................
Minerals of the Metamorphic Rocks .......................................
Rocks of the Metamorphic Area .............................................
(a) The Sillimanite-zone.
(b) The Cyanite-zone.
(c) The Staurolite-zonc.
Sedimentary Origin of the Metamorphic Rocks ........................
Evidence of Progressive Metamorphism ....................................
General Conclusions, and Summary of Results ...........................
Analyses of the Rocks .. .......................................................
Page
330
330
339.
337
343
351
352
352
354
L INTRODUCTION.
Ta~ area to which attention is directed in the following pages lies

in the north-eastern corner of Forfarshire, and forms part of the
singularly flat table-land of the South-eastern Highlands. I t is
essentially a moorland district, much covered with peat and heather,
and is drained by two rivers, the North Esk and the South Esk.
The rocks of which the area is composed consist principally of
gneisses and schists ; these are clearly seen in the craggy sides of
the valleys through which the two Esks and their tributaries flow.
Boulders of these rocks may be noticed in the rough walls by the
roadside as one drives up the gleus, and their intensely crystalline
aspect is a most striking feature. A brief visit to the crags and the
flat-topped moorland speedily convinces the observer t h a t this
crystalline aspect is one of the chief characteristics of the district.
I t is proposed to show in the present communication that this area
contains several masses of intrusive rock which are probably conneeted underground, and that the highly crystalline character of
the surrounding schists is mainly the result of thermometamorphism.
V. I~0CKS OF TIIE ~ETAMORPHIC 2~R:EAo
A brief description may ~now be given of the principal types of

rock in which the minerals above described occur. They may be
divided into four groups: firstly,, those of the silhmanite-zone ;
secondly, those of the cyanite-zone ; thirdly, those of the staurolitezone : and lastly, those lying between the third zone and the Great
Highland Fault, as seen on the banks of the North :Esk.
The development of Early Palaeozoic global stratigraphy

W. S. M c K E R R O W
Department o f Earth Sciences, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PR, UK
Abstract: The major steps in the development of Early Palaeozoic stratigraphy are examined, with special
emphasis on early Journal papers by Murchison and Sedgwick, and on their conception of systems and
series, which permitted long-distance correlation. Unlike other periods, the Ordovician and Silurian were
originally split into series; most stages have only been defined in the past 60 years. From 1880, Lapworth's
graptolite zones have allowed much greater chronological precision. More recently, other methods have
been developed for recognizing small time divisions, including studies in gradational evolution. A significant new advance is the correlation (by biostratigraphy) of short-lived physical events such as magnetic
reversals and sea-level and climatic changes.
Sedgwick (1845), in the first paper in Volume 1 of the Journal,

presented transverse sections showing the stratigraphic and
structural relations of Lower Palaeozoic rocks in North
Wales. He acknowledged, on page 6, the palaeontological help
of J. C. Sowerby and his assistant, J. W. Salter, but, as we shall
see, fossils were scarce in many of these formations, and
Sedgwick was clearly more interested in unravelling the structure. In contrast, Murchison applied the methods of William
Smith by describing (also with the expert help of Sowerby and
Salter) the fossils present in each formation of his Silurian
System. By 1845, Murchison had traced the Silurian across
much of northern Europe, and was collaborating with several
European geologists (e.g. Murchison & Verneuil 1845) to
define younger parts of the Palaeozoic.
While many of the objectives in modern stratigraphy are
similar to those of Murchison and Sedgwick, we have now
more techniques available. Just as important, we also have a
different approach to biostratigraphy, mainly because we know
more about how the Earth works and how animals live than did
the geologists of 150 years ago.
After a brief discussion of developments prior to 1845, this
review gives an account of the evolution of Early Palaeozoic
stratigraphy, followed by a more personal view of where biostratigraphy is heading. The principal steps in the development
of stratigraphy are set out in a logical sequence which means
that they are not all presented in chronological order.
and sections showing beds from the Coal Measures up to the

Muschelkalk of Thuringia (Dunbar & Rodgers 1958, p. 290;
Geikie 1897, p. 100).
The much more celebrated A. G. Werner, working in the
same region of Germany as Lehmann and Ffichsel, is famous
for his all-embracing doctrine on the origin of rocks; he
thought that they were mostly precipitates from sea water: the
Neptunist theory. But Werner also proposed, in 1787, five
broad stratigraphical units (based, in part, on the work of his
associates, in the regions of Erzgebirge, Saxony and Bohemia)
which he claimed were world-wide in scope (Geikie 1897,
pp. 102-115; Rupke 1983, pp. 112-14).
Werner's stratigraphical units were:
5.
4.
3.
2.
1.
Volcanics
Unconsolidated deposits
Floetz [now classed as Permian to Tertiary]
Transitional strata, including greywacke
Primitive strata, including granite, gneiss, etc.
Werner is more widely known than Lehmann or Ffichsel.

The new theory (together with the ability to give a good lecture
and have notable students) provided Werner with more publicity, even although he did not publish very much. Thanks to
Hutton and others, Werner's ideas on Neptunism were later
discounted, but he retains a position in the development of
stratigraphy. In 1831, when Murchison and Sedgwick started
field work in Wales and Shropshire, their aim was to examine
the beds below the Old Red Sandstone, which were still known
by Werner's term: 'Transition rocks or greywacke' (Fig. 1).
Step 1: defining a local succession of formations and

mapping them in the field
Stratigraphy did not begin with William Smith. In 1751, the
French geologist, J. E. Guettard, appears to have created the
first geological map (Geikie 1897, pp. 21-2), when he portrayed the geographical distribution of rocks (with fossil
localities) in France and western Europe. But Guettard gave no
indication that he had any ideas on the chronological or structural relations of the strata he mapped (Geikie 1897, p. 96).
A few years later (in 1756), the German geologist J. G.
Lehmann, working in the Harz and the Erzgebirge mountains,
was the first to publish sections showing the sequence and structure of rocks (Geikie 1897, p. 96-7). Then, in 1762, G. C.
Ffichsel, a contemporary of Lehmann, published both maps
Step 2: recognizing characteristic fossils in each formation

The British must share the credit with other Europeans for
recognizing the importance of fossils to stratigraphy. In the
seventeenth century, the Danish physician and mineralogist,
Nicholaus Steno recognized that different strata had different
fossils. Subsequently, in 1703, the British scientist Robert
Hooke clearly envisaged the potential of fossil shells to provide the 'criteria of chronology' in sedimentary rocks, but he
does not appear to have put his suggestion into practice (Dott &
Batten 1988, pp. 19-24).
By 1799, William Smith had drawn up a table of strata in
83
84
W . S . MCKERROW
WERNER
1787
SEDGWICK
1855
MURCHISON
1859
LYELL
1865
LAPWORTH
1879
1993
Pridoli
Upper
Upper
Silurian
Ludlow
Silurian
Silurian
Wenlock
Upper Llandovery
Middle
Transition
t"
Silurian
.....
Silurian
Lower Llandovery
Upper
strata
Ashgill
Cambrian
Lower
including
Caradoc
0
Lower
Silurian
greywacke
Silurian
Llandeilo
Ordovician
Llanvim
Middle
Arenig
Cambrian
O
<
0"
>
Z
Tremadoc
Upper Cambrian
Cambrian
Cambrian
Middle Cambrian
Lower Cambrian
Lower
Cambrian
Cambrian
Longmynd
Fig. I. Some classifications of the Lower Palaeozoic (modified from Secord 1986, fig. 9.4).
England (from the Coal Measures to the Chalk) in which he
listed some characteristic fossils in each formation, but this was
not published until 1813 (Townsend 1813; Geikie 1897,
pp. 230-1). At the same time, following the lead of GiraudSoulavie (Geikie 1897, pp. 204-8), Cuvier & Brongniart (1808)
were compiling faunal successions in Tertiary beds in the Paris
Basin, although they were at first more interested in the history
of life than in the correlation of strata (Hancock 1977, p. 6).
Subsequently, Smith (1816-1819) showed how the use of
fossils permitted formations to be mapped across much of
England. Smith may never have heard of Guettard, Lehmann
or F(ichsel, and he had little comment to make on the theories
of Werner and Hutton. In 1817 Smith stated: 'My observations
... are entirely original, and unencumbered by theories, for I
have none to support.' (Hancock 1977, p. 4). The only theory
essential to construct a geological map is the belief that formations are entities.
Smith certainly had most influence on subsequent developments in biostratigraphy. Even as late as 1822, Cuvier and
Brongniart were still attempting to fit the French sequences
into Werner's scheme, but when confronted by [Cretaceous]
beds in Poland, with different lithologies but the same fossils
as in France, Brongniart started to argue in favour of the prime

position of fossils as a means of correlation (Hancock 1977,
p. 7).
These new observations also brought new theories. While
Lyell preached uniformitarianism, Cuvier thought that the
faunal changes which occurred in his successions were the
results of a series of extinction events (Hallam 1989, pp. 3740). The catastrophic theories of Cuvier show some signs of
revival in recent years but, as Smith observed, theories are not
essential for the application of fossils to correlation.
Step 3: facies and type localities

One potentially confusing issue in biostratigraphy is the presence of different facies (with different fossils) occurring in rocks
of the same age. The problem of facies was recognized early on
by Brongniart, Fitton and Phillips and discussed in detail by
Gressly (1838), who coined the term. A year after Gressly's
paper was published, De la Beche had no great difficulty in
regarding the Old Red Sandstone as a local facies of the marine
Devonian (Rudwick 1985, pp. 267-8). In 1842, after his visit to
New York, Lyell recorded Old Red Sandstone fish and marine
GLOBAL S T R A T I G R A P H Y
Devonian rocks sandwiched between the Silurian and
Carboniferous (Rudwick 1985, p. 381).
Because of facies changes, the beds represented in different
regions had different aspects, although the stratigraphical
sequences in which they occurred often contained enough
fossils for their approximate age to be determined. This was
usually done by reference to previously described sequences.
The concept of type localities (invented by d'Orbigny) has thus
proved a useful tool when correlating over large distances
(Hancock 1977, p. 11).
Step 4: systems, periods and eras
In the 50 years after the Geological Society was founded (in
1807), several of its fellows played a crucial role in the development of global stratigraphy.
The long-distance correlation of formations was closely
linked with their reclassification into larger groups. At first, the
word 'system' had a variety of meanings, but when Murchison
(1835, 1839) defined the Silurian System both by its rock
sequences and its fossils, it soon became recognizable across
Europe and in America, and the term 'system' gradually
assumed its modern meaning (Bassett 1991, pp. 16-20;
Rudwick 1985, p. 446).
The use of systems (with the present definition) was pioneered by the British, who based most of them on British strata.
The Carboniferous System was established by Conybeare &
Phillips (1822) to include the Old Red Sandstone; its limits
only developed later, when the Devonian and Permian systems
had been defined. Most systems (though often with rather
imprecise boundaries) were established within the following 20
years (Rupke 1983, pp. 128-9); these included Lyell's (1833)
subdivision of the Tertiary, and the establishment of the Cambrian by Sedgwick in 1835 (published a year later in: Sedgwick
& Murchison 1836), of the Silurian and the Permian by Murchison (1835, 1841b), and of the Devonian by Sedgwick &
Murchison (1839). When established, most of these systems
were known to have characteristic fossil assemblages, but at
first the Cambrian was hard to recognize outside Wales because
it lacked any well-documented diagnostic fossils.
In the first volume of the Journal, Murchison & Verneuil
(1845) emphasized how the Silurian, Devonian and
Carboniferous each had distinct organic remains in the same
superposition across much of northern Europe. They also
showed how the Permian System could be defined with reference to known sequences in Germany and Russia, a stratigraphical method which most of us would applaud.
Murchison & Verneuil commented on the similarities
between the fauna and flora of the Permian and the
Carboniferous, even though a marked unconformity was
present at this level in many areas of Europe (now termed the
Hercynian Orogeny). They (Murchison & Verneuil 1845, p. 82)
also noted that 'The Triassic system does not contain a single
Palaeozoic form, whether animal or vegetable'; there was a
very marked change in the fossils above the Permian, even
though strong stratigraphic breaks at this level were not
common. By 1845, Murchison & Verneuil had recognized that
unconformities are much less useful than faunal changes for
international correlation; this elementary principle of global
stratigraphy has taken over a century to be widely applied.
Much earlier, in 1838, Sedgwick chose the term 'Palaeozoic'
to denote the Cambrian and Silurian jointly (Rudwick 1985,
p. 242). Later, Phillips (1840, 1841) redefined the term
Palaeozoic and suggested the corresponding terms: 'Mesozoic'
85
and 'Kainozoic' [subsequently 'Cainozoic' and now

'Cenozoic'] (Harland et al. 1989, pp. 30-1; Rudwick 1985,
p. 363). Phillips' new eras had apparently made Murchison
and Verneuil look more closely at the faunal changes across
the Permian/Triassic boundary.
In the first paper published in the Journal, Sedgwick (1845)
gave an account of the rocks of North Wales; this was a continuation of an earlier paper published in the Proceedings of the
Geological Society. At this time, Sedgwick had temporarily
changed his mind about the use of the term 'Cambrian' and
used 'Protozoic' instead; this may have been related to the
discovery, by the Geological Survey, of Llandeilo and Caradoc fossils within the supposed 'Cambrian' of Wales (Hallam
1989, pp. 78-9).
The boundary between the Cambrian and the Silurian was
first agreed (in 1834) by Sedgwick and Murchison to run
through unmapped territory in Wales (Secord 1986, fig. 3.9;
Bassett 1991, pp. 8, 15-16), but by 1845, Murchison, Sedgwick
and the Geological Survey all agreed that similar fossils were
present on both sides of this boundary. By the 1850s, Murchison's solution (Fig. 1) was to extend the Silurian downwards to include all the fossiliferous rocks from the Lingula
Flags (now classed as Upper Cambrian) to the Ludlow,
whereas Sedgwick claimed everything up to and including the
May Hill Sandstone (recognized today as Upper Llandovery)
as Cambrian (Hallam 1989, p. 82).
These arguments on the Cambrian-Silurian boundary are
well known, but there was a more significant difference
between Sedgwick and Murchison: while Sedgwick continued
to stress the importance of physical stratigraphy and structure,
Murchison realized (and put into practice) his belief that
fossils were the best method of long-distance correlation
(Secord 1986; Hallam 1989, p. 83-4).
Sedgwick (1852), writing on the rocks of southwest England,
was still maintaining 'that no good classification either of subdivisions or systems, or of subordinate formation, can ever be
attempted without a previous determination of the physical
groups'. This paper was written after the 'Great Devonian Controversy', recounted by Rudwick (1985) was over, but at a time
when much stratigraphical uncertainty still prevailed about
the ages of many rocks in Devon and Cornwall. Nevertheless,
Sedgwick eventually put some of Murchison's precepts into
practice by recording every fossil available to him; in addition,
Sedgwick recruited M'Coy as his palaeontological assistant.
While both Sedgwick and Murchison were presumably
moderately competent palaeontologists, they both used
specialists whenever possible. Rudwick (1985, p. 444) points
out that the 'clinching evidence' for the resolution of the Devonian controversy was 'not only the result of Murchison's
competent but quite conventional field work in Devon, the
Rhineland and Russia, but also the product of fossil specialists
such as the impoverished Lonsdale and the less than gentlemanly Sowerby and Phillips ... more or less professional
palaeontologists'.
Murchison's 1845 geological map of eastern Europe and
Russia was based on long-distance correlation by fossils
(Johnson 1982). Palaeontology was also important in Murchison's subsequent travels, for example, his visits to
Scandinavia and Russia (Murchison 1847), and to Germany
and Bohemia in 1853 (Bassett 1991, p. 38) while he was compiling the first edition of Siluria (Murchison 1854).
By the 1850s, the Silurian System was becoming global in
extent. In the United States, James Hall had compiled a list of
Silurian fossils from New York (Murchison 1841a), and D. D.
86
W . S . MCKERROW
Owen (1846) had mapped and described the Silurian System of

the mid-west (Johnson 1977); and shortly after, Sharpe (1848)
had listed shelly fossils from each formation in New York and
compared them with equivalents in Britain. Charles Darwin
(1846) reported on fossils from the Falkland Islands resembling Silurian forms (they are actually Devonian), and
Strachey (1851) recognized Silurian fossils in the Himalayas.
Murchison has a claim to be the first global geologist; his map
(Murchison 1854, p. 475, reproduced by Bassett 1991, p. 41) of
the geographical distribution of 'Palaeozoic formations'
around the world was the first of its kind.
Murchison's renown, though deserving of high recognition,
was gained through numerous publications which did not
always give due credit to others (Torrens 1990); he appears to
have been following a contemporary custom (Flinn 1992).
Murchison originally grouped together what we now call
Caradoc and Llandovery beds. In 1852, M'Coy recognized that
Murchison's 'Caradoc beds' contained two distinct faunas, so
that what we now term 'Ordovician' and 'Silurian' could be
distinguished palaeontologically (Hallam 1989, pp. 80-1).
M'Coy and Salter also described fossils from the Cambrian (in
its modern sense) of Britain. At about the same time, Barrande
(1852-1911) distinguished three successive Early Palaeozoic
faunas in Bohemia. Thus, by the mid-1850s, although not designated by any formal nomenclature, the importance of a
tripartite division of the Early Palaeozoic was becoming recognized internationally (Hallam 1989, p. 83) and the boundaries
(Fig. 1) were incorporated in the literature by such authorities
as Lyell (1865).
The Ordovician System was originally defined by Lapworth
(1879) as extending from the base of the Arenig Series to the
base of the Llandovery Series. Although these series were quite
well defined by their faunas, Lapworth appears to have been
influenced by the presence of two unconformities in Wales and
Shropshire: one below the Arenig and another below the Llandovery, both reflecting geographically restricted tectonic
events (Woodcock 1990; Toghill 1992). Subsequent international decisions have now classified the Tremadoc Series
with the Ordovician on the basis of internationally recognizable faunal changes at its base (Norford 1991 and references
therein). The very fact that system boundaries are the subject of
so much discussion, illustrates their subjective nature.
Modern work on the definitions of systems is now concerned
with obtaining international agreement on precise definitions
of the base of each system, using type sections where good zonal
fossils are present. McLaren (1977) showed, for the Devonian,
just how it should be done; since then, the base of the Silurian
(Cocks 1988) and the Carboniferous (Paproth et al. 1991) have
been agreed; the base of the Ordovician is close to settlement
(Norford 1991), while work is still in progress on defining the
base of the Cambrian (Cowie & Brasier 1989).
The International Geological Congress at Bologna in 1880
recognized the distinction between stratigraphical and
chronological divisions: the duration of a system was recognized as a period (Hancock 1977, p. 15). This reflected some
new thinking about different types of stratigraphical units,
which is still not universally agreed (see also Dunbar &
Rodgers 1957, pp. 290-2).
Caradoc sandstone' (p. 13), but in the same volume Murchison

& Verneuil (1845, p. 81) refer to 'the whole Palaeozoic series'.
In these earlier papers, the term 'series' was used primarily in a
lithological sense. Two years later, Murchison (1847, p. 2)
compared some Swedish beds and their faunas with the 'limestones of Wenlock' and others with the 'Ludlow formation',
but his only time-stratigraphical terminology comprised
'Lower Silurian', 'Upper Silurian' and 'the Old red (Devonian)
system'. Eventually, the major divisions of the 'Cambrian' and
'Silurian' systems came to be termed 'series', while the major
divisions of the Devonian and younger systems (or more accurately: periods) were called 'stages'.
It was not until 1859, seven years after Sedgwick and M'Coy
had distinguished the Caradoc and May Hill fossils, that Murchison (by then Director of the Geological Survey) proposed
the term Llandovery as a series (Hallam 1989, p. 81; Bassett
1991, p. 38), as opposed to 'Llandovery rocks', the phrase he
had earlier employed in The Silurian System (Murchison 1839).
This proposal was also prompted by the recognition of a postCaradoc unconformity in Shropshire by Aveline and Salter
(Bassett 1991, p. 31). Local unconformities like this Shelveian
event (Toghill 1992), rather than faunal changes, continued to
play intrusive roles in the definition of many series.
Apart from in Norway (see below), smaller divisions than
series were not, however, discerned during the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, so, until Lapworth (1879-80)
published a list of graptolite zones, the series (which were
based primarily on shelly fossils) formed the main pillar of
international correlation in the Early Palaeozoic.
Because many benthic animals could not cross wide oceans,
independent Ordovician series have been defined in North
America and elsewhere using native shelf faunas, and it is only
in recent years that these have been correlated, with moderate
precision, with the British series (Ross et al. 1982; Fortey et al.
1991, fig. 8).
The term 'stage' was first employed in stratigraphy for
ammonite-rich sequences in the Mesozoic by d'Orbigny (184251) who defined it 'solely according to the identity in the composition of the faunas' (see Hancock 1977, p. 9). Stages were
thus originally, as subsequently they always have remained,
chronological terms, while the Early Palaeozoic 'series'
started life as formations, and then with the growth ofbiostratigraphy, subsequently developed into time-rock units. Many
think they still have a role as such, but this is not universally
accepted (see Harland et al. 1989, p. 21).
The work of Norwegian geologists allowed the immediate
recognition of Murchison's Silurian series in the Oslo area
(Johnson 1982); of these, Kjerulf (1857) is the most remarkable: he proposed a sequence of stages for the local Silurian,
which has only been superseded in the past 15 years.
During the last 60 years, following the lead of Bancroft
(1933, 1945), the original series (some would now call them
epochs) of Murchison and Sedgwick are today divisible into
numerous stages, both in Britain and abroad. These are being
redefined by relation to type localities, so that, even in the
Ordovician, when many indigenous faunas prevailed, international correlations are becoming ever more precise (Williams 1969; Barnes & Williams 1991; Holland & Bassett 1989).
Step 5: series and stages
Step 6: graptolite zones
In Early Palaeozoic stratigraphy, the use of the term 'series'

began haphazardly. Sedgwick (1845), in the first volume of the
Journal, refers to the 'Bala series' (p. 11) and the 'series of
Oppel (1856-8) showed that the Jurassic Period could be

divided into 33 zones based on pelagic ammonites. He pointed
out that the recognition of zones 'involves exploring the verti-
GLOBAL S T R A T I G R A P H Y
cal range of each separate species in the most diverse localities,
while ignoring the lithological development of the beds' (Hancock 1977, p. 12). The application of Oppel's conception of
zones to the Early Palaeozoic had to wait until Hall and
Lapworth examined the pelagic graptolites.
Geologists working on the Palaeozoic owe at least as great a
debt to Lapworth as they do to Murchison and Sedgwick. Lapworth (1873) produced a series of papers on the palaeontology
of graptolites. He then showed that many of his newly defined
species had very short time ranges (Lapworth 1879-80). Subsequently, and most significantly, Lapworth (1878, 1889) applied
his new graptolite zones to unravelling the stratigraphy and the
structure of southern Scotland.
The introduction of Lapworth's graptolite zones raised
several problems in Early Palaeozoic stratigraphy. At first the
zones were based almost entirely on sequences in the Southern
Uplands, where brachiopods and trilobites are absent or rare;
there was therefore great uncertainty in correlating the zones
with the previously established series based on shelly fossils.
Later, Lapworth (1889) described graptolites occurring with
trilobites and brachiopods in southwest Scotland, where the
pre-Ashgill benthic faunas are largely different (because of the
wide Iapetus Ocean) from those in England and Wales where
the series were defined. New correlations are still being proposed between the graptolite zones and the series and stages
(e.g. Fortey et al. 1991; Holland & Bassett 1989), and studies in
graptolite evolution are now allowing even finer
chronological divisions to be discerned (Rickards 1989).
87
gradational changes occur only in a minority (?< 10%) of

benthic lineages. A sudden appearance, followed by stasis, is
the norm for many genera of trilobites and brachiopods, so
most benthic taxa can never be expected to be used as fine time
indicators.
Numerous alternatives to the original graptolite zonal
scheme are now available (see Cowie & Brasier 1989; Barnes &
Williams 1991; Webby & Laurie 1991; Holland & Bassett
1989; Bassett et al. 1991). In North America and Australia
some endemic taxa are employed as indices for graptolite
zones. The development of micropalaeontology permits
correlation of many sections previously considered to be
barren. Conodonts are now almost as useful as graptolites
(more so in some facies) and there is lively discussion (e.g.
Barnes 1988; Norford 1991) on the relative merits of the two
groups in biostratigraphy. Acritarchs (e.g. Fig. 2), chitinozoans
and ostracodes also provide useful stratigraphical indices. In
the Early Cambrian, various small shelly fossils are proving
accurate guides to correlation, while in the Silurian vertebrates
and plant spores can also be employed.
These different schemes result in the duplication of zonal
indices for the same time interval, but this should not lead to
arguments about usage or priority. All correlation schemes
must (eventually) be related to internationally agreed series
and stages. Most of the finer subdivisions should, perhaps,
remain informal, to be emended as our knowledge develops
(e.g. Fig. 2).
Step 8: event stratigraphy

Step 7: other palaeontological criteria for zonation
Biostratigraphy, in the long run, must rely on evolutionary
changes in animals and plants, but these do not always occur
progressively. Moreover, many changes in fossil sequences are
not related to evolution: they can be due to local or regional
changes in facies or, in some cases, to migrations.
Ziegler (1965) showed that similar Silurian benthic communities occur in similar environments at different times, and
thus that benthic assemblages cannot be used p e r se to indicate
fine time intervals. Subsequently, it has been shown (e.g. Ziegler et al. 1968; Cocks 1989) that it is only in lineages with
gradational evolutionary changes, and which have been
studied by quantitative methods, that benthos can be used as
precise indicators of small time divisions (Fig. 2). The total
range of a species can then be determined by recording the
ancestors in the beds below and the descendants in the beds
above.
As early as 1945, Bancroft showed that enough changes
occurred in some Late Ordovician brachiopods and trilobites
for the subdivision of the series into stages (see appraisal in
Williams 1969, p. 245). Williams (1948) and Sheldon (1987)
have also described gradational evolution in a few families of
Ordovician trilobites.
In the Silurian, gradational evolution has been described in
S t r i c k l a n d i a which enabled successive taxa of these brachiopods to be employed as time indicators within the Llandovery Series (Williams 1951; Baarli 1986); gradational evolution is also known in E o c o e l i a (Ziegler 1966). At present, using
macrofossils, it is difficult to give precise ages to Llandovery
shelly facies without reference to members of one of these two
brachiopod lineages (Fig. 2).
We now realise that, at least with shelf benthos, a few wellstudied lineages showing gradational evolution are the best
basis on which to create fine time divisions. But appreciable
Some Early Palaeozoic eustatic changes in sea level are related

to the widespread development of black shales (Leggett et al.
1981) and also to more local occurrences of red shales (Ziegler
& McKerrow 1975). More significantly, lowering of sea-level
can be correlated with some extinctions (e.g. Leggett et al. 1981;
Fortey 1984; Johnson & McKerrow 1991; Nielsen 1992),
especially in the pelagic realm. During the Early Palaeozoic,
the only large sea-level change related to major extinctions in
the shelly faunas was in the late Ashgill (Brenchley & Newell
1984; Brenchley 1984; Owen et al. 1991). Several sea-level
changes can also be correlated with increased intercontinental
migrations of benthic faunas (Scotese & McKerrow 1990;
Sheehan & Coorough 1990). Some environmental changes are
indicated by changing ratios in stable isotopes in beds relatively unaffected by diagenesis or metamorphism (e.g. Corfield
et al. 1992; Kirschvink et al. 1991).
We are still at the stage of trying to distinguish which sealevel changes are globally synchronous (e.g. Johnson et al.
1991). The methods suggested by Vail et al. (1977) and Haq et
al. (1988) may eventually allow recognition of Early
Palaeozoic stratigraphic sequences bounded by synchronous
stratigraphical breaks on cratons, but in orogenic regions many
unconformities are only regional in extent and some are diachronous (McKerrow et al. 1991; Toghill 1992). For example,
Woodcock (1990) has shown clearly that, in the Welsh Basin,
the three big stratigraphical divisions recognized by Lapworth
(Woodcock rightly calls them 'supergroups' rather than 'systems') are bounded by regional unconformities. By contrast, on
the cratons of North America (Ross & Ross 1992), the Russian
Platform (Kaljo & Nestor 1990), the Andean Platform (Baldis
et al. 1992), the Australian Platform (Nicoll et al. 1992) and the
Yangtze Platform (Johnson et al. 1985), many stratigraphic
sequences have synchronous boundaries and are likely to be
related to eustatic sea-level changes.
88
W. S. M C K E R R O W
Llandovery
area
litho
stratigraphy
Eocoelia
evolution
Stricklandiid
evolution
(Williams1951
emended)
Graptolite
zones
(Ziegler 1966
centrifugus
<
angelini
I
!
Formation
~ c
"= o
O
emended)
Gwernfelen
~ "~
4,
Costistricklandia
lira t a
crenulata
sulcata
4,
Cerig
Formation
griestoniensis
4
curtisi
Stricklandia
crispus
la e vls
ii
turriculatus
,
I~Normwood Fm
Rhydings
Formation
Z
Stricklandia
sedgwickii
_<
convolutus
z
O
nuJ
<
argenteus
lens
progressa
intermedia
S t r ! c k l a n d i a lens
intermedia
Trefawr
Formation
3b
~
hemisphaerica
3a
~'magnus
r~
triangulatus
Z
<
z
<
a
a
Crychan
Fm
Bronydd
D
"1"
n-
Formation
Scrach
~Z
<
cyphus
~-cinaces
S. l e n s l e n s
S. l e n s p r i m a ~
!
~1c
"~lb
atavus
~la
~acuminatus
persculptus
Formation
upernus
Magnetostratigraphy, now commonly employed as a stratigraphical tool in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic, is gradually
being extended down into the Palaeozoic (e.g. Trench et al.
1991; Kirschvink et al. 1991). But magnetostratigraphy in the
Early Palaeozoic has still a long way to progress. As in other
types of event stratigraphy, we still need to employ conventional biostratigraphic data to correlate the events.
Conclusions: the aims and achievements of Early

Palaeozoic stratigraphy
The main aim of stratigraphy is to provide a chronology of
Earth history. In the Early Palaeozoic, this has resulted in the
development of different zonal schemes in different environments. Some of the finer zones may be as short as 300 000 years.
To many geologists 150 years ago, the production of a geological map was the prime aim of stratigraphy. Biostratigraphy
is still the basis for most regional geological maps, and a good
Fig. 2. The modern correlation of the

Llandovery Series (from Cocks 1989, fig.
35). Stars indicate records from the type
Llandovery area. The acritarch zones
are from Hill (1974). Reproduced by
permission of the Trustees of the
Natural History Museum, London.
map is the first requisite for all types of mineral and petroleum
exploration. Smith and Brongniart were able to produce geological maps based on their studies of the characteristic fossils
of each formation, and it was to the credit of Murchison and his
contemporaries that this method was extended to the Early
Palaeozoic. Geophysics and deep borehole evidence now
allow modern maps to show the distributions of formations at
depth as well as on the surface.
Modern biostratigraphy has seen advances in the determination of the stratigraphical age of physical events such as sealevel and climate changes, magnetic reversals and asteroid
impacts, so that they can be developed for use in global
correlation (see Whittaker et al. 1991). Many igneous and
structural events can be dated by radioactive isotopes, but at
present few boundaries of Early Palaeozoic series can be estimated to within 5 Ma (e.g. Snelling 1985).
Some Early Palaeozoic global changes in sea level (e.g. in
the late Ashgill) are associated with the spread of land ice and a
GLOBAL
STRATIGRAPHY
lowering of sea level; others are synchronous with orogenic

events and there may be a causal connection (Johnson &
McKerrow 1991, p. 164). Until we can determine the causes of
such global changes, the full potential of sequence stratigraphy for intercontinental correlation is unlikely to be achieved.
At present, plate movements appear to be more predictable
than sea-level or climatic changes, but it is perhaps possible
that, when the cycles of global changes in the past are better
correlated and understood, geologists may even start looking
forward as well as backward in time.
L. R. M. Cocks, R. A. Fortey, S. P. Hesselbo, M. E . J o h n s o n , Derek

Siveter, E. A. Vincent and A. M. Ziegler kindly made suggestions
which i m p r o v e d early drafts o f this paper.
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&
Received 3 August 1992: accepted 1 September 1992.
From QJGS, "1,5-6.
On the OLDER PAL~OZOIC (Protozoic) ROCKS OF NORTH WALES.

By the Rev. A. SEDGWICK, M.A., F.R.S., V~%odwardian Professor of Geology and Fellow of Trinity College in the .University of Cambridge.
1. Introduction.
IN a paper read before the Geological Society in June, 1843,
and intituled, " An Outline of the Geological Structure of North
Wales,"* the author gave a description of those stratified rocks
in the northern counties of the principality which are of anterior
date to the mountain limestone. Those rocks he separated into
the following three principal groups : - 1. Chlorite-slate and mica-slate. These form a band along the
north-western side of the promontory of Carnarvonshire from Porth
Dilleyn to Bardsea island.
2. Greywacke and roofing slate, often containing calcareous
bands, and alternating with Plutonic rocks of cotemporaneous
formation : and these rocks the author terms, in his present paper,
the protozoic, group. They extend in an east and west direction,
from the borders of Shropshire to the western coast of Carnarvonshire; and their north-western boundary, from the confines of
Shropshire to Yspytty Evan, coincides nearly with the Holyhead
road ; and from Yspytty Evan to Conway, with the Conway river.
3. An overlying and sometimes unconformable deposit of flagstone, &c., coterminous alo~lg the IIolyhead road and Conway river
with the last-mentioned principal group; but bounded towards
the north-west by an overlying range of mountain limestone.
From QJGS, 3, 1.
On t/,e Silurian and Associated Rocks in DALECARLIA,and on the

Succession from Lower to Upper Silurian in SMOLAND, (~LAND,
and GOTHLASD, and in SCANIA. By Sir RODERmK I. MuacHIsos, G.C.S., V.P.G.S. &c.
PLAT~ I.
HAWNa already communicated the additional knowledge I obtained
last year (1845), concerning the drift and erratic blocks of Swedea*,
l propose in. this memoir to give the results of the examination of
those pal0eozoic and associated rocks in several parts of that country
which fell under the joint observation of my friend M. de Verneuil
and myself during the same period.
Two of the districts under review have not been critically examined since they were described by Hi~inger; and his memoirs
beiiJg in the Swedish language, with which few persons are familiar, and having been written before the paleeozoie clarification
From QJGS, 8, 1-2.
2. On t]/e SLATE ROCKS of DEVON and CORNWALL.

By the Rev. A. SEDGWICK, F.R.S., G.S. &c.
AFTER a painful interruption of three years, I resumed my geological
work during the past summer, and revisited some portions of Devonshire and Cornwall, a small part of the typical Silurian country (of
Sir R. I. Murchison), a part also of the Cambrian groups of North
Wales, and lastly some groups of the newer fossiliferous slates of
Westmoreland and Yorkshire. I rejoice to appear once more as a
fellow-labourer, and to lay the first-fruits of my summer's task before
the Geological Society.
My present notice will be confined to Devonshire and Cornwall.
It is well known to all who take any part in the working of our
Society, that during the past year Sir R. I. Murehison, after an
examination of certain fossils sent to him from Cornwall, has introduced some new colours into the geological maps of Cornwall and
South Devon*. Thus, he colours the great headlands, between
the Bays of St. Austell and Falmouth, Lower Silurian. Again, he
colours a considerable part of the coast in the neighbourhood of
Looe, &e., Upper Silurian; and the same colour is extended to a
portion of the dates of South Devon which skirt the-north side of
the metamorphic rocks of Bolt Head and Start Point. The first
change of colour is grounded on good evidence; for in the great
headlands S.W. of Austell Bay there is a development of rocks with
a remarkable mineral structure, and with fossils which I should call
Cambrian, and which Sir R. I. Murchison calls Lower Silurian. I f
I mistake not, there is, however, rather too great an extension given
to the new colour in this part of the map of Cornwall. As to the
Upper Silurian colour, it was put in hypothetically, or on imperfect
evidence; and I believe, that both from Devonshire and from Cornwall it must be expunged as erroneous.
Charles Lapworth and the biostratigraphic paradigm

RICHARD
A.
FORTEY
Department of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London S W 7 5BD, UK
Abstract: Lapworth's paper on 'The Moffat Series' (1878) provided a model for deciphering the
'interminable greywackes' of the Southern Uplands, and one which lasted for a century. The same
paper established graptolites in a dominant position in Lower Palaeozoic biostratigraphy. The changes
in the biostratigraphic paradigm are discussed with reference to Lapworth's contribution; issues
implicit in his 1878 paper are still contentious. Graptolites have exemplified the conflict that can arise
between the use of fossils as stratigraphic ciphers, on the one hand, or as complex organisms to be
interpreted biologically on the other. They have been subjected to the vicissitudes of stratigraphic
fashion. It is shown that Lapworth's biostratigraphy has been enduring in contrast to his structural or
palaeogeographic interpretations. However, the subsequent separation of litho- and chrono- from
biostratigraphy, while conceptually necessary, has encouraged an idealistic pursuit of the perfect
stratigraphic section for the purpose of defining stratigraphic boundaries. This has not always been
constructive, not least because such boundaries often coincide with events which militate against the
preservation of ideal sections. But Lapworth's close integration of biostratigraphic range with
observations on lithology, 'barren beds' and fossil preservation may have a new lease of life in the
context of event stratigraphy.
'The Moffat Series' was read by Charles Lapworth to the
Geological Society on 21 November 1877, and published as
pp. 240-343 of Volume 34 of the Quarterly Journal the
following year. With this paper, the mysteries of the vast
tract of 'interminable greywackes', the Southern Uplands of
Scotland, seemed at last to yield to the scientific method.
Here was an area of great structural complexity which had
previously yielded only the most simplistic interpretations;
furthermore, Lapworth 'solved' the problem by the
application of a particular palaeontological method: the
recognition of a new sequence of graptolite zones which
could be used to trace out the complexities of structure with
extraordinary reliability. The award of the Murchison Fund
of the Geological Society of London to Lapworth hard on
the heels of his paper shows that the significance of his work
was quickly appreciated. One year later, in 1879, he was to
publish his celebrated article in the Geological Magazine in
which the concept of the Ordovician System was introduced,
a concept nourished by his detailed work in southern
Scotland. Lapworth's description remains a primary
reference for those visiting Dob's Linn (this is the modern
spelling of Dobb's Linn of the early accounts), Craigmichan
Scaurs, or Muckra Burn. His acuity of observation was
remarkable: while the interpretative context in which his
structures have been placed has changed several times, the
hard facts of his sections have almost all survived
unchallenged.
If we are celebrating the lasting influence of The
Geological Society's Journal, Lapworth's (1878) paper is
more than just a contender for longevity. It signalled a
change in the understanding of a great area of our islands. It
introduced a biostratigraphical approach to structural and
historical interpretation. It confirmed the graptolites as a
group of major importance in calibrating early Palaeozoic
time. Some of its conclusions still stand; others have been

superseded. Why this should be tells us something about
both the enduring and the ephemeral sides of geological
enquiry. The issues raised in the Moffat Series are with us
still, and are worth consideration now that the Journal
publishes fewer biostratigraphic results than formerly.
Graptolites: fashion in biostratigraphic calibration

'Owing to the great rarity in the Moffat Series of fossils
belonging to the well-understood families of the Brachiopoda and Crustacea, which are universally regarded as the
most trustworthy exponents of the geological age of the
containing beds, we are forced to rely almost exclusively
upon such evidence as may be afforded by their
Graptolithina' (p. 333).
' . . . e a c h species and variety of Graptolite &c has a
definite range in the vertical succession of strata.' (p. 252).
Lapworth may have been a trifle disingenuous in the first
statement, because James Hall had already (1865) published
a splendid monograph on the graptolites from Quebec,
which had demonstrated a succession of species which were
to prove of zonal utility. Lapworth himself had already
published on graptolites in a stratigraphic context. However,
he was correct in asserting the value of relying upon
graptolites in the British 'Silurian'. The trilobites
(Lapworth's 'Crustacea') had already been proved of worth
by Murchison in his Silurian System (1839), and they had
been subsequently monographed by John Salter (18641883). The brachiopods had been similarly treated by
Davidson (1866-1883). The success of the zones proposed
by Lapworth in unscrambling the structure of the central
Southern Uplands served to shift attention to graptolites as
a biostratigraphic key to problems yet unsolved. Most of
93
94
R.A.
LAPWORTH, 1878
maximus
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
ELLES & WOOD, 1913
turriculatus
~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
spinigerus
i
i
maximus band
/ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
sedgwickii
(= sedgwickfi )
cometa
FORTEY
convolutus
i
i
cometa band
CURRENT
turriculatus
convolutus
i
argenteus
magnus
gregarius
i
itriangulatus Subzone
fimbriatus Subzone
triangulatus
cyphus
5:
vesiculosus
cyphus
modestus &
vesiculosus
vesiculosus
___J
acinaces
atavus
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
acuminatus
acuminatus
acuminatus
persculptus
anceps
anceps
extraordinarius
i
pacificus
anceps
i
complexus
o_
<
~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
sedgwickiJ
i argenteus Subzone
gregarius
} maximus Subzone
4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
z<
~.)
D
Barren muds
finearis
Clinganl
Wilsoni
complanatus
linearis
Clingani
Wilsoni
complanatus
finearis
clingani
wilsoni
>
o
iv"
Fig. 1. The persistence of Lapworth's biostratigraphic concepts (compare Figs 3 and 4), showing his original zonal scheme deduced in the
Moffat Series (left), Elles & Wood's subsequent modification (centre), and modern usage (right). Note that despite the recognition of a few
new zones and a change of name, Lapworth's concepts survive in some detail. However, he did list the 'Barren Beds' as a unit with time
significance.
Lapworth's zones are, with certain refinements, still in
employment (Fig. 1); they have been a lasting contribution
which seem likely to be permanent.
The reasons for this are not hard to understand, at least
in retrospect. The Moffat successions are almost entirely
confacial, the product of sedimentation away from
terrestrial perturbations, as Lapworth himself suggested.
Furthermore, the succession of graptolitic bands is
punctuated by barren intervals which tend to truncate
vertical ranges of species; this accentuates the discreteness
of zones, by giving comparatively neat concurrent ranges to
species within a given zone. Graptolites then approached
the ideal standard for biostratigraphic subdivision which had
been set by the work of Oppel (1856) using ammonites in
rocks of Jurassic age. In a word, they became fashionable.
The acme of graptolite zones is probably the great
monograph of British Graptolites by Elles & Wood
(1901-1918); this work was edited by Charles Lapworth,
according to the cover page. Thus it had his guidance and
seal of approval. It provided the necessary documentary
evidence for zones not merely for what was to become the
later Ordovician and early Silurian, but for almost the whole
of the both Systems. It was more than a match for the
coarser correlations of Salter and Davidson. Moreover,
Lapworth himself, in a running series of papers published in
the Annals and Magazine of Natural History had shown how

graptolites were unsurpassed for international correlation of
Lower Palaeozoic strata. If one adds to this that the
Ordovician System itself was conceived by Lapworth as he
began progressively to realize the importance of graptolite
faunas in distinguishing major divisions in Lower Palaeozoic
time, then there is a recipe for their unchallenged
supremacy as biostratigraphical indicators; from Dob's Linn
to the world at large. As if to confirm this, Rudolf
Ruedemann (1904), working in the shale formations of the
eastern United States, contrived a zonal system based on
graptolites for much of the Ordovician which showed
concordance with Lapworth's scheme.
'Gertie' Elles was to become the high priestess of the
Lapworthian method. From the Sedgwick Museum,
Cambridge, she performed an enormous number of
determinations of graptolites, armed with the great book.
Hardly a Memoir of the Geological Survey that touched on
Ordovician or Silurian was published without the signature
of G. L. Elles, or, before 1914, E. M. R. Wood upon the
graptolites. This is a testimony both to Elles' industry, and
to the successful application of the full set of zones
established in the early years of the twentieth century,
including her own (1904) Welsh additions to the Lapworth
canon. But when she followed this work to attempt the
THE B I O S T R A T I G R A P H I C P A R A D I G M
biostratigraphic unscrambling of complex structure (thereby
following Lapworth's example in applying palaeontology to
a geological problem) the results were less happy. Where
better to apply Lapworth's system of deduction than to the
complex and ill-understood ground of the Lake District?
Elles (1933) proposed zones after studying the geology
there, just as Lapworth had done, but on this occasion the
passage of time has been less kind to them (Jackson 1962).
Older graptolite faunas, unknown to Elles, have been added
(Jackson 1979; Rushton 1985; Maletz et al. 1991), and the
zonal scheme for the Arenig Series is being thoroughly
reinterpreted. The graptolites were not the sole key to the
complex structure of the Lake District, a structure which is
still in the process of disentanglement. This is not to say that
graptolites have no part to play in the process, because the
new discoveries have played a vital part in the generation of
tectonic models, but rather that Elles' application of the
Lapworthian method was not an invariable guarantee of
success in the absence of its brilliant originator.
Geology versus biology: palaeontology pulled two

ways
One of the compelling qualities of Lapworth's system as
embodied in Elles & Wood's monograph was its simplicity;
graptolites were recognizable from their overall form and
from a few, simple measurements: thecal spacing, stipe
width and colony size. Graptolites were probably the first
fossil species to be quantitatively defined. These criteria
were those used by Lapworth, and could even be applied in
a general way in the field. The monograph was nothing less
than a catalogue for the calibration of time, and one that
was easily mastered. True to their name, the outlines of the
graptolite colonies were, almost literally, written on the
rocks for biostratigraphic correlation. It should be added
that theories asserting the planktic habits of graptolites
gained wide currency at about the same time as the heyday
of Elles & Wood's monograph (e.g. Marr 1925), adding the
final touch to their theoretical perfection as correlation
tools. However, acknowledging planktic habits for graptolites was not a sine qua non for the successful application of
the Lapworthian method. For example, there was much
disagreement about the site of accumulation, and mechanism of the deposition of graptolite shales (e.g. Grabau 1929;
Bulman 1964) which were not finally rationalized until the
recognition that Lower Palaeozoic oceans differed in their
distribution from those later in geological time.
The graptolites portrayed in Elles & Wood were, in
truth, little more than cartoons of the original organisms.
The serrated outlines of the thecae revealed little of their
true structure and nothing of the colony development. They
were 'writing on the rocks' (as the Greek root of the name
describes them) for the convenience of biostratigraphers.
This did not matter for geologists, primarily concerned with
the correlation of formations, but it did matter to zoologists.
As the graptolites began to be taken seriously as organisms,
so a wealth of fine structures were discovered. This process
had already started by the 1890s when Gerard Holm had
discovered that splendid detail could be revealed by etching
whole colonies out of limestones. The description of these
specimens suddenly turned graptolites from stratigraphic
ciphers into complex animals. These could be studied
without primary regard for stratigraphic utility. Palaeontology as a whole has continued to be pulled between these
95
two poles: as geological tool on the one hand, as

palaeobiological discipline on the other.
If there are rivals to Lapworth's contribution they might
be found in the magnificent papers describing isolated
graptolites by O. M. B. Bulman (commencing 1932) and
Roman Koslowski (1949), which are as indispensible now as
when they were published. It is significant that Bulman
published his contributions in Arkiv fiir Zoologie, rather
than a geological journal. Bulman was writing at the same
time as Erik Stensio's magisterial works on fossil fishes were
being published, works in which the anatomy was realized in
almost as much detail as could be obtained from a dissection
of a living fish. These papers set a new standard in the
description of fossils, which has not been surpassed.
Koslowski also recognized graptolites for what they were for
the first time, an extinct clade related to the living
hemichordates, and thus opened a new research programme
in which zoological information might play a direct part.
However, 95% of graptolites are preserved in the
flattened mode, as in the Ordovician and Silurian at Moffat.
They simply lack the rich information which can be obtained
from isolated material (Fig. 2). Could they really be trusted
as stratigraphic indicators, if they were so incompletely
known? It was not long before differences in taxonomy
arose between material studied in the 'classical' flattened
style and the new isolated material preserved in full relief.
Neither Elles nor Ruedemann really took on board the
new morphological discoveries. There was a barrier, indeed,
on occasion hostility, between those who used graptolites
primarily as geological indicators, and those who sought out
the secrets of their anatomy and biology. The former may
have thought of themselves as the guardians of Lapworth's
tradition, while the latter no doubt allied themselves with
the new evolutionary biology following the 'Modern
synthesis' of Darwinism in the 1930s. This tension between
the palaeobiological role and the biostratigraphical role of
fossils has not gone away; it is still there in the contrast
between some of the authors who write in the journal
Paleobiology and those who write in the Journal of
Paleontology.
Conodonts become fashionable in the latter half of this
century
It is well-known that graptolites are rare in Lower
Palaeozoic inner shelf deposits, such as the limestones which
dominated deposition upon the Laurentian platform.
Discovery of the ubiquity of conodonts in such deposits (and
their comparative ease of extraction by way of acid
dissolution) led to a 'boom' in conodont specialists in the
1970s and 1980s. Conodonts, in their turn, became
fashionable. In these organisms there was less conflict
between different preservational modes. From Lower
Palaeozoic 'layer cake' successions (where no equivocal
questions about the way up of strata exist) a succession of
conodont zones to rival Lapworth's graptolite zones was
proposed and promulgated (see, for example, Sweet &
Bergstr6m 1971). These were conceived not in the contorted
splendour of the Southern Uplands but in the flat-bedded
quarries of Sweden and the Western USA. Such was their
popularity that they became a focus for particularly
intensive research. When the Working Group of the IUGS
on the Cambrian-Ordovician boundary reached a decision
on what kind or organism should be critical for the
96
R.A.
FORTEY
ill
!
f~
+
definition of the Ordovician it was the conodonts, not the
graptolites, that were chosen as the primary reference
(Norford 1988). The place of the graptolite Rhabdinopora
(formerly Dictyonema)flabelliformis, the first planktic
graptolite, had been usurped by a modest but widespread
conodont of the genus Cordylodus. It is interesting that the
same kind of idealism has been claimed with regard to
conodonts as stratigraphical indicators as has been applied
to graptolites: they are not subject to diachronism, they are
planktic, and so on.
Reconciling the biological and geological approaches

Graptolites are now known in more detail than Lapworth
could have imagined. Ultrastructural studies (Crowther
1981) have revealed even the fabric of their construction, at
magnifications measured in thousands. Isolated material
Fig. 2. The fully anatomized graptolite

skeleton (left) (courtesy of P. R.
Crowther) compared with the drawings
used in Elles & Wood's monograph
(right) of the genus Climacograptus
(sensu lato), showing the difference
between the preservation commonly
encountered in the field and that used
for palaeobiological studies.
has now been described from many additional parts of the

geological column (Cooper & Fortey 1982; Williams &
Stevens 1987; Mitchell 1987). The knowledge of graptolite
fine structure is now being fed back to the interpretation of
the specimens on the rock. This has the positive effect of
reconciling the morphological and the stratigraphical
approach to the study of specimens with mutual benefit for
both biostratigraphy and palaeobiology. The tell-tale
signature of a complex thecal structure may be preserved
even in the most recalcitrant of graptolite shales. The
negative aspect, if it can be so described, is that the simple
approach using the 'great book', armed with which any
stratigraphic problem could be solved, applies no more. The
straightforward, and somewhat idealistic, phase of research
which Lapworth initiated has passed.
Thus it is that apparently arcane work on the
ultrastructure, or colony development of graptolite colonies
has now contributed to problems of practical stratigraphy.
This has, if anything, only re-emphasized that graptolites are
superb fossils for stratigraphic correlation; many apparent
anomalies in ranges have been resolved thanks to new
knowledge of fine structure. To cite one example, there was
an apparent mismatch in age between Ordovician
Didymograptus bifidus Zone of Europe and North America
as determined using 'tuning fork' graptolites, the latter
apparently being older than the former. Studies on isolated
material revealed, within the first millimetre of the colony,
such differences in structure as to show that there was no
likely close relationship between these 'tuning forks' on
either side of the Atlantic. On the other hand, genuinely
reliable, widespread species were identified among other
groups of graptolites (such as isograptids). It is becoming
clear that there are some geographically restricted
graptolites, including many of those that belonged to shelf
biotopes, but it is also true that there were many genuinely
pandemic taxa, even at times of high 'provinciality'
elsewhere (Cooper et al. 1991).
B i o z o n e s m o d i f i e d , a n d the r e s u r g e n c e o f g r a p t o l i t e s
The methods of graphical correlation have refined zonal

usage, by using all the range data for fossils, especially first
and last appearances of species, rather than 'lumping' them
by zone (Shaw 1964; Edwards 1984). Conodonts were
subjected to this method, yielding results that added to their
lustre as correlation tools (Sweet 1984), with a five-fold
increase in precision within a single craton. This method
does not, of course, 'invalidate' zones, which remain
valuable as a common language for international correlation, and are the appropriate level of resolution for many
problems. Recent graphical correlations using graptolite
range data (Cooper & Lindholm 1990) show that they are
equally capable of refining the timescale.
During the century or more after the publication of
Lapworth's Moffat Series paper, the graptolites have been
subject to several surges in biostratigraphic popularity. Now
their peculiar virtues are respected alongside those of
conodonts. Graptolites extended into oceanic deposits. They
included species which were exceptionally pandemic in
distribution, even at times when other elements in the fossil
faunas were endemic (Fortey & Mellish 1992). Conodonts
can both complement graptolites, and extend into limestone
facies where they are absent. Correlation between zonal
schemes based on these different organisms is becoming
more secure (Bergst6m 1986).
The complete rehabilitation of graptolites as biostratigraphic tools received its official imprimatur with the
selection, in May 1985, of the graptolitic section at Dob's
Linn as the base of the Silurian System, and hence the top
of the Ordovician System (Cocks & Rickards 1988). This
was at an horizon (based on the acuminatus Zone) only a
part zone away from its original definition. Lapworth would
no doubt have been delighted.
The durability of biostratigraphic data compared

with contingency of structural and palaeogeographic
inference
'Those who accepted the theory of the Llandeilo age of the
dark shales and greywackes of the south of Scotland, and
attempted to correlate them with their supposed equivalents
97
on the south of the Solway, have frequently expressed their

astonishment that the Scottish deposits, which must have
been laid down in a sea in some places less than 30 miles
distant from the volcanic area of the Lake-district, yet
showed no trace whatever of contemporaneous igneous
action, whether in the form of trap-dyke, lava flow, or bed
of volcanic ash.' (Lapworth 1878, p. 342) [Lapworth goes on
to suggest that they may actually be of somewhat different
ages].
'Nor is this extraordinary north-westerly attenuation of
the Lower Silurian rocks a phenomenon exclusively confined
to Britain. On the contrary it is one of the most striking
features of the Lower Silurians of Europe in general.' (p.
339).
'After undergoing innumerable repetitions among the
desolate wilds of Eskdalemuir, in the contorted and inverted
attitudes of their equivalents in the Moffatt area, the beds of
this great group gradually roll over to the s o u t h w a r d . . . ' (p.
342).
'The Girvan district is here regarded as a distinct and
separate area.' (footnote to p. 341).
The four quotations just given relate to aspects of
geology other than the detailed biostratigraphic exploration
l,
~/'/
~. Oceancurrents
--Uplifted ....
~.-~_.,,"
r~
x -"
Volcanic island
"':"'"~,ji2~~": :~:': '"
~o~
CU e t
....
'~,,~"'
'"
""'
~J~
An,o.W
8~]$h ~.~nnii.h
Mirii~:.:!~'r'e';'t'J
~~J-'"~"j////AngcIOr-'~r~ent
...y
'"....
(=)
Land
Shelf
. ~ " /
/~/ , ,-
,/
~o"
---
Tu~idites
Volcanoes
, <"
lapetus Ocean
Southern part
of British
Isles
(b)
Fig. 3. The shifting Palaeogeography of the Moffat area. (a) A late
'geosynclinal' model taken from A. Williams (1969).(b) A
representative 'Iapetus' model (after Cocks et al. 1980). Later
models (e.g. Ingham in Cope et al. & 1992) introduce many more
terranes. Compare these historically contingent models with Fig. 1.
98
R.A.
of the Moffat area itself and its succession of graptolites

zones. They are all made with Lapworth's characteristic
assertiveness, and the contemporary reader might well have
accepted all these statements as just as true as the others
relating to biostratigraphy. With the wisdom of hindsight it
is clear that there are different ways to interpret all four of
the statements today. In contrast, as we have seen, the
biostratigraphic scheme proposed by Lapworth survives as
'ground truth' in its essentials.
This point about the durability of biostratigraphic results
is an important one, because, in the perception of some
geologists, biostratigraphy is sometimes seen as a rather
routine procedure by comparison with the grander science
of structural deduction or palaeogeography. Possibly, it is
perceived that the conceptual breakthrough was made by
Lapworth, so that all that follows is in a sense, 'fine tuning'.
What the biostratigrapher deals with is not so much
falsification of rival hypotheses, the definitive mode of
scientific reasoning described by Karl Popper, as progressive
refinement of what is already known. The detailed revision
of the late Ordovician to earliest Silurian part of Lapworth's
sequence in Dob's Linn carried out by S. H. Williams
(1982a, b, 1983) is central to the current meaning and
correlation of biozones, for all that the techniques employed
are the classical ones of bed-by-bed collecting and
description. An internationally acceptable and recognizable
base to the Silurian System depends on such meticulous
biostratigraphy.
Changes in regional palaeogeographic setting

The concept of 'extraordinary northwestern attenuation' of
Ordovician and Silurian was an idea that was quickly
falsified. For all Lapworth's disclaimer (in the footnote) that
Girvan was a completely separate area, it was apparent that
there was a great thickness of sediments there which
included time equivalents of the Moffat succession (Williams
1962). Far from being a separate area, this Girvan-to-Moffat
change became a textbook example of regional facies and
thickness variation (Fig. 4), and was promulgated as such
through the numerous editions of Wells & Kirkaldy's
textbook of historical geology. The second 'attenuation' to
which Lapworth referred was the succession in Scandinavia
and the Russian Platform, which is indeed similarly
condensed to that at Moffat, but would now be interpreted
as part of a separate palaeocontinent, and truly decoupled
from the Southern Uplands.
Of Lapworth's original statements with regard to
sediment distribution, probably the only one which survives
unmodified is the idea that 'these strata must have been laid
down in an area removed in some way from the irregular
and disturbing influences of river-deposits and current
action...'. Lapworth himself would have regarded this
depositional setting as part of the general, northwesterly
attenuation of 'Silurian' sequences across Europe.
There have been some profound changes since then.
Once the contrast with Girvan was established, the Moffat
area was recognized as being far removed from sediment
sources which, under this interpretation, then lay rather to
the north ; this, coupled with the notion of crustal shortening
represented by the regional isoclinal folding, permitted the
problem of distance to be resolved. What is a comparatively
short distance today was much greater at the time of
deposition of the rocks. This view of the palaeogeographic
FORTEY
~X
~;"
//
Suggested
continuation
~ ~ ~"~
] ~ ( " \ "Silurian"~
~ II'"IMY
sequences
fllllll~
~tlllllllllll/:hick "sil.,ia~
Thicksequences
also
inArmorica&Bohemia
(a)
- : - - _ - - ~ -.-i
sEm,rs :*":*:'I StincharLsl;7~

AAI
~G ~
~"~---UNC0NFQRMTYJ~~
St2ES
-
ARENIG
"
(b)
Fig. 4. Changing palaeogeography of the Moffat area. (a) A sketch

of Lapworth's view, accepting the northwesterly attenuation of
'Silurian' rocks across Europe (b) the 'textbook' example of facies
change between Girvan and Moffat taken from the last edition of
Wells and Kirkaldy's Outline of Historical Geology (1966).
place of the Moffat area persisted through two thirds of the

present century, which might be termed the 'geosynclinal
period': Moffat was an example par excellence of an early
Palaeozoic starved geosyncline. As appropriate, Moffat was
incorporated into Marshall Kay's (1951) monumental, if
baroque, apotheosis of the geosyncline. Possibly the last
appearance of the Southern Uplands in this vein was in A.
Williams' (1969) review of brachiopod distributions. Current
systems within the geosynclinal system were invoked to
explain features of Ordovician brachiopod distribution,
which included faunas extending from Girvan into
Scandinavia. But the palaeogeography was, essentially,
present-day geography with added geosynclines.
The 'post-geosynclinal' period stems from the recognition of the vanished ocean Iapetus (Wilson 1966) and,
subsequently, a mid-European oceanic tract termed
Tornquist's Sea by Cocks & Fortey (1982). This change in
narrative, whereby the principles of plate tectonics could be
applied to the classic Caledonides, is now so familiar as not
to require elaboration here. It solved, at a stroke, the
dilemma of the profound differences between the Lake
99
District and the Southern Uplands 'in some places less than
thirty miles distant' which Lapworth had remarked (above).
It provided a rationale for the differences between the
Girvan district and Moffat, and an explanation for the suite
of rocks at Ballantrae, so different from their contemporaries around Skiddaw. The introduction of terranes has
allowed a further degree of freedom, and one that has
directly affected the Moffat area. As this is written, the Atlas
of Palaeogeography and Lithofacies has just been published
by the Geological Society, and there (Ingham in Cope et al.
1992) Moffat will be found 'floating', rather uncertainly, as
an oceanic terrane within Iapetus, and outboard of other
terranes, carrying the legend 'relative position not known'.
collected which spans the same time interval. The modern

versions of Lapworth's scheme have now been tested in this
say in numerous localities around the world (Cocks &
Rickards 1988), including China, USSR, Australia and the
Americas; the sequence of species which appear in these
sections is very similar. If anything, one might say that the
biostratigraphic science contrasts with the tectonic, because
the latter has been through several revisions, as earlier ideas
have become falsified, often in the context of new theory. In
truth, biostratigraphy acts as an independent monitor of
tectonic theory, and both should collaborate in the
generation of robust hypotheses; this, of course, is precisely
the way Lapworth proceeded.
Changes in structural interpretation
The divorce of rock and fossils: end of a marriage

of convenience or dissolution of a natural
partnership?
One might repeat a similar history of change with regard to

structural interpretation, but the briefest summary will
demonstrate the point. Lapworth's demonstration of
isoclinal folding, often with an inverted limb, at the local
level, became a pervasive structural model at the regional
level, much employed by Peach and H o m e , and other
distinguished surveyors. After the introduction of plate
tectonic interpretations, the hypothesis that the Southern
Uplands comprised part of an accretionary prism (Leggett et
al. 1979) emphasized the importance of regional thrusting in
dividing the Uplands into different tectono-stratigraphic
units. This intrepretation has itself not been without
controversy, and the structure of the Southern Uplands is
still under debate, although the terms of the debate are now
invariably conducted with reference to plate tectonic
models. Thus there have thus been several shifts in
interpretation as was the case with the sedimentary setting.
Comparative durability of biostratigraphy

There is no reason to suspect that the question of the site of
deposition of the Moffat Series has been definitively settled.
Paradoxically, its position is now so freed from constraints
that it could have been located practically anywhere
outboard of Laurentia. The re-interpretations of the
structure of the Southern Uplands continue. As has been
shown, the scientific method has offered change and change
again since Lapworth's paper was published, depending
upon which paradigm (structural, tectonic or sedimentological) was current at the time, and it cannot be supposed that
this revisionary process has now stopped. Compared with
these periodic conceptual fluxes, the biostratigraphy has
been extraordinarily enduring. There have been certain
changes to the nomenclature of the graptolites, which can be
the cause of justifiable irritation to the non-specialist, as well
as new discoveries and changes in the stratigraphic ranges of
species. The addition of the extraordinarius Zone near the
end of the Ordovician is possibly the most important change
to Lapworth's sequence (Williams 1983), but even in this
case the characteristic fauna is both improverished, and
confined to a single band at Dob's Linn.
It should not be claimed that Lapworth's biostratigraphic
science is in some sense 'better' than his structural science,
on account of its comparative durability. But the capacity of
good biostratigraphic schemes to evade subsequent falsification is assuredly one of the achievements of this branch of
geology. In the field, a zonal scheme has to run the gauntlet
of being potentially falsified by every sequence subsequently
' . . . b l a c k rock showing the peculiar variegated lines of the
M. gregarius Zone, and affording M. tenuis, C. scalaris, and

other of its commoner fossils...' (p. 266).
' . . . w e notice with much interest the extraordinary
'Clingani' band of our typical section. It is here nearly a foot
in thickness, and is crowded with well-preserved examples
of Monograptus Clingani (Carr.) and M. leptotheca
(Lapw.).' (p. 271).
Lapworth (1878) was able to describe the details of field
relationships of rocks and fossils in a minute and leisurely
way which would not be permitted in a modern journal.
These intimate descriptions reveal how Lapworth conceived
his zones, and how he was able to trace his shale 'bands'
across the intensely folded country.
Time and again the reader will be struck by the way
Lapworth described the lithological details and the fossils
together, an intimate association used in an almost forensic
examination of the structure in the field. Although the
fossils are dubbed with Latin names they are, in truth, little
more than complex lithological signals. Their state of
preservation, crowding and colour are mentioned along with
their names. They are deployed in conjunction with other
stratigraphical signals, such as peculiar colours produced by
weathering, or the stripiness of shale beds. In contrast,
evolution is hardly mentioned; I can find only one
suggestion that one species might be ancestral to another in
the paper. Lapworth did not neglect the biological aspects of
graptolites (Lapworth 1897), but at this earlier stage in his
career he seems to have regarded them primarily as
geological indicators.
To Lapworth, therefore, biostratigraphy was not
divorced from lithostratigraphy; rather, the fossils were an
intimate part of the whole aspect of the rock available for
correlation purposes. The fossils were regarded almost as
part of the lithology.
The recognition of a distinction between chrono-, lithoand biostratigraphy has been one of the important changes
to stratigraphic practice within the last half century. It would
be difficult to leave out this consideration from a discussion
of Lapworth's achievements. The major formational ~ames
used by Lapworth: Glenkiln, Birkhill and Hartfell, survive
into modern usage. As originally proposed, the 'Barren
Mudstones' had the status of an 'interzone' towards what is
now the top of the Ordovician (Fig. 1), a rock interval which
was listed amidst the formally recognized zones. Lapworth's
notebooks (see S. H. Williams in Cocks & Rickards 1988,
100
R. A. F O R T E Y
~1 i
.OOOV.C.AN-S.LU
BOUNDARY.AN
"
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
I~=
!.}
'~
I...............
--~ palegrey mudstone
metabentonite
i. l,i
[
I
species abundant
I
u~,lariusBanl
species
rare
i[
"
..~
I
_.1
~.
..i i
,,,
~
I'*
I ~
IQ
IQ
I Q"
!~.
,~.
i~
I (-~
. 't3
=0
I
,~
'~
IQ"
Fig. 5. A modern interpretation of part of the section studied by Lapworth, after Williams (in Cocks & Rickards 1988, fig. 5), showing the
'range bar' convention applied to a confacial, but not completely continuously fossiliferous section.
fig. 1) show another, unfossiliferous 'Belcraig Shale'
sandwiched between the linearis and anceps zones, and
given equal status to these zones. In .these cases, thickness
of rock was taken as a surrogate for time, even in the
absence of fossils. The chrono-, bio- and litho aspects were
thoroughly intertwined.
The 'unpicking' of these various concepts has resulted in
greater clarity for biostratigraphy; the ranges of fossil taxa
are now routinely shown as vertical bars extending upwards
through the section; see, for example, the graptolite ranges
shown through the Ordovician-Silurian boundary interval at
Dob's Linn, Fig. 5 in Williams' paper. We are so used to
seeing biostratigraphic data presented in this way that it is
possible to forget that it is a convention, and one which
conceals data which were of importance to Charles
Lapworth. I identify two consequences which have not
always been to the advantage of biostratigraphers.
The ideal section

One consequence of the separation of the discipline of
biostratigraphy has been an ambiguous achievement. This
has been the spread of an idea of the ideal biostratigraphic
section, a kind of platonic rock section equipped with
perfect properties for international correlation: continuous,
confacial and conformable, fossiliferous throughout, yet
with cryptic breaks minimized, replete with fossils of several

groups, which are arranged in evolutionary series.
Furthermore, such sections have an horizon suitable for
hammering in a 'golden spike' for the base of a
chronostratigraphic interval to immediate international
satisfaction. Such sections rarely, if ever, exist in nature.
Yet their pursuit has been one of the motivating forces
behind various Working Groups of the International
Geological Correlation Programme. It is curious to find such
an idealistic concept holding sway in the geological sciences,
which are so generally pragmatic. The importance of sound
criteria for international correlation is not to be gainsaid,
but this is, perhaps, a different matter from the relentless
pursuit of a perfect section which is likely to prove a
chimera. This is probably why the definition of the
Cambrian-Ordovician has remained undecided after more
than 15 years of intense work and debate (Norford 1990).
The intensity of argument increases as smaller and smaller
flaws are examined, and this is not surprising because the
ultimate level of focus is upon such minutiae as subjective
and minor taxonomic disagreements, where specialists are
notoriously combative. To those outside these debates, the
arguments must seem as esoteric as the medieval disputes as
to how many angels could dance upon the head of a pin.
For the definition of major boundaries, such as the base
of a System, the chances of finding an ideal horizon in an
ideal section are still further slimmed by the fact that most
boundaries were placed originally, and with good reason, at
some important event in world history, thus generating
precisely the circumstances under which ideal sections are
likely to become corrupted by the sticky stuff of history. The
odds are stacked against the existence of the ideal section.
The end of the Ordovician, which is recorded in the Moffat
Series, coincides with the major Hirnantian glaciation at the
end of the Ordovician (Beuf et al. 1971) and is thus a case in
point. Shelf sections spanning the Ordovician-Silurian
boundary are invariably dramatically affected by this event,
and it is unlikely that even the offshore palaeogeographic
site at Moffat escaped its influence. Virtually every other
Palaeozoic system and series boundary carries with it some
eustatic or other event which affects the likelihood
continuous confacial fossil faunas.
101
fleshed-out historical narrative of events in the heart of the

Palaeozoic.
Now that biostratigraphy has established itself as a
discipline in its own right, it has taken a lesson from Charles
Lapworth in applying its unique precision to wider
geological problems. But this does not signal the end of the
need for more and detailed study of classical rock and fossil
sequences. Just because the principles of biostratigraphy
have a long pedigree it does not diminish the need for their
continued exercise.
I thank L. R. M. Cocks who read and improved the manuscript, and

P. R. Crowther and S. H. Williams who allowed me to use their
graptolite illustrations.
References
Loss o f information on rock-fossil interactions

The range-bar convention in biostratigraphy may serve to
deflect attention from some of those features which
Lapworth so keenly observed, relating to the occurrence
and lithological association of fossil material. At its worst,
this dissociation means that the biostratigrapher is called in
as a consultant to provide his determinations on isolated
specimens, often without regard to any circumstances of
field occurrence, essentially as a kind of technician. The
biostratigrapher's job might be in danger of becoming no
more than the provision of an inventory of names which can
be added to other criteria (e.g. isotopes, trace elements) for
synthesis. But details of field occurrence do contribute both
to stratigraphy and to the biological knowledge of the fossils
themselves. For example, the 'barren beds' in the Moffat
succession a r e not merely inconvenient gaps in the fossil
narrative, but reflected both ash from distant volcanoes and
oceanic conditions at a time of climatic crisis, which was also
one of the major turning points in graptolite evolutionary
history. Equally, the complanatus or clingani 'bands' are
likely to have had more significance than just being a part of
the range of their respective species. Perhaps, now that the
conceptual framework of biostratigraphy has been
sufficiently clarified, the time has come to go back to
Lapworth, and examine further the interactions between
bio- and lithostratigraphy. The application of sequence
stratigraphy to fossil bearing sequences has done this to
some extent, although the 'ideal sequence' is potentially as
intransigent a taskmaster as the 'ideal' section. Nonetheless,
there is reason to suppose that the Ordovician-Silurian
sequence in all its detail will be related to climatic and
oceanographic events of which Charles Lapworth had little
conception.
The way forward

The stratigraphic endeavour started by Lapworth has, in a
sense, come full circle. The biostratigraphy he initiated has
survived, with additional refinement. These modifications
have been introduced progressively over the last century,
rather than being initiated by a profound change in
conceptual framework, as has been the case with the
structural and palaeogeographical views of the Southern
Uplands. Now once again the intimate association between
rocks and the fossils they contain, to which Lapworth
devoted much scrutiny, is being re-examined to produce a
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FORTEY
SHAW, A. B. 1964. Time in stratigraphy. McGraw-Hill, New York.

SWEET, W. C. 1984. Graphic correlation of upper Middle and Upper
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BRUTON, D.
L. (ed) Aspects of the Ordovician
System.
Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, 25-35.
& BERGSTR6M, S. M. (eds) 1971. Symposium on conodont
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Geological Society, London, Memoirs, 3.
, 1969. Ordovician faunal provinces with reference to brachiopod
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,1982b. Upper Ordovician graptolites from the top Lower Hartfell Shale
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, 1983. The Ordovician-Silurian boundary graptolite fauna of Dob's
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-
& STEVENS, R. K. 1988. Early Ordovician (Arenig) graptolites of the

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-
Received 31 October 1992; accepted 10 November 1992.
From QJGS,34, 240-241.

19. The MOFFA~ S~Rrm. By C~ARL~S LArWORTB, Esq., F.G.S.
(Read 1%v. 21st, 1877.)
[PLAT~.SXI.-XIII.]
CONTENTS.
Ir~trodu~tion.
I. General characters of the Lower Silurian Rocks of the south of Scotland.
II. General characters of ths strata of the Moffat district.
III. History of previous opinion.
A, -Physical Relations of the Moffat Series.

L Description of the typical sections of Dobb's Linn and Craigmiehan Scants.
XI. Description of the black bands to the south of the Moifat Valley.
(a) Black-shale bands south-west of St. Mary's Loeb.
i. Muckra Band; ii. Riskinhope Band; iii. Whitehope Band;
iv. Borrybush Band.
(b) Black bands in the valley of the Yarrow.
i. Mount-Benger Burn; ii. Eldinhope.
(v) Black hand of ~Ettrick and Glenkiln.
i. Ettriek; ii. Entertxona; iii. Belcraig ; iv. Glenkiln.
III. Description of the sections of the Moffat Series to the north of the MoffatYarrow Yalley.
(a) Basin of the Upper Annam
i. Frenchland Burn; ii. Garple Spa; iii. Rittonside; iv. Headshaw T,inn ; V. Harti~ll Spa.
(b) Basin of the Meggat Water.
(c) Basin of the Moffat Water.
IV. Summary of observations and conclusions regarding the physical relations
of the Moffat Series.
B. Subditrisions, Lithology, and Pal~eonology of the Moffat Series.

L The GIenkiln Shales.
II. The Hartfell Shales.
(a) Lower Hart~ell.
i. Zone of Clirna/,ograptus Wilsoni; ii. Zone of lh'cranograpCus
Clinqani ; iii. Zone of PleurograTtus linearis.
(b) Upper Hartfell.
i. Barren Mudstones ; ii. Zone of l)icellograTtus anceps.
III. The Birkhill Shales.
(a) Lower Birkhill.
i. Zone of .DilolograTtus acumi~gus; ii. Zone of Diplograplus
vesiculosus ; iii. Zone of MonograTCus greqarius.
(b) Upper Birkhill.
i. Zone of JDiTlograpCuscomeCa; ii. Zone of Monoqraptus sTinigerus ; iii. Zone of RastriCes maximus.
Table showing the vertical distribution of the Fossils of the Moffat Series.
C. Conclusion.
I. Systematic importance of the divisions of the Moffa Series.
II. Comparison of the :Faunas of the three divisions of the Moffat Series with
those of their foreign equivalents.
(a) Llandeilo :Formation ; (b) Bala or Caradoc ; (c) Lower Llandovery.
III. General conclusions as to the geological age and relationships of the Moffi~t
Series.
IV. Bearing of the foregoing conclusions upon the general question of the suecession among the Silurian Rocks of the south of Scotland.
INTRODUCTION.
I. General characters of the Lower Silurian _I~ocks of the south of

Scotland.
No single geographical r e , o n in B r i t a i n is m o r e clearly defined
physically t h a n the broad tableland k n o w n as the S o u t h e r n H i g h lands or Uplands of S~otland. Cut off a b r u p t l y from the n o r t h of
E n g l a n d by the shallow inlet of the Solway and t h e m o u n t a i n - w a l l
of the Cheviots, and f r o m the m a i n mass of Scotland by the great
central valley of L a n a r k and Mi.dlothian, it stretches like a vast
zone across the entire b r e a d t h of t h e island from sea to sea. 0 c c a sionally some of its h i g h e r points are sufficiently grouped t o g e t h e r
to be classed popularly u n d e r a c o m m o n title, such as the Moorfoots,
L o w t h e r s , and L a m m e r m u i r s ; b u t the region, as a whole, m a y best
be described as a rolling sea of broad r o u n d e d hills and deep n a r r o w
valleys. T h e only level spots occur along t h e banks of its few really
i m r o r t a n t rivers, where their lower valleys e x p a n d into the long
fertile reaches of w h i c h the Merse, Nithsdale, and A n n a n d a l e are
t h e m o s t familiar examples. The more elevated areas, which rarely
exceed 2000 feet in height, show here a n d there strips of peat moss
or h e a t h e r y moor-land. Nowhere, however, do we m e e t w i t h t h e
crag, cliff, and rocky g r o u n d of the N o r t h e r n H i g h l a n d s , b u t hill
a n d dale are clothed alike in a universal m a n t l e of soft green turf.
T h e district is consequently p r e e m i n e n t l y pastoral, agriculture being
almost entirely restricted to the low-lying, open dales.
Dinantian (Lower Carboniferous) biostratigraphy and chronostratigraphy in the

British Isles
N. J. RILEY
British Geological Survey, K e y w o r t h , Nottingham N G 1 2 5 G G , U K
Abstract: Vaughan's (1905) zonation of the Carboniferous Limestone in the Bristol district was a
pioneer biostratigraphical study, which because of its meticulous execution can be reinterpreted in a
modern context. The replacement of his scheme with a chronostratigraphical one by George et ai.
(1976) had a similar revolutionary affect on British Dinantian stratigraphy. However, it is now time to
revise the British Dinantian stages so that they more closely correspond to biostratigraphical events.
Dinantian biostratigraphy still requires considerable refinement, but it has now achieved a diversity of
techniques and resolution far beyond that which was available at the time of these earlier proposals. It
is the most pragmatic and closest approximation to widespread chronostratigraphical correlation
available. This paper discusses these and related issues and presents a review and correlation of
current biozonations.
This contribution is written as a tribute to Vaughan's paper

on the 'Palaeontological Sequence in the Carboniferous
Limestone of the Bristol area' published by the Geological
Society in 1905. It was one of the most influential papers to
have appeared in the Journal and pioneered biostratigraphical subdivision of the Carboniferous Limestone in Britain,
whilst providing one of the first detailed commentaries on
the principles of biostratigraphy.
This review aims to summarize the d e v e l o p m e n t of
biostratigraphical subdivision of the Dinantian Subsystem
(Lower Carboniferous) in the British Isles and provide a
commentary on the wide diversity of biostratigraphical
schemes currently available in terms of their facies
application, interrelationships and current problems. International correlation is not dealt with here, but is assessed in
Brenckle (1991). As biostratigraphy is used to recognize
chronostratigraphical units, this paper will also address the
relationship of biostratigraphy to the British Dinantian
stages proposed by George et al. (1976) and those aspects of
sequence stratigraphy which are relevant to this classification. Aspects of geochronometry and palaeomagnetism
have been summarized by Leeder (1988) and Hailwood
(1989) respectively. Chemostratigraphy is a promising new
area of stratigraphical research being applied to Carboniferous rocks, but there is little information in the public
domain for this technique to be reviewed in the present
context. For reasons of brevity authors of taxonomic names
are not included in this account, however they can be found
in the references quoted for each fossil group covered in the
text and British Geological Survey memoirs. A summary of
British Dinantian classification is given in Fig. 1.
to the biostratigraphical investigation of the British

Carboniferous. Reports from this committee were issued
through the BA by Garwood between 1896 and 1900 and by
Hind, until 1907. Against this background, Vaughan's
(1905) zonation, which was based on the distribution of
corals and brachiopods in the Carboniferous Limestone of
the Bristol district, was the first serious attempt to apply a
biostratigraphical zonation to the Lower Carboniferous
marine limestones of Britain. Prior to this classic work,
Carboniferous fossils had largely been described more as a
taxonomic exercise, with little regard for their utility in
subdividing the very broad lithostratigraphical units then
recognized. The state of Carboniferous biostratigraphy
immediately prior to Vaughan's paper was illustrated by
Hinde & Howe (1901, p. 388) who subdivided the
Carboniferous Limestone throughout the British Isles into
only two zones.
Vaughan's scheme was heralded as a preliminary
zonation (Vaughan 1905, p. 183), however, it influenced the
correlation and subdivison of the Carboniferous Limestone
throughout Britain and Ireland for the next seventy years
with only minor refinement at its reference section (e.g.
Reynolds 1921), until a formal chronostratigraphical scheme
was proposed by George et al. (1976). This proposal defined
a series of regional stages erected at various basal boundary
stratotypes in Britain and Ireland. Yet even this
standardized scheme has inherited boundaries related to
some of Vaughan's zones; a major tribute to the accurate
and careful observations made by Vaughan.
Vaughan's grasp of the essentials of biostratigraphical
theory was remarkably advanced, both in concept and
practice. Today, when we take many of our stratigraphical
procedures and concepts for granted, his account makes
refreshing reading. It presents a remarkably mature and
argued case for the erection and application of biostratigraphical subdivision of the Carboniferous Limestone
which, to this day, serves as a key paper; not only for
Vaughan's zonation of the Avon Gorge, Bristol

The sponsorship of a committee on the 'Life Zones of the
British Carboniferous Rocks' by the British Association
(BA) in the late nineteenth century added great momentum
105
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M
Dla
D I N A N T I A N BIO- AND C H R O N O S T R A T I G R A P H Y
Carboniferous stratigraphers, but also as a pioneer example
of general biostratigraphical philosophy (ibid., p.183-4).
Vaughan was conscious of several important biostratigraphical zonal concepts (and their interrelationships) that we
would now recognize as assemblage zones, genus zones,
interzones, lineage zones and subzones. He was aware of
the role of homeomorphy in taxonomic identification and
demonstrated that some zones could be diachronous and
facies dependent, whereas others indicated the diachroneity
of certain lithostratigraphical units. His observations were
meticulously linked to named sections allowing others to
confirm and expand upon his zonal scheme. He was also
aware that microfossils had great potential; however, these
were ignored, probably because he intended that his zones
could be recognized easily in the field. Vaughan was
conscious that his scheme was parochial, because detailed
description of other regions was unavailable, so his zones
could not be tested at the time of their proposal. He
predicted that his scheme would be improved as the results
of studies elsewhere in Britain became clear.
The first real test of this opinion was demonstrated
through the work" of Garwood (1907, 1913, 1916) who
described the faunal sequence in the Carboniferous
Limestone areas bordering the southern Lake District in
northwest England. Garwood erected his own zonal
terminology for faunas underlying the D i b u n o p h y l l u m
Zone, but did attempt a correlation with Vaughan's zones.
This alternative zonation resulted from the discovery of
stratigraphically significant faunas that were not present in
the Bristol area. His studies were extended south and
eastwards into the Settle area of Yorkshire Dales by
Garwood & Goodyear (1924) and into the adjacent Craven
Basin by Parkinson (1926). All these authors provided an
uneasy correlation at certain horizons with Vaughan's zones;
however, the broad framework of the Vaughanian scheme
was recognizable and summarized by Garwood (1929). The
faunal differences between northwest and southwest Britain
were thought to result from zoogeographical provincialism.
This position was embelished and adapted further by
Hudson (1930) and other workers e.g. Turner (1950). This
resulted in a subtle corruption of both Vaughan's scheme
and Garwood's interpretation of it, with different workers
using the zones in various senses, as faunas present in other
regions but not recognizable in the southwest were
integrated.
Vaughan's scheme only addressed the subdivision of the
Carboniferous Limestone facies. Basinal sequences generally lack rich coral/brachiopod faunas and zonation of these
successions using ammonoids (goniatites) was initiated by
Hind (1918), but it was Bisat (1924) who made the first
significant breakthrough at establishing a workable zonation
(see the later section on ammonoids).
Micropalaeontological studies were rarely undertaken
prior to the last three decades, however the impact of
micropalaeontology has been to extend biostratigraphical
zonation into non-marine facies and strata which lack
macrofauna, or situations where only small rock samples are
107
available, such as in boreholes. These techniques have

complemented and provided an independent means of
testing the reliabilty of certain macrofaunal zonations.
Dinantian eustasy
The modern debate on the eustatic controls upon British
Dinantian stratigraphy was initiated by Ramsbottom (1973)
who divided the Dinantian into six major cycles. Each cycle
included a transgressive base and regressive top. Major
biostratigraphical changes were introduced by each transgression. This approach echoed that invoked by Wright et
al. (1927) for the Namurian (Millstone Grit) of the
Rossendale area in northwest England. Ramsbottom's
synthesis radically changed the way in which Dinantian
sequences could be subdivided and correlated.
The eustatic hypothesis was developed in subsequent
papers (Ramsbottom 1974, 1977, 1981b) and lead to a
hierarchical nomenclature with the original six major
Dinantian cycles subdivided further into eleven mesothems
(Dla, D l b etc.). Mesothemic boundary status was given to
perceived regressive/transgressive boundaries, where such a
boundary was associated with significant biostratigraphical
change, as distinct from the numerous minor cyclical
boundaries which pervade the Carboniferous Limestone
facies in particular. A full critique and discussion of
Ramsbottom's hypothesis and classification was given by
George (1978) who was one of its main opponents.
Ramsbottom's hypothesis provided a vehicle for
advancing Dinantian stratigraphical practice, which still
remains largely unrealized. Prior to his synthesis, only
tectonic controls were considered important in producing
depositional and faunal hiatuses in the Dinantian (Hudson
& Turner 1930a, b; Rayner 1953, pp. 277-281). Indeed it is
reasonable to regard Ramsbottom's classification as a
pioneer attempt at a modern sequence stratigraphical
framework for the British Dinantian. The main weakness
was not the hypothesis itself, but some of the evidence and
conclusions used to support it, such as the reliance on a
superficial interpretation of diagenetic and sedimentological
criteria which were used to recognize some of the eustatic
boundaries. This was exacerbated further by insufficient or
incorrect biostratigraphical data (for amplification of these
points refer to the Chronostratigraphical Section of this
paper). Another complication, largely ignored by Ramsbottom, is the variety of syndepositional tectonic controls
which operated during the Dinantian which blur the
distinction between eustatic and tectonically driven sedimentary sequences.
An attempt to address this latter difficulty was advanced
by Horbury (1989) in a detailed sedimentological study of a
late Dinantian carbonate platform in the Morecambe Bay
area of northwest England. Horbury, Concluded that it is
possible to elucidate between short term glacioeustatic
driven cycles (c. 0.02-0.1 Ma) and local pulsed tectonism (c.
0.4Ma). This work provided an insight into the possible
glacioeustatic
status of minor
cyclicity, but
not
Fig. 1. Dinantian classification and zonation applicable to the British Isles. The relevant range charts (Figs 2 and 3) give the key to ammonoid
and conodont abbreviations. The seismic sequence boundaries are taken from interpretation of the biostratigraphical data given in the text of
Ebdon et al. (1990), not their figures. Ramsbottom (1977) never clarified the boundaries of mesothems Dla, Dlb and Dlc, but Ramsbottom &
Mitchell (1980) equated the Dlc mesothem with the Ivorian Stage of Belgium. Stipple ornament shows interzones (conodonts and miospores)
or non-sequence (brachiopods).
108
N.J.
Ramsbottom's mesothems which occupy much longer time

intervals, and which may have resulted from a longer term
cycle of glacio-eustasy, or processes such as sea floor
spreading rates or geoidal eustasy.
There is still much to be gained in attempting to generate
a eustatic based sequence stratigraphy for the Dinantian, if
only to stimulate detailed multidisciplinary comparative
studies in tectonicallyseparate terrains.
Chronostratigraphy
One of the most significant conclusions of Ramsbottom
(1973) was the dramatic illustration of the incompleteness of
the Avon Gorge sequence, through the recognition of
numerous stratigraphical gaps. Some of these hiatuses had
previously been suspected by Butler (1973) and Mitchell
(1972), but it was Ramsbottom's hypothesis which provided
the mechanism for predicting why and where such
stratigraphical gaps lay. Not only was this a demonstration
of the predictive capacity of Ramsbottom's synthesis, but it
also had major implications for Dinantian stratigraphy, since
it explained, in terms of sequence stratigraphy, why
Dinantian coral/brachiopod faunas present in northern
Britain were not represented in Vaughan's zones derived
from the Avon Gorge (this also affected the 'Avonian'
conodont zonation proposed by Rhodes et al. 1969).
Furthermore it exposed even greater differences between
Garwood's (1913) and Vaughan's (1905) schemes, than
those already recognized (e.g. Rayner 1953). Consequently
the use of Vaughanian zones and their derivatives in
different senses in separate regions, as well being used in a
chronostratigraphical sense, was no longer acceptable.
In this climate the resultant formal proposal for
chronostratigraphical subdivision of the British Dinantian in
the 'Dinantian Report' by George et al. (1976), was a great
step forward. It provided the first formal chronostratigraphical classification of the British Dinantian, against which all
the biozonal schemes could be compared. It also fulfilled the
need to separate the conceptual principles of biostratigraphy
and chronostratigraphy (although this has been ignored by
many stratigraphers). This resulted in subdivision of the
British Dinantian into six regional stages; the Courceyan,
Chadian, Arundian, Holkerian, Asbian and Brigantian.
Their characteristic fossils were summarized and each stage
was defined at a basal boundary stratotype. A commentary
on the recognition and correlation of the stages,
supplemented with correlation charts, was also provided for
each region of Britain and Ireland.
Despite statements by George (1978) that the chronostratigraphical scheme was not based on Ramsbottom's
cycles, it clearly was. Not only was this admitted by
Ramsbottom (see discussion in George, 1978), who was a
coauthor of the Dinantian Report, but the cycles were
shown to correspond in the accompanying charts (George et
al. 1976, table 1), and some of the stage boundaries were
chosen at or adjacent to lithological horizons which fulfilled
Ramsbottom's cycle boundary criteria, such as dolomites
(Arundian), algal horizons (Chadian), and sandy strata
(Holkerian and Brigantian). The stratotypes were located in
settings where it could be predicted from Ramsbottom's
model that the sequences were at their most complete in a
Carboniferous Limestone facies. The only exception was the
base of the Courceyan, which had to be chosen at a position
which reflected the Heerleen definition (1935) of the base of
RILEY
the Carboniferous (Jongmans & Gothan 1937). This
definition is now superseded (Paproth et al. 1991) by the
entry of the conodont Siphonodella sulcata at the recently
defined basal boundary stratotype for the Carboniferous at
La Serre, near Cabri~res in southern France. The then
definitive ammonoid Gattendorfia subinvoluta was unknown
from Britain and Ireland, so for pragmatic reasons the
extinction of the late Devonian miospore Retispora
lepidophyta (formerly Spelaeotriletes lepidophytus) was
used.
Ramsbottom (1977 & in George 1978) also considered
that his mesothems were respon.sible for introducing the
characteristic faunas used to recognize the stages and by
implication deduced that established biostratigraphical
boundaries reflected mesothemic boundaries. This approach
conveniently married the chronostratigraphical framework
with existing biostratigraphical zonation, particularly the
Vaughanian zonation in the sense used by Garwood (1913 et
seq.).
Hence the base of the Chadian was chosen at what was
thought to be the entry of Eoparastaffella, in continuity with
the base of the Visran Series at its stratotype in Belgium.
The base of the Arundian approximated to C2S~ and the
bases of the Holkerian, Asbian and Brigantian stages with
the $2, D1 and D2 zones respectively of Garwood (1913). It
is because of this close correspondence to existing
biostratigraphy that the stages can be recognized away from
their stratotype sections without having to accept any
mesothemic significance either conceptually or in facies
interpretation.
Problems do exist however if a close isochronous lateral
correlation with the stratotypic stage boundaries is
attempted, although recognising the presence of the stages
themselves is generally easy. These problems are more
severe than realized by George et al. (1976), but not as
imposing as suggested by Ebdon et al. (1990), and are
outlined as follows.
Courceyan. The base was defined in a cliff section at the
Old Head of Kinsale , Ireland (Irish Grid 16242 04069) at
the junction with the Kinsale Formation and underlying Old
Head Sandstone Formation. Problems with the stage do not
relate to its stratotypic definition but to recommendations by
Ramsbottom & Mitchell (1980) who proposed that the
Courceyan be replaced with the Belgian, Hastarian and
Ivorian stages, which they considered were equivalent. This
practice has been adopted to some degree, but serious and
valid objections were raised by Fewtrell et al. (1981a) and
these are compounded further by the suspected diachroniety
of Courceyan coral zones (Sevastopulo & Nudds 1987).
Furthermore it is now known that the base of the Visran
and the top of the Ivorian do not correspond (Conil et al.
1989, 1991). The erroneous equation of the bases of the
Chadian and the Visran is still a common practice, which is
further confused by the previous use of the conodont
Mestognathus beckmanni as a basal Vis4an marker, now
invalidated by its presence in late Tournaisian strata (Conil
et al. 1991, fig. 2) and confusion of this species with the
slightly stratigraphically earlier appearance
of M.
praebeckmanni.
Chadian. The most serious difficulty of all arises with the
Chadian. This stage was defined in the Craven Basin, in a
well exposed road cutting at Chatburn [National Grid Refe-
rence SD 7743 4442], at the first lithological change below
the entry of the foraminiferan Eoparastaffella. The basal
boundary corresponded to what was believed to be the
junction between the Horrocksford Beds and the overlying
Bankfield East Beds within the Chatburn Limestone Group.
Subsequent workers have failed to repeat this foraminiferal
record (Fewtrell et al. 1981a, b; Riley 1990b, in press).
Indeed the real entry of Eoparastaffella is in the lower part
of the Hodder Mudstone Formation (Riley 1990b; Riley in
Aitkenhead et al. 1991, pl.1, o,q), some 300m above the
base of the Chadian Stage at the stratotype. Other diagnostic taxa, such as the brachiopod Levitusia humerosa, enter
about 150 m above the base. There is no sequence boundary
associated with the stage boundary, and even local lithostratigraphical correlation cannot be traced because the stage
boundary does not, in fact, coincide with the base of the
Bankfield East Beds (see Riley in press for a full discussion).
Despite these difficulties with the early part of the Chadian,
its base is widely correlated uncritically, but in reality a
significant part of the stage cannot be distinguished from the
late Courceyan. Riley (1990b) suggested that the term 'late
Chadian' be used to convey Chadian recognized by the
presence of Eoparastaffella and assessory taxa, such as
Gnathodus homopunctatus, which are strictly Vis6an. Thus
enabling clearly defined correlation and adherance to the
original biostratigraphical concept of the Chadian Stage.
Obviously there is a need for the Chadian Stage to be
abandoned or restratotyped as discussed in Riley (1990b, in
press).
Arundian. This was defined at Hobbyhorse Bay [SR 8880

9563], Dyfed, south Wales, in a cliff section at the junction
between the dolomitized Hobbyhorse Bay Limestone and
the overlying Pen-y-holt Limestone. The lowest 16 m of the
Arundian stratotype lacks fauna diagnostic of this stage
(Ramsbottom 1981a). The earliest Arundian is thus indistinguishable biostratigraphically from the late Chadian. This
observation was confirmed by Simpson & Kalvoda (1987)
who considered the dolomitic top to the Hobbyhorse Bay
Limestone was secondary dolomite; however this interpretation does not necessarily detract from a primary depositional differentiation between these units. Whether the
stratotype boundary is a sequence boundary remains to be
confirmed, however Simpson & Kalvoda (1987) considered
the entire section to represent progressive bathymetric
deepening. It seems pertinent to redefine the base of the
Arundian at the first entry of primitive archaediscids as
suggested by Davies et al. (1989); such a procedure is
possible without relocating the stratotype.
Holkerian. This is defined at Barker Scar [SD 3330 7827],
near Holker Hall, on the northern shore of Morecambe
Bay, Cumbria, at the junction between the Dalton Beds and
the overlying Park Limestone. Recent mapping by I. C.
Burgess (pers. comm. 1992) suggests that the sandy strata
referred to the Davidsonina carbonaria Beds by Garwood
(1913) present in the Ravenstonedale district, within the
lower part of the Ashfell Limestone, are absent due to
non-sequence at Barker Scar. This non-sequence is represented 2 km to the west of the stratotype by a palaeosol, and
it is suspected that this horizon lies in the sandy interval
below the stratotypic boundary at Barker Scar (at the base
of bed I, in Ramsbottom 1981a). This observation parallels
109
suspicions raised from BGS mapping in thick sequences in

Northern Ireland and north Wales by W. I. Mitchell and J.
R. Davies respectively. These areas contain corals intermediate in character between Siphonodendron and
Lithostrotion ('cerioid tendency') associated with late Arundian foraminifera. This transition fauna is not recorded at
Barker Scar.
Further study is still required, however it seems likely
that a considerable non-sequence is developed at Barker
Scar and that the stratotype will require relocation.
Asbian. This is defined in a hillside outcrop at Little Asby

Scar [NY 6988 0827] in Ravenstonedale, northwest England,
at the junction of the Ashfell Limestone and the overlying
Potts Beck Limestone. The original record of the diagnostic
coral Dibunophyllum, from the basal bed has never been
repeated, despite intense searching along a coral bed which
is laterally well exposed for many hundreds of metres (Patterson pers comm. 1991). Strank in Ramsbottom (1981a)
recognized the first characteristic Asbian foraminiferal entry
at 19.6 m above the base of the section, and this corresponds
to the earliest repeatable occurrence of Dibunophyllum in
the section. Clearly there is a case to redefine the Asbian
boundary at this horizon, but there is no need to relocate
the stratotype.
Brigantian. This is defined in a stream gorge at Janny Wood
[NY 7832 0375], near Dent, northwest England at the base
of the Peghorn Limestone. Several workers including; Burgess & Mitchell (1976); Pattison in Frost & Holliday (1980);
Somerville & Strank (1984b) and Wilson (1989), have noted
that some D2 Zone macrofossils occur in a transitional fauna
in late Asbian rocks. Thus some of the characteristic Brigantian and D2 macrofossils listed by George et al.
(1976) and Burgess & Mitchell, such as Lithostrotion
maccoyanum, Lonsdaleia duplicata, L. floriformis and
Pugilis pugilis are not restricted to that stage, or overlap
with characteristic Asbian faunas. This problem is particularly characteristic north of the Askrigg Block and in Scotland, but has also been encountered in Derbyshire and
north Wales (Chisholm et al. 1983; Somerville & Strank
1984b). However, it must be stressed that these difficulties
usually relate to only a short interval around the
Asbian/Brigantian boundary. Bearing in mind the excellent
ammonoid stratigraphy available in the late Dinantian, it
seems reasonable to relocate and redefine the Brigantian in
an ammonoid bearing sequence, if this transition
coral/brachiopod fauna is to be avoided in a definitive
stratotype.
Seismic sequence stratigraphy

A seismostratigraphical classification for the Dinantian of
northern England was proposed by Ebdon et al. (1990), and
further developed by Fraser et al. (1990) and Fraser &
Gawthorpe (1990). These studies also provided an
interpreted sequence stratigraphy, with seismic sequence
boundaries corresponding to diastems or equivalent
correlatable surfaces in laterally conformable successions.
The overlying Silesian Subsystem was also treated in a
similar manner. Ironically this scheme also subdivided the
Dinantian into six sequences, given the notations EC1 to
EC6, with EC1 commencing in the late Devonian.
110
N.J.
However, the boundaries between these sequences do not

always coincide with those of Ramsbottom's (or between
Ebdon et ai. 1990 and Fraser & Gawthorpe 1990) and are
conceptually different, being derived largely from seismic
evidence in the East Midlands, supplemented with
stratigraphical data from key boreholes and surface sections.
Indeed these authors attributed the driving mechanism for
their sequences entirely to tectonic controls linked to
syndepositional rifting in the basement ('syn-rift megasequence') and did not consider eustacy as relevant except at
the subsequence scale, refering to Hubbard's (1988) study of
Jurassic and Cretaceous passive plate margins as a
justification for this point of view. These studies revitalized
the subdivision of the Dinantian into tectonic sequences; a
practice which was introduced by Hudson & Turner (1933a,
b) but not accommodated into the scheme of Ebdon et al.
(1990).
Ebdon et al. (1990) suggested that their seismic
sequences might provide a more applicable chronostratigraphical subdivision of Dinantian strata in northern
England and the Midlands, with the possibility of using
them to redefine the existing stages. However, this is
unlikely to be realized because of the coarse resolution of
seismic stratigraphy.
For example the basal part of Sequence EC3 in the
Craven Basin was correlated with the base of the late
Chadian by Ebdon et al. (1990), but with the early Arundian
by Frazer & Gawthorpe (1990). When compared with the
depositional sequence stratigraphy described by Riley
(1990b), the reason for this divergence of correlation
becomes clear; there are two unconformity surfaces within
this interval and these can be resolved biostratigraphically in
borehole and field examination, but not seismically. This
argument will be developed further elsewhere, but it is interesting to note that in the Namurian, the sequence boundary
associated with the Mid-Carboniferous Boundary (Riley
et al. 1987), which is a well constrained boundary in
north Africa, Eurasia and the USA, providing the basis for
international subsystem divison of the Carboniferous and
which must be eustatic, is not recognized in the seismic
sequence stratigraphy published by these authors. Thus
seismic sequence boundaries, in the above examples, fail to
achieve as near an approximation to chronostratigraphical
boundaries as is currently reached using biostratigraphical
markers and appear to miss sequence stratigraphical events
which are internationally significant.
Biostratigraphy of the British and Irish Dinantian

The following section is intended as a guide on the current
status of biostratigraphical schemes. Ranges of taxa are
derived principally from the published data referred to in
the relavent sections, supplemented in the case of
foraminifera and trilobites with the author's observations.
Ammonoids
The species ranges of selected late Dinantian ammonoids in
the British Isles are given in Fig. 2. Ammonoids characterize
hemi-pelagic sequences. They are rarely associated with
coral/brachiopod faunas except in bioherms, within
limestone turbidite sequences and in some peritidal settings,
where conditions favoured local post-mortem accumulations
such as along strand lines. Their zones are globally
RILEY
applicable, reflecting their nekto-pelagic habit and in the
late Dinantian, as in the overlying Namurian, they provide
the highest biostratigraphical resolution of any fossil group.
Very little is known of the early Courceyan ammonoid
faunas in Britain and Ireland. Ammonoid zonation of this
interval has been refined by Kullmann et al. (1991), based
mainly on German sections. The base of the Carboniferous
is no longer defined under the terms of the Heerlen decision
of 1935 (Jongmans & Gothan 1937), which used the entry
of the ammonoid Gattendorfia subinvoluta, but by the entry
of the conodont Siphonodella sulcata (Paproth et al. 1991).
According to Korn (1986), this Lies within the Imitoceras
prorsum Ammonoid Zone. Matthews (1983) recorded I. cf.
prorsum from the basal Courceyan Castle Slate Member in
County
Cork,
Ireland.
Goldring
(1955)
reported
Gattendorfia crassa from his faunal division 'B' in the Pilton
Shale Formation (according to Bartzsch & Weyer 1988, this
ammonoid falls within the lower part of the Siphonodella
sandbergi Conodont Zone). In the overlying division 'C' he
recorded lmitoceras sp..
Butcher & Hodson (1960) illustrated Hammatocyclus aft.
homoceratoides from the overlying division 'D' of Prentice
(1960), this lies within the Landkey Formation or the basal
part of the Tawstock Formation (Heddon Member, Jackson
1991) of late Courceyan or early Chadian age. Riley (in
Edmonds et al., 1985) recorded Protocanites from beds
correlated by Jackson (1991) with the Landkey Formation.
Undescribed Kazakhstania sp. is known from the
uppermost part of the Courtmacsherry Formation at
Ringabella Point in Ireland. This record is believed to lie
within the upper part of the Siphonodella Conodont Zone
(Sevastopulo in an unpublished field guide, Palaeontological
Association 1987).
Matthews (1970) described a unique fauna from east
Cornwall which included Kazakhstania sp. (Gattendorfia of
Matthews 1970), Muensteroceras complanatum, M. cf.
rotella and Pericyclus princeps, together with unspecified
pericyclids (incorrectly referred to Ammonellipsites and two
new, undescribed genera; a Gattendorfiinid (Gen. nov. A)
and a Pseudarietitinid (Gen. nov. B) (Bartzsch & Weyer
1988). No conodont fauna is associated, hence the precise
age within the Courceyan is unknown. The type material of
P. princeps is thought to come from the Calcaire de Vaulx et
de Chercq in Belgium. Paproth et al. (1983) assign this to
the Ivorian (late Tournaisian) on macrofaunal grounds. M.
complanatum comes from the lower part of the overlying
Calcaire de Calonne of late Ivorian age (Paproth et al.
1983). M. rotella is also known from these units, which were
referred to Tn3c by Del6pine (1940), (includes the
Scaliognathus anchoralis Conodont Zone and the upper part
of the underlying Polygnathus communis carina Conodont
Zone, down to the appearance of Eotaphrus cf. bultyncki).
If Matthews' (1970) identifications are correct, then this
implies a slightly younger age for the upper range of
Kazakhstania than is currently accepted. There are
unconfirmed records of Protocanites from the Lower
Limestone Shales in the Gower region of South Wales
(George 1969).
Riley (1991) reviewed the British and global distribution of
mid-Dinantian ammonoids (late Courceyan to Holkerian),
revised the Fascipericyclus-Ammonellipsites Ammonoid
Zone of Ramsbottom & Saunders (1985) and erected a new
successive zone, the Bollandites-Bollandoceras Ammonoid
Zone. The overlying Beyrichoceras Zone was redefined and
STAGES
ZONES
B. micronotum
Beyrichoceras aranaeum
Beych.redesdalensis
Bt. sulcatum
O. gilbertsoni
E. @rimmed
G. hudsoni
Michiganites hested
N. rotiforme
N. vittiger
Prolecanites discoides
B. excavaturn
B. globosum
B. mk:ronotoides
B. submicronotum
Beych. founieti
Beych. implicatum
Beych. stenolobus
Beyrichoceras delicatum
Beyrichoceras obtusum
Beyrichoceras rectangularum
Beyrichoceras vesciculiferum
Bt. castletonensis
Bt. umbilicatum
G globostdatus
Girtyoceras deani
Girt.yoceras discus
Girtyoceras simplex
l lrinoceras omatissimum
IN. spirorbis
Parad. pseudodiscrepans
Praedarelites culmiensis
Pronorites cyclolobus
Be),ch. truncatus
G. crenistria
G. fimbriatus
Girtyoceras meslerianum
Girtyoceras platiforme
Girtyoceras premeslerianum
Amsb. falcatus
G. concentricus
G. spirifer
Girtyoceras cowdalense
Parafl. striatus
Asb. (I.)
Brigantian
B2o B2b P l o Plb P1c Pld P2o P2b P2c

X
X
X
X
X
X
X X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
STAGES
ZONES
Arnsl~. robustus
Arnsb. sphaericostriatus
Amsb. waddingtoni
Arnsb. warslowensis
D. kathleenae
Girtyoceras brueningianum
14. carraunense
H. waldeckense
K. hawkinsi
Neoglyphioceras spirale
Parag. bisati
Parag. elegans
Parag. kaflovecense
Pronorites ludfordi
S. recdina
S. turnen
H. hibemicus
H. mediocris
H. posthibemicus
H. ramsbottomi
H. tumida
Meta. hodsoni .
Parag. koboldi
Parag. rudis
Lusit. granosus
Neoglyph. caneyanum
S. crenistriatum
S. subtile
Girtyoceras multicamera turn
Girt),oceras weetsense
Meta. varians
Neoglyph. subcirculare
Parad. marioni
S. adeps
S. delepinei
S. newtonense
S. ordinatum
S- procerum
S. splendens
S. stolbergi
Girtyoceras shorrocksi
Girtyoceras waitei
Lyrogoniatites georgiensis
Meta. plicatifis
111
Asb. (I.)
Brigantian
B2o B2b Plo Plb =1cl Pld P2o P2b P2c

X
X
X
X
X X
X
X
X
X X
X
X
X
off. X
X
X
off. X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
x
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
x
x
X
X
X
X
Fig. Z. Ranges of selected ammonoids in the late Dinantian of the British Isles. Abbreviations: Arnsb., Arnsbergites; B., Bollandoceras;
Beych., Beyrichoceratoides ; Bt., Bollandites, D., Dimorphoceras ; E., Entogonites ; G., Goniatites ; H., Hibernicoceras ; K., Kazakhoceras,
Lusit. , Lusitanoceras ; Meta. , Metadimorphoceras, Neoglyph. , Neoglyphioceras ; Parad. , Paradimorphoceras ; Parag. , Paraglyphioceras ; S. ,
Sudeticeras, Asb (1.), late Asbian. Sources are given in the text.
revised by Riley (1990a). The account of Ramsbottom (in

Earp et al. 1961) provides a full summary of the P~, to Pzc
zonal sequence in it's type area, the Craven Basin,
northwest England. This scheme was developed principally
by Bisat (1924, 1928, 1934, 1952, 1955, 1957), Moore (1930,
1936, 1939, 1941, 1946, 1950, 1952, 1958) and Moore &
Hodson (1958). Korn (1988) has revised the taxonomy of
late Dinantian ammonoids. The stratigraphical distribution
of late Dinantian ammonoids is summarized in Fig. 2.
Bivalves.
As in the Namurian it is the marine bivalves present in the
hemipelagic mudstone facies of the Dinantian which have
the greatest stratigraphical value. These assemblages
accompany the ammonoids and are subject to a similar
distribution. The taxonomy and detailed stratigraphy of
many Dinantian bivalves requires careful scrutiny before
their stratigraphical potential can be realized. Non-arine
bivalves, fundamentally important in the zonation of late
Namurian and Westphalian sequences, are virtually
restricted to the Scottish Midland Valley and the
Northumberland Trough, and are of little biostratigraphical

value in a Dinantian context.
The posidoniid Karadjalia is characteristic of some
Courceyan hemipelagic sequences in southwest England. In
the earliest Vis6an (late Chadian, FA Ammonoid Zone) the
mytiloid Aviculomya occurs. Undescribed species of
Posidonia and Dunbarella enter in the early part of the BB
Ammonoid Zone. In the Beyrichoceras Ammonoid Zone,
Posidoniella vetusta is characteristic of 'knoll reef' settings.
In the hemipelagic mudstones, Actinopteria persulcata,
Dunbarella persimilis, Posidonia kochi and P. corrugata
enter in this zone; the latter species and A. persulcata
extending into the Arnsbergian. Posidonia becheri is
abundant in the Plb and Plc ammonoid zones. This species
last occurs in the P~d Ammonoid Zone, where it is rare, but
is joined by abundant P. membranacea and P. trapezoedra,
which continue their range into the Pendleian.
Conodonts
A range chart of selected conodonts is given in Fig. 3.
Conodonts are present in nearly all Dinantian marine facies,
112
RILEY
N.J.
STAGES
ZONES
spic.
P. sp~atus
Pa. variab#is
Ps. dentilineatus
P. inornatus
B. acu/eatus aculeatus
B. aculeatus plumulus
CL unicomis
P. communis communis
S. isosticha
E, laceratus
G punctatus
G delicatus
P. co~-amuniscafina
G. cuneiformis
Pr. owent
H? cf. cristulus
D. bassi
B. sl~nulicostatus
Ps. multistriatus
Ps. pinnatus
M. groessensi
Ps. minutus
P. mehli lMus
Eo. bultJ/ncki
P. mehli mehli
D. bouckaeai
",4." petilus
i o,.(.,ich.(,., ,r. i
Courceyan
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
in.
_ Ps. multistriatus
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
I=
lanc 'l, --'.
Polygnathus mehli
I:I
I:I
I
G. bilineatus
L. commutata
L.
n'~Do.
coll.
~:~
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
I i I
l==n
Im=l
ilan
i==n
i==n
11.111
!!11
Im:mI
I~:~
~:~
i= I:I
1=
m:m
~:~
I:I
I : I
I:I
I:I
I BB:I BI:IB ~ : n
BI:I
BB:IB I
II:II:I
I:I
Im:am:emm:um:emm:emI
Im:mm:mm:mm:mm:mI
I i I I I / I I I I I
I
I:I__J:I:II:
",4. "scalenus
~--
___=I:II:I
- - I :l~:Im
I I:I
Do. tatus
S anchora/is europensis
Hi. segaformis
G pseudosemig/aber
P. bischoffi
Eo. burlingtonensis
G aexanus
M. praebeckmanni
M. beckmanni
G. homopunctatus
CIo. carinatus
T varians
",4." oJspk~atus
Pa. capncornis
"A." asymmetricus
",4."scandalensis
L. commulata
N singularis
!C. characfus
"A." libratus
Gen. glotloides
Era. asymmetricus
C unicomis
G. austini
C. c#sratus
C. regularis
G. gin'yi girtyi
G. praebilineatus
G bilineatus
L. mononodosa
M txp/tm
G. ginyi collinsoni
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Fig. 3. Ranges of selected conodonts in the Dinantian of the British Isles (modified from Varker & Sevastopulo 1985). Stipple denotes
interzones. Abbreviations: genera--'A.', Apatognathus ; B. , Bispathodus ; C. , Caousgnathus ; CI. , Clydagnathus ; Clo. , Cloghergnathus ; D.,
Dollymae ; Do., Doliognathus ; E., Elictognathus ; Eo., Eotaphrus ; Em., Ernbsaygnathus ; G., Gnathodus ; Ge., Geniculatus ; H. ?, Hindeodus ?;
L. , Lochriea ; M. , Mestognathus ; N. , Neoprioniodus ; P. , Polygnathus ; Pa. , Patrognathus ; Pr. , Prioniodina ; Ps. , Pseudopolygnathus ; S.,
Scaliognathus ; Si., Siphonodella ; T., Taphrognathus. Zones---anch /b. ; S. anchoralis / P. bischo~fi ; bouc., D. bouckaerti; bul. ; Eo. bultyncki;
cf. bul., Eo. cf. bultyncki ; coll., G. girtyi collinsoni ; has., D. hassi ; hom., G. homopunctatus ; in., P. inornatus / Siphonodella ; lat., Do. latus ;
L. mono., L. mononodosa; prae., M. praebeckmanni; spic., P. spicatus Stages--Ch. (e), early Chadian; Ch. (1.), late Chadian; Ar.,
Arundian; Ho., Holkerian; As. (e.), early Asbian; As. (1.), late Asbian.
but particular taxa are facies selective, leading to parallel
zonation schemes in separate facies and regions. They do
require digestion of considerable quantities of rock (on
average greater than 1 kg) for a representative assemblage.
The best preserved routine preparations come from
limestone turbidites, but hemi-pelagic shales can generate
the highest abundances. As with miospores, conodonts

change colour in response to their thermal burial history,
rendering them useful in assessing hydrocarbon maturity.
A very thorough review of the development of conodont
zonation, stratigraphical ranges and facies distribution was
given by Varker & Sevastopulo (1985) to which the reader is
referred. In addition the Scottish Dinantian has yielded
exquisitely preserved material which has been vital in
understanding the biology of these previously enigmatic
chordates (Aldridge et al. 1986). Because conodonts were
nekto-pelagic they have a global marine distribution rivalled
only by the ammonoids, and are therefore particularly
significant in international correlation. For this reason the
base of the Carboniferous has been redefined, from the
original Heerleen ammonoid based definition, to coincide
with the entry Siphonodella sulcata as noted already.
Several important studies have been published since
Varker & Sevastopulo (1985), notably Austin (1987) and
Stone (1991) on the Arundian stratotype and adjacent
sections and Armstrong & Purnell (1987) on the
Northumberland Trough. There have also been important
taxonomic papers which modify late Courceyan and early
Visran zonation, in particular that of Von Bitter et al.
(1986), on Mestognathus, and Belka (1985) who introduced
new gnathodid taxa. Conil et al. (1991) has revized
conodont distribution in the Belgian Dinantian and these
studies together with those on the Tournaisian/ Visran
boundary interval in Britain by Riley (1990a and in
Chisholm et al. 1988) have significantly improved our
knowledge on the distribution of key taxa such as
Scaliognathus anchoralis, Mestognathus praebeckmanni, and
Gnathodus homopunctatus in relation to the Chadian and
Vis6an boundaries in Britain. The accompanying range
chart (Fig. 3) is a modification of that given by Varker &
Sevastopulo (1985) and reflects these developments.
Coral /brachiopod zonation

The ranges of selected coral and brachiopod taxa in the
British Isles are given in Figs 4,5,6,7. Coral/brachiopod
assemblages dominate the Carboniferous Limestone macrofauna. Their main advantage is that they have been
recorded where relevant, in most stratigraphical studies
published this century, especially memoirs accompanying
maps by the British Geological Survey. These assemblages
are usually easily seen in the field and in borehole core and
are particularly suited to field mapping techniques.
However, being large, non-mobile benthos they are very
susceptible to facies controls and are often distributed at
discrete horizons, being absent from much of the strata
which may lie within their zonal range.
As already stated, Vaughan's (1905) pioneer work
established a zonation for southwest Britain, whereas
Garwood (1913) initiated a zonation for northern England.
Their schemes were embelished, modified and geographically extended to the rest of the UK and Ireland by
subsequent workers. The reader is referred to George
(1958, 1969), George et al. (1976), Green & Welch (1965, p.
15) and Rayner (1953) for a full summary of this phase in
the development of British coral/brachiopod zonation and
to George et al. (1976) for stratigraphical comparisons. The
Courceyan zones were revised by Ramsbottom & Mitchell
(1980), Mitchell (1981) and Sevastopulo & Nudds (1987) as
assemblage zones. Mitchell (1989) gave a summary of the
distribution of rugose coral faunas from the Chadian to
Brigantian interval in Britain, giving alphabetical notations
for each fauna. This study did not use the classical zonal
divisons of Vaughan (1905) and Garwood (1913). The
distribution of heterocorals was summarized by Sutherland
& Mitchell (1980). Recent studies on brachiopods include
Courceyan
STAGE
Zones
V. vetus
Cyathaxonia comu
F. densum
F. omaliusi
M. favosa
M. konincki
M. megastoma
Sy. clevedonensis
Sy. konincki
Z delanouei
Z vaughani
AL burringtonensis
Ax. simplex
C. patulum greeni
C. patulum patulum
Ca. comucopiae
Cravenia tela
Cy. modavensis
K. tortuosum
Am. cravenensis
Ca. gigantea
Corwenia vaga
F. ambi~uum
K. praecursor
SL cylindrica
Sy. hawbankensis
113
V. vetus
early Chadian
Z. delanouei C. patulum
X
X
X
X
X
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x.....
x
x
x
x
S. cylindrica
X
X
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
Fig. 4. Ranges and of selected corals in the Courceyan and early

Chadian (Tournaisian) of the British Isles. The correspondence of
the S. cylindrica Zone with the base of the Chadian is schematic.
Abbreviations: AI., Aulophyllum; Am., Amplexicarina; Ax.,
Axophyllum; C., Caninophyllum patulum; Ca, Caninia gigantea;
Cy., Cyathoclisia; F., Fasciculophyllum, K., Koninckophyllum; M.,
Michelinia; Si., Siphonophyllia; Sy., Sychnoelasma; V., Vaughania.
The sources are given in the text.
Brunton (1984) which reviews earlier work, Brunton &

Mundy (1986, 1988a, b) and Brunton & Tilsley (1991).
Considerable data on coral/brachiopod distribution is
included in the numerous BGS memoirs which describe
Dinantian sequences.
Where modern comparative work with other biostratigraphical schemes has been carried out, for instance by
Sevastopulo & Nudds (1987), between conodont distribution
and the Courceyan coral zones in southwest Britain and
Ireland, a marked lateral diachroneity exists. These authors
interpreted this as a limited facies tolerance of the corals,
vindicating George's (1958, p. 236) awareness of the crude
chronostratigraphical significance of certain Courceyan
corals. Similar problems occur in the Vis6an, for example
the entry of Dorlodotia briarti was interpreted as a late
Arundian event (Nudds 1981); however, my own observations show that this entry at Ravenstonedale in northwest
E n g l a n d is in fact accompanied by Cf4tr2 foraminiferal
assemblages which indicate a late Chadian age (the
correlation of the base of the Arundian below the Brownber
Pebble Beds by George et al. 1976 was erroneous due to a
wrongly labelled thin section supplied by R. Conil; M.
Coen, pers. comm. 1991). Conversely the entry in Belgium
is apparently associated with Cf46 Subzone foraminifera,
upon which the original late Arundian interpretation of the
British record was based. When one considers that D. briarti
is found predominantly at inner carbonate ramp settings it is
clear that these anomalies reflect the narrow facies tolerance
for this coral.
114
N.J.
STAGES
Assemblages
Ax. simplex
Ca. oomucopiae
Carcinophyllum simplex
Carruthersella compacta
Clis. r~idum
Clis. incjletonense
Cravenie tela
Cyax. rushiana
D. briarfi
D. pseudovermiculare
K. clitheroense
K.. c2/atho~lloidee
K. meathoper~e
K. vesioulosum
M. megastoma
P. murchisoni
Si. c)4indrica
Spirophyllum praecurser
Sy. urbanowitschi
Clis. multiseptatum
Cravenia lamellata
Hap. subcinica
Si, caninioides
Si. ~arwoodi
~'. hefonensis
Si ? ciliate
Sph. martini
Solenodendron horsfieldi
Sy. konincki
Amp/, enniekilleni
K. cartyanense
M. tanuisepta
Siph. caswellense
Amplexizaphrentis ashlellensis
Ax. mendipense
K. ashfellense
K. Ir~ila
Siph. sociale
Chodlan
0ate)
A
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Aiur~lan
B
X
X
X
Asblan
F
STAGES
I~'lgontlan
H
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Holkledan
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
RILEY
Assemblages
C. bristeliense
"Caninia"iuddi
C/is. r~idum
Di. smithi
L. arachnoideum
L. araneum
L. portlocki
Siph. muttiradiale
Siph. scaleberense
AI. redesdalense
C/is. keyserlin~i
Dib. bourtonense
K. vau~hani
Si. benburbensis
Siph. pnceum
Siph. pauciradiale
Dib. biparfitum
~'ph. fasciculatum
H~Dlolasmadense
L. maccoyanum
Solen. furcatum
Act. floriformis
AmpI. derbiensis
Aul. pach,yendothecum
Clis, delicatum
Dph. lurcatum
D~h. lateseptatum
K. ma~lnificum
K. pmprium
Lor~dalia duplicate
Palastraea retie
Cotwenia ru~osa
K. interruptum
Nemistium edmondsi
Orionastraea ensiler
Orionastraea placenta
Orionoastraea indivisa
Slim. slimonianum
Chodlan
Oate)
Arundlan
B
Ho&lerlon
E
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
I~lganllan
Asblan
F
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
el,
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
O~.
X
X
X
X
X
Fig. 5. Ranges of selected corals in the late Chadian to Brigantian (Visran) of the British Isles modified from Mitchell (1989). Abbreviations as
Fig. 4, except: Act., Actinocyathus; Ampl., Amplexizaphrentis; Car., Carcinophyllum ; Clis., Clisiophyllum ; Cyax., Cyathaxonia ; D.,
Dorlodotia ; Di, Diphyphyllum ; Dib. , Dibunophyllum ; Hap., Haplolasma ; L. , Lithostrotion ; Siph. , Siphonophyllia ; Slim., Slimoniphyllum.
Sources are given in the text.

These observations illuminate the fact that, as George
(1958) pointed out, coral/brachiopod sequences have great
local value (faunal bands of Garwood 1913), but because
occurrences are linked strongly to lithology and are often
the result of fortuitous, accidental preservation, precise
correlation between disparate regions is difficult. This is
borne out by the upward stratigraphical extension of many
of Vaughan's original guide taxa by subsequent workers and
the confusion of Vaughan's zonal notations as already
discussed. A further problem is that Vaughan's scheme, was
based on a sequence in which major non-sequences occur as
already discussed in the Chronostratigraphy section.
Flora
Calcareous algae are abundant in carbonate rocks but little
is known of their stratigraphical distribution. The extinction
of K o n i n c k o p o r a is used as a basal Brigantian marker event.
Davies et al. (1989) demonstrated that bilaminar
K o n i n c k o p o r a enters in the late Chadian and not, as was
thought, in the Arundian. Riley (in p r e s s ) has discovered
monolaminar K o n i n c k o p o r a in the late Courceyan at the
Chadian stratotype; previously this form was used as a
Chadian marker.
Terrestrial macrofloral stratigraphy is poorly known and

was summarized by Scott (1984) and Scott et al. (1984).
Important papers on the phytogeography of Dinantian floras
include Raymond (1985) and Rowley et al. (1985).
The most important floral components in a stratigraphical sense are miospores. These have the advantage of wide
dispersal and are unique in that they can be used routinely
to correlate between non-marine and marine sequences.
They are particularly abundant in coal, palaeosols and finegrained terriginous clastics. Because they can be extracted
from small volumes of rock, they are especially suited to
borehole sampling. Offshore hemipelagic shales and most
carbonate-dominated sequences however, tend to yield
sparse or unidentifiable miospore assemblages. Knowledge
about miospore palaeoecology and parent flora is improving
but is not comprehensive. Where it is possible to compare
miospore zonations with marine faunas the relationship
between them appears to be consistent at least within
Britain, Ireland and the nearby continent. Miospore zones
in the early Courceyan and late Visran rival the resolution
achieved by some faunal zones. Another feature, as with
conodonts, is their colour preservation in response to
thermal history during burial; this characteristic renders
them important in assessing hydrocarbon maturity.
STAGES
early
Chadian
Courceyan
V. vetus
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Zones
Av. schmidti,
Ch. failandensis
Cleiothyridina roysii
M. mitcheldeanensis
Or. spinulifera
Plic. stoddarti
Pr. fremingtonensis "
Pu. subpustulosa
Spinoc. b,,assa
Str. paeckelmanni
Unisp. tomacensis
Br. wexfordensis
CleL glabistra (P.)
CleL glabistra (V.) ..
Dict. multispinife..rus
Pugilis vaughani
Pu. tenuipustulosus
Rug. vaughani
Schw. aspis
Syr. cyrtorhyncha
Athyris expansa
Eom. derbyensis
Megach. magna
Palaeocho. cinctus
Tylothyris laminosa
Acanth. mesoloba
A vonia youngiana
Composita ambigua
De/. comoides
DeL destinezi
Del. notata
Dict. semireticulatus
Levitusia humerosa ,
.P.licatifera plicah'lis
Pu. nodosus
Pu. pyxidiformis
Retie. bellmanensis
'Spir. furcatus
Spir. bollandensis
Spit. copIowensis
Spit. konincld
Syr. elongata
.
Z. delanouei c. patulum
x
x
....
....
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
, ,
,,,
......
....
si Cylindric.
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
....
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
Fig. 6. Ranges of selected brachiopods in the Courceyan and early

Chadian (Tournaisian) coral zones (Fig. 4). Abbreviations:
Acanth., Acanthoplecta; Av., Avonia; Br., Brochocarina; Ch.,
Chonetes ; Clei., Cleiothyridina; Del., Delepinea ; Dict.,
DictyocIostus ; Eom. , Eomarginifera ; M. , Macropotamorhynchus ;
Megach., Megachonetes; Or., Ovatia; Palaeocho., Palaeochoristes;
Plic., Plicochonetes; Pr., Productinella; Pu., Pustula; Retic.,
Reticularia ; Rug., Rugosochonetes ; Schw. , Scheilwienella ; Spinoc. ,
Spinocarinifera; Spir., Spirifer; Str., Strophonema; Syr.,
Syringothyris; Unisp., Unispirifer. Sources are given in the text.
A selection of miospore ranges and their zones is given

in Fig. 8. A complete miospore zonation of the British
Dinantian was first proposed by Neves et al. (1972) and
expanded in Neves et al. (1973). Subsequently Clayton et al.
(1977, 1978) and Clayton (1985) developed this scheme.
Higgs et al. (1988a, b) proposed new zonal divisions for the
Courceyan. The reader is referred to these original papers
for details of the ranges of taxa and references to earlier
publications. The following account serves to compare
selected miospore zonal boundaries with faunal and
chronostratigraphical ones.
115
(i) Vallatisporites verrucosus-Retusotriletes incohatus (VI)

Zone. This zone correlates closely with the base of
Carboniferous and is the definitive base of the Courceyan
Stage. It is associated with Siphonodella sulcata (definitive
of the basal Carboniferous) and the Acutimitoceras prorsum
ammonoid fauna in the Rhenish Slate Mountains (Higgs &
Streel 1984). In southern Ireland, Matthews (1983) recorded
A. cf. prorsum from this zone at Nohoval Cove, close to the
Courceyan Stratotype.
(ii) Kraeuselisporites hibernicus- Umbonatisporites distinctus
(HD) Zone. Higgs and Streel in Higgs et al. (1988a) note
that the base of this zone lies in the Peracuta Shales (base
Tn2a) in Belgium, and Higgs & Streel (1984) recorded H D
zone assemblages in the lower part of the Siphonodella
crenulata Conodont Zone in Germany. The upper limit of
the zone is unknown in terms of faunal biostratigraphy.
(iii) Spelaeotriletes balteatus-Rugospora polyptycha (BP)
Zone.
The precise age of the base of this zone is unknown;
however the top lies in the upper part of the Polygnathus
spicatus Conodont Zone in Ireland.
(iv) Spelaeotriletes pretiosus-Raistrickia clavata (PC) Zone.
In Ireland the base of the zone lies just below the
Polygnathus inornatus Conodont Zone and its top within the
Pseudopolygnathus multistriatus Conodont Zone.
(v) Schopfites claviger-Auroraspora macra (CM) Zone. In
Ireland the base of the CM Zone lies in the lower part of the
Polygnathus mehli Conodont Zone, resulting in an interzone
between the CM Zone and the underlying PC Zone. The
miospore characteristics of this interzone are poorly known.
The appearance of the eponymous taxon Auroraspora
macra is in the underlying PC Zone, but it is uncommon
until the CM Zone.
(vi) Lycospora pusilla (Pu) Zone. The base of this zone
remains undefined in terms of precise faunal biostratigraphy. The early part of the zone differs only from the
underlying CM Zone by the appearance of the eponymous
taxon Lycospora pusilla. The lack of accessory taxa to
identify the zone means that its base is relatively more
sensitive to facies; a situation exacerbated by the rarity of
the zonal guide in the lower part of the zone. Certainly
definitive basal Vis6an microfaunas in Denmark (Bertelsen
1972) and north Wales (Somerville et al., 1989) contain
good Pu Zone assemblages, suggesting that the basal part of
the zone in which L. pusilla is rare lies within the latest
Tournaisian. Higgs et al. (1988b) gave this lowest interval
with rare L. pusilla subzonal status.
(vii) Knoxisporites triradiatus-K, stephanephorus (TS)
Zone. This zone was introduced by Clayton (1984) and
assigned a late Arundian to mid-Holkerian age. No
supporting evidence for this correlation was submitted with
the original definition. Higgs (1984, fig. 3) equated the zone
with the Holkerian Stage in northwest Ireland', however
comments (ibid. p.191) later in this paper appear to
corroborate the correlation given by Clayton (I984) and
Higgs et al. (1988b).
(viii) Perotriletes tessellatus-Schulzospora campyloptera
(TC) Zone.
The base of this zone may lie within the late Holkerian as
commonly followed; however Gueinn (in Frost & Holliday,
1980) quoting unpublished work by Williams, implied that
the lowest TC Zone assemblages in the Archerbeck
116
STAGES
Assemblages
Acanth. meso/oba
CIr. ~b~'ar,, (P.)
Composita gregaria
Eom. derbiensis
Levitusia humerosa
Plicatifera p/icatilis
Refic. bellmanensis
Spit'. bollandensis
Lamdarina manifoldensis
"Camarat. " fawcetfensis
Cornposita ambi~ua
Dict. multispiniferus
Pu. pyxidiformis
Spir. furcatus
Steno. isorhyncha
Synng. cuspidata
Syring. elongata
Comp. flco~ea
De/. carinata
.
Echinoconchus punctatus
Lino. hemisphaerica
Mecjach. zimmermanni
Megach. papillionacea
Prod. garwoodi
Del. notata
Davidsonina carbonaria
Oaviesiella derbyensis
Daviesiella langollensis
Lino. corrugatohemisphaedca
Lin~rotonia ashfellensis
Broch. wexfordensis
Gi~. maximus
Gig. tulensis
Latip. latissimus
Punctospirifer scabricosta
T),lothyris laminosa
Alitaria panderi
Davidsonina septosa
Del. comoides
Fluctuaria undata
Gig. inflatus
Gig. crassiventer
Gig. dentifer
Gig. edelbur~ensis
Gig. janischewskina
Gig. semiglobus
Prod. reclesdalensis
Prouctus Droductus
Pugilis pu~ilis
Pu~ilis scoticus
Semiplanus semiplanus
Eom. cambriensis
Gig. 9aylensis
Gig. gigantoides
Gi9. okensis
Striatifera striata
Gig. elongata
Gi~. varians
N.J.
Ic~e
Chodk:m
A
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
AnJndlan
B
Holke~lan
E
RILEY
Bdgonflan
Asl:~n
F
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
lmmmlJ
1=,-I1
E N N N
nunm-n
nmr'.'.nmL,nnm
mnmE'ii, n n
u,,'-Bm
mmB~l ~
X
X
X
X
X
X
mm
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Borehole lay some 10 m below the Burns Beds, correlated

by George et al. (1976) within the early Asbian. Owens (in
Ramsbottom, 1981, p.l.9) listed a TS Zone assemblage l m
below the base of the Asbian at Hassler Brow, near to the
Asbian stratotype. The base of the TC Zone therefore
probably lies within the early Asbian.
(ix) Raistrickia nigra-Triquitrites marginatus (NM) Zone.
The eponymous taxa and other accessories used to recognize
this zone are rare in the early part, hence the precise
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Fig. 7. Ranges of selected brachiopods in the

late Chadian to Brigantian (Vis6an) coral
assemblages (Fig. 5) of the British Isles. The
only Holkerian record of Palaeosmilia murchisoni is in Ramsbottom (1981a). Abbreviations as Fig. 6, except: Camarat.,
Camaratoechia; Comp., Composita; Gig.,
Gigantoproductus ; Latip. , Latiproductus ;
Lino., Linoproductus ; Prod., Productus,
Steno., Stenoschisma. Sources are given in the
text.
chronostratigraphical position of the zonal base is somewhat

diffuse. Clayton et al. (1978) subdivided this zone into the
Tripartites distinctus-Murospora parthenopia (DP) and
Murospora margodentata-Rotaspora ergonulii (ME) subzones. NM zone assemblages were recorded by Hibbert &
Lacey (1969) from the Menai Straits area of North Wales, in
basement beds which were thought to be overlain by early
Asbian faunas, however according to J. Davies (pers.
comm. 1992) the overlying limestones are of late Asbian, or
early Brigantian age. Currently the base of NM Zone is
correlated with the base of the late Asbian.
DINANTIAN
BIO- A N D C H R O N O S T R A T I G R A P H Y
STAGE
117
I c,. I,,,. I.o. 1 , b,an 1
Courceyan
ZONE
Crassispora maculosa
Cyrtospora cristifer
I-I)/menozonotriletesexplanatus
Lophozonotriletes malevkensis
Lophozonotriletes trian~lulatus
Spelaeotriletes obtusus
Spelaeotriletes resolutus
Umbonatisporites abstrusus
Vallatisporites verrucosus
Verrucosisporites nitidus
Kraeuselisporites hibemicus
Neoraistrickia c~mosa
Umbonatisporites distinctus
Spelaeotri/etes balteatus
Vallatisporites vallatus
Anaplanisporites baccatus
Colatisporites decorus
Crassispora t~chera
Granulatisporites micro~lranifer
Kraeusefisporites mitratus
,Prolycospora ru~lulosa
Raistrickia clavata
Raistrickia condJ/Iosa
,Spelaeotriletespretiosus
Convolutispora circumvallata
Schopfites clavi~ler
Lycospora pusilla
Vallatisporites ciliaris
Knoxisporites stephanel~horus
Knoxisporites triradiatus
Chaetosphaerites pollenisimi/is
Crassispora aculeata
Cribrosporites cribellatus
Dic~/otriletes sa~enoformis
Leiotriletes tumidus
Perotfilites tesselatus
Potoniespores delicatus
PC I CM
X
X
VI
HD
BP
X
X
X
X
X
X
,.,
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X..
X
Pu
TS
TC
NM
VF
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
,,X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
X
x
X
X
x
X
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
X
x
x
x
X
X
x
X
X
X
| l l l
Schulzosporaspp.
Fig. 8. Selected ranges of Dinantian

miospore taxa derived from Clayton
(1984), Higgs et. al. (1988a) and Neves
et al. (1972). The interzone between the
CM and PC zones is not shown due to
lack of data. Abbreviations: zonal
symbols see text, Ch., Chadian; Ar.,
Arundian; Ho., Holkerian.
Stenozonotriletes coronatus
Triquitrites mar~/inatus......
Verrucosisporites baccatus
Wa/tzispora p/anian~/u/ata
Dic~/otriletes pacti/is
Murospora mar~lodentata
Murospora parthenopia
Raistrickia ni~tra
,.
Rem,ysporites ma~nificus
Rotaspora eff/onu/ii
.Tripartites distinctus
Diatomozonotriletes saetosus
Grandispora spinosa
Rotaspora fracta
Rotaspora knoxi
Savitrisporites n u x
Spencerisporites radiatus
Tripartites vetustus
Triquitrites trivalvis
Cin(lulizonates cf. capistratus
Bellispores nitidus
,Ret!.c.u/atisporitescarnosus
,Schopfipol/enites el/ipsoides
(x) Tripartites vetustus-Rotaspora fracta (VF) Zone. The

best correlation achieved for the base of this zone is that of
Higgs (1984) who recognized its base associated with the
P~an, ammonoid zonal boundary in northwest Ireland. This
compares well with the base of the VF Zone in the
Spilmersford Borehole in the Scottish Midland Valley
NC(~)
....
.....
x
x
x
X
x
x
x
X
X
x
x
x
X
X
X
X
X
x
x
X
x
x
x
x
x
X
X
x
x
x
X
x
(Neves & Ioannides 1974), which lies below the top of the
Spilmersford Beds. This horizon has been correlated with
the Dykebar Limestone by Wilson (1989), a horizon which
yields the bivalve Posidonia becheri, which is found in strata
no younger than the P1~ Ammonoid Zone, but is
characteristic of the underlying P~b and Plc ammonoid zones.
118
N.J.
Recently, Ebdon et al. (1990) reported that VF Zone

miospores occur in latest Asbian strata at the Brigantian
stratotype. Traditionally the base of the Asbian has been
inferred to equate with the base of the Pla Ammonoid Zone;
however, this new evidence suggests that it is more likely to
lie at the top of this ammonoid zone.
(xi) Bellispores nitidus-Reticulatisporites carnosus (NC)
Zone. Attempts by Owens (in Ramsbottom 1981a) to
obtain identifiable assemblages at the Pendleian stratotype
(basal Namurian) near Clitheroe have failed to yield any
indication of the position of the base of the NC Zone with
regard to ammonoids. The best evidence for the base of this
zone is that of Marshall & Williams (1971) who recorded
Cingulizonates cf. capistratus from their locality 11, between
the Three Yard and Five Yard Limestone in Northumberland, this lies within the P2b Ammonoid Zone, since
Sudeticeras ordinatum is known above the horizon of the
Five Yard Limestone. This is a minimum age for the base of
the NC Zone, since their underlying sample containing VF
Zone assemblages (localities 9 and 10) lies some 100m
below, above the Cockle Shell Limestone, which is of a P2a
Ammonoid Zone age. The V F / N C zonal boundary
therefore lies in the late Brigantian between the upper part
of the P2a and P2b ammonoid zones. There is no
palynological signature to the Visran/Namurian boundary.
Fora m in ifer a
The generic ranges of selected British Dinantian foraminifera are given in Fig. 9. All Dinantian foraminifera were
benthonic and it is the free living forms which are
particularly useful stratigraphically. Foraminifera are abundant in mid-ramp and platform settings, but their small size
enabled considerable post-mortem distribution, hence they
are also found interjected with ammonoid bearing basinal
mudstones in limestone turbidite sequences and in
tempestites within peritidal sequences. They are therefore
an important group in correlation between basin and shelf
settings and in deciphering reciprocal sedimentation.
Dinantian carbonates are highly indurated hence foraminifera are identified in random orientation from thin section of
the bulk rock. They have the advantage over other
Dinantian microfossils in that they are examined routinely
within the context of the enclosing sediment. Their small
size makes them ideally suited in borehole exploration
where they can be examined as thin sections in mounted
cuttings of carbonate rocks.
By the end of the nineteenth century Britain was at the
forefront of Carboniferous foraminiferal research through
the work of Brady (1876), after which time much of this
research lay dormant, the initiative being taken by Soviet,
American and Belgian workers. It is tempting to speculate
whether
it
was
the
dominance
of
Vaughan's
coral/brachiopod zonation and its elaboration by subsequent
workers which inhibited the development of British
Dinantian micropalaeontology during the first half of the the
present century. The importance of foraminifera was again
realized by Davis (in Hudson & Cotton 1945) and the first
attempt at a foraminiferal zonation of the British
Carboniferous was made by Cummings (1961), who
proposed seven zones based on the sequence of foraminifera
present in the Archerbeck Borehole, in the Northumberland
Trough. He considered that his zones occupied the entire
Dinantian down to the C2S1 Coral Brachiopod Zone (late
RILEY
Chadian or Arundian equivalent). During the 1960s and
1970s Belgian workers, lead by Conil, established a
foraminiferal zonation for the Dinant and Namur basins of
Belgium which is the standard for northwest Europe. This
zonation was progressively applied to British and Irish
sequences, culminating in the first comprehensive illustration of British foraminifera, linked to the regional stages of
George et al. (1976) by Conil et al. (1980). This remains a
key reference not only with regards to the distribution of
British foraminifera, but also as a guide to the taxonomy
and morphological terminology developed by Belgian
workers. One important conclusion of Conil et al. (1980)
was the realization that the Archerbeck Borehole sequence
lay entirely within the Cf6 Zone, and that Cummings'
zonation was unworkable. Fewtrell et al. (1981b), provided
another key publication on the stratigraphical distribution of
British Dinantian foraminifera which included a review of
previous publications. These authors did not adopt or
propose any foraminiferal zonation, but documented generic
ranges in relation to the British Dinantian stages and
illustrated a selection of species supplemented with brief
generic descriptions. They also pointed out some of the
problems that were emerging with the Chadian and Asbian
stratotypes in relation to foraminifera. Also significant was
their observation that some guide taxa entered earlier in
Britain than had been reported from Belgium. Subsequent
publications have included: Athersuch & Strank (1989);
Conil et al. (1981); Marchant in Charsley (1984); Riley (in
Chisholm et al. 1988); Riley in Davies et al. (1989); Riley
(1990b); Riley (in press); Strank (1982a, b, 1983, 1985.
1986); Strogen et al. (1990); Somerville & Strank (1984a);
Somerville et al. (1992a, b); Strank (in Mitchell et al.,
1986).
A British-based zonation scheme has not yet emerged
and very little is known about early and mid-Courceyan
foraminifera in Britain. Progress needs to be made in
documenting accurately the distribution of particular
species; detailed taxonomic studies will be required to do
this.
Revision
of the
Eoparastaffella
(Cf4)
and
Neoarchaediscus (Cf6) zones is desirable since the
eponymous taxa are absent from the lower subzones of each
zone.
Ostracodes
Ostracodes are common in Dinantian marine and certain
non-marine settings. Despite their abundance little is known
of their biostratigraphy. The most reliable zonation is that
presented by Gooday (1983) for entomozoacen ostracodes
across the Devonian/Carboniferous boundary in the
hemipelagic facies of southwest England. That proposed for
the shallow marine sequence in the Northumberland Trough
(Robinson, 1978) and adjacent regions, appears to be only
locally applicable, because of facies controls. The British
Micropalaeontological Society is currently compiling a
review of British Carboniferous ostracodes (Athersuch et
al.) to which the reader is referred.
Trilobites
The ranges of selected trilobite species in the British Isles
are given in Fig. 10. Trilobites are locally common in many
Dinantian marine settings. As in previous periods trilobites
adapted to a variety of habitats giving rise to a diverse array
Courceyanl Chadian J
(part)
[ eady I late
STAGES
Zones & subzones
cf4cz2
Arundian
middle
cf4~ ..... cf4~
late
edan
cf46
ct5
cf3
cf4oLl
F__Uana/a
Eotextularia
Granuliferella
LatiendothFanopsis
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
.. X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
,,, X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Toumayella
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Va~uHne#a
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
L. X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X.
X
X
X
X
X
. X.
X
X
X
Pseudotaxis
early
Icd'e
early .....
ct~,- pl ct~,
X
X
X
X
lale
c~,~
X
X
X
X
X
X
x
x
X"
X ,,
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
X
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X ,,
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Cribrospira
Endostaffella
Holkeria
Koskinotextularia
Millerellas.I.
Mstinia
Palaeotextularia(rnonolaminar)
Pojarkovella
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Cnbrostomum
x
x
x
x
x
Gi~asb~
Groessenseila
Palaeotextularia(bilarninar)
Vissariotaxis
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x....
Septabtunsiina
Spinobrunsiina
iSpinoendothyra
TetratAxis
sessis#a
paine/~
Endothyranopsis
Florennella
Lugtonia
U~'ocns
Omphaloa's
PtectogFanopsis
Eoparastaffella
Globoendothyra
Lysel/a
Pseudoammod~scus
Bogushella
Eostaffella
Glomodiscus
Planoarchaediscus
Uralodiscus
Viseidiscus
Paraa,rchaediscus
Kasachstanodiscus
Nodosarchaediscus
Archaediscus
B~bradya
Fig. 9. Ranges of selected late Courceyan to Brigantian foraminifera in the

British Isles. The Cf6fl Subzone is not
recognizable in Britain and there is
confusion over its definition. Conil et al.
(1991) state in their text that the base of
this subzone coincides with the entry of
Howchinia, however in their range chart
they show the entry of this genus at the
base of the overlying Cf6y Subzone.
early
119
~a~'na
Euxinita
Howchinia
,Koskinobi~enerina
Neoarchaediscus
Asterarchaediscus
Janischewskina
Loeblichia
Wamantella
Monotaxinoides
'1
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
x
x
x
x
. . . . x
x
x
....
of forms. Three principal ecological associations are

represented, located in hemipelagic mudstones, bioherms
and carbonate ramp/platform settings respectively (Riley
1984a, b). Riley (1982) established a series of zones for the
mid-Dinantian of the Craven Basin, northwest England and
some of these can be traced into southwest England
(Jackson 1991), Ireland and the English Midlands (Tilsley
1988a, b). A formal proposal of this zonation awaits valid
taxonomic description of some of its component species.
Owens (in Thomas et al. 1984) provided a review of
previous British research and presented a range chart.
Subsequently he monographed British brachymetopids
(Owens 1986). Osm61ska (1970) monographed shelf facies
forms (except brachymetopids); her contribution remains a
key reference.
,,,
x
x
x
x
x
x,,,
x
x
Trilobites from the hemielagic facies give a similar

degree of stratigraphical resolution as achieved by the
ammonoids, but most information on them has come from
sequences in Germany (e.g. Brauckmann 1973). The range
chart presented herein gives a false impression of an
apparent scarcity of trilobites in the mid-Courceyan and
Arundian. It only reflects the lack of published data and
taxonomic work.
Conclusions
Vaughan's (1905) coral brachiopod zonation scheme has
influenced Lower Carboniferous stratigraphy in Great
Britain and Ireland for much of this century. The Dinantian
stages proposed by George et al. (1976), replaced this
scheme. For a variety of reasons they now require some
STAGES
Courceyan
early middle
An~lustibole ? porteri
Brachymetopus woodwardi
Moscho~llossis decorata
Phillibole drewerensis
Phillibole duodecimae
Phillibole hercules
Piltonia fr~i
Piltonia salted
Phillipsia ornata
Bollandia ~lobiceps
Brachymetopus macco,yi
Phillipsia ~lemmulffera
PhilIpsia kelll/i
Bollandia columba
Bollandia ru~iceps
Cummin~/e/la raniceps
Eoc}/phinium clitheroensis
Namuropyge g/aphra
Phillibolina worsawensis
Reediella reedi
Bo//andia persephone
Coombewooclia spatulata
Cummin~ella tubercul~enata
Liobole castroi
Namuropy~e decora
Phillibole coddenensis
Phillibole nitidus
Reediella stubblefieldi
Tawstockia Ion~lispina
Weania colei
Weania feltrimensis
Winterber~lia hahnorum
Aprathia morata
Cummin~lella ionesi
Griffithides hotwellensis
Gnffithides Ioncjiceps
Lir~uapbillipsia mitcbelli
Linguaphillipsia scabra
Tawstockia milled
Bra(~hymetopus omatus
Cummin~lella carrin~ltonensis
Eocyphinium seminiferum
Linguaphillipsia cumbriensis
Phillibole polleni
Vande~rachtia vander~rachti
ArchecJonus antecedens
Arche~onus laevicauda
Bollandia obseleta
Cumminc=lella au~e
Cummin~lella insulae
Cyrtoproetu8 craooensis
Eocyphinium caslletonensis
Griffithides acanthiceps
Liobole erdbachensis
Namuropyge acanthina
Phillibole aprathensis
Piltonia hum#is
Piltonia pa ucita
Reediella ~lranifera
Weania an~llica
Cummin~lella laticaudata
Cyrtoproetus michlowensis
Eocyphinium breve
Paladin bakewellensis
Paladin ~llaber
Arche~onus tever~lensis
Cummin~ella sampsoni
Griffithides whitewatsoni
Kulmiell3 leei
Paladin barkei
Paladin ~llaber
Paladin mucronatus
Particeps scoticus
Chadian
late
early
late
X
X
X
X
X
X
Arundlan
Holkerlan
Asblan
early
Brlgantlan
late
early
X
X
X
X
late
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Fig. 10. Ranges of selected trilobites in

the Dinantian of the British Isles.
D I N A N T I A N BIO- A N D C H R O N O S T R A T I G R A P H Y
redefinition at their boundary stratotypes so that they
correspond as nearly as possible to biostratigraphical events.
This is because biostratigraphy, although conceptually
different from chronostratigraphy, is the most pragmatic and
closest means of approximating chronostratigraphical
correlation in the British and Irish Carboniferous. Thus the
Arundian and Asbian stages require their basal boundaries
moving to the bases of the Cf4fl and Cf6tr foraminiferal
subzones respectively. This can be done without relocating
these stratotypes. The transitional nature of the
coral/brachiopod macrofauna and lack of distinctive
microfauna associated with the basal Brigantian suggests
that a definitive basal boundary stratotype for this stage
should be taken in an ammonoid bearing sequence at the
base of the Arnsbergites falcatus Plb Ammonoid Zone.
There are strong suspicions that the Holkerian stratotype is
affected by a non-sequence and if this is confirmed it will be
necesary to relocate this stratotype. The most serious
problem arises with the Chadian which has no biostratigraphical, lithostratigraphical or sequence boundary associated with its base. It is recommended that the only way
the original concept of this stage can be retained is by taking
the base of the stage at the base of the redefined late
Chadian (sensu Riley 1990b). This will require relocation of
the stratotype.
Global data on Lower Carboniferous biostratigraphy is
still not at an acceptable standard to identify a eustatic
sequence stratigraphy conclusively. Stratigraphers need to
be aware that both tectonic and eustatic processes
contributed to Dinantian sequence stratigraphy. The
resolution of seismic sequence stratigraphy so far published
from the British Carboniferous misses internationally
important sequence boundaries that can be recognized using
direct observation and biostratigraphical techniques.
All the biostratigraphical schemes available for the
British Carboniferous are capable of further refinement.
Some miospore zones are still not related precisely to other
biostratigraphical schemes. Trilobites, Visran corals and
brachiopods require the erection of zonations that are
independent from chronostratigraphy. Courceyan ammonoids are still poorly known and the stratigraphy of
ostracodes throughout much of the Dinantian is unknown.
Foraminiferal zonation needs to be revised to reflect the
entry of eponymous genera and further refinement will be
achieved if a consistent taxonomy at species level can be
realized. All biozonations need to have more objective
scrutiny regarding the effect of facies on the distribution of
their assemblages. This can be achieved by comparing
different zonation schemes (e.g. Sevastopulo & Nudds 1987)
and by using less widely known techniques such as
correspondence analysis (e.g. Hennerbert & Lees 1991).
Stratigraphers need routinely to use more than one
biostratigraphical technique in order to reduce the influence
of facies effects in correlation.
Even if these recommendations are achieved, it should
be stressed that biostratigraphical evidence used in support
of chronostratigraphical correlation should always be
presented in terms of zones and guide taxa. Future revision
of chronostratigraphical interpretations as techniques and
classifications change will therefore be possible. Vaughan's
(1905) scheme has serious gaps in its zonal coverage, but it
is only because of his careful and meticulous work that we
are able to reinterpret and retain the value of his pioneering
contribution to British stratigraphy.
121
Thanks are expressed to my collegues, particularly A. McNestry

and N. Turner for discussion of miospore data and zonations. This
paper is published by permisssion of the Director, British
Geological Survey (NERC).
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--
2 0 ,
Received 17 December 1992; accepted 21 January 1993
From
QJGS,6 1 ,
181 - 182.
11. The PAL2gONTOLOGICXLSEQUENCE i~t $h~ CARBONIFEROUSLI~csTo~. of tke BRISTOT. ARSa.
By ARTHUR VAUQHAN,B.A.,
D.Se., F.G.S.
(Read June 8th, 1904; rearranged, and
additional matter incorporated, October 1904.)
[PLATESXXII-XXIX.]
COMTE,N*TS.
Page
l. Introduction .....................................................................
I I. Detailed Description of Continuous Sections and Isolated Exposur~
ill the Bristol Area .........................................................
i) Continuous Sections :-(a) The Avon Section ................................................
Analysis of Stoddart's Paper .................................
(b) Sodbu ry ..........................................................
(c) The Failure{ ~rea (including Flax ]3otu'ton) ...............
(d) The Tytherington Section .......................................
(e) The Clevedon Area .............................................
Q") The Portishead District ..........................................
(ii) Isolated Exposures :-(A) In the Cliftou-Olevedon Ridge ....................... . ......
(B) In the Clifton-Westbury-King's Weston Ridge .........
(C) In the Wickwar-Sodbury Ridge ..............................
(D) In the Olveston-Tytherington-Cromhall Ridge ............
(E) The Backwell-Wrington Mess.................................
I !1. ]~ltngesand Maxima of the Corals and Brachiopods in the Bristol
Area ..........................................................................
IV. Comparison of the :Bristol Sequence with that in Neighbouring
Areas ...........................................................................
V. Compariso. with the Belgian Sequence ...................................
V1. Summary and Analysis .........................................................
VI 1 Notes on the Corals and Brachiopods referred to in the Faunal
Lists ...........................................................................
181
188
188
200
203
211
219
225
228
231
233
239
240
243
248
255
257
266
1. I.~'I'RODUCTIOI~.
T n , s paper deals w i t h the fossil sequence in the Carboniferous
Limestone of the Bristol area, and with the possibility of dividing
that system into a series of palveontological zones.
The general geology of the area has been most luminously
expounded by Prof. Lloyd Morgan in the series of papers which
he has contributed to the Proceedings of the Bristol Naturalists'
Society, and to these I make constant reference. I am thus able
largely to dispense with detailed accounts of topography and lithology, which would otherwise interrupt seriously the pala~ontological
discussion.
Mr. E. B. Wethered has contributed a most instructive paper
' On Insoluble Residues obtained from the Carboniferous-Limestone Series at Clifton, '~ and it is with his lithological divisions
t h a t I have mainly correlated the pala~ontologieal zones suggested
in this paper.
To the late Mr. W. W. Stoddart ~" we owe the first attempt to
compile a list of the fossil contents of the beds in the Avon Section.
I have drawn up a complete analysis of his observations, so f a r
only as the Corals and Brachiopods are concerned ; this will, for
convenience, follow immediately upon the detailed account of my
own observations on the Avon section.
For my purpose, i t is obvious that the essential desiderata are
good exposures, the relative stratigraphical position of which is
unquestionable. Exposures which satisfy these two conditions are
to be found in several parts Of the Bristol area, and, from them,
the determination of the faunal sequence is merely a matter o[
accurate observation and careful tabulation.
Since every fossil that i s recorded in the following lists was
noted down at the instant at which it was observed, while all
specimens which presented any difficulty in determination were
extracted as completely as possible and carefully re-examined
at leisure, I may claim t h a t these lists are absolutely reliable,
provided that each name .presents
exactly the same
i d e a to t h o s e w h o r e a d it, as i t d o e s to m e i n w r i t i n g
it.
Time from fossils: S. S. Buckman and Jurassic high-resolution geochronology

J.
H.
CALLOMON
University College L o n d o n , 20 G o r d o n Street, L o n d o n W C 1 H OAJ, U K
Abstract: Chronostratigraphical classification of rocks can be approached from two directions. The
first is a 'top-down' process of subdivision of the geological column in a hierarchy of successively finer
units. These units are therefore defined by their boundaries, which are time-planes, and form complete
continuous series or scales. They are chosen to be widely recognizable, and hence correlatable, by
means, in the Phanerozoic, of their contained guide-fossils, i.e. by their characteristic biozones. This
was the approach of d'Orbigny and Oppel in the Jurassic, leading to a standard chronostratigraphy
down to Subzonal level notably espoused by Arkell and widely adopted today. The second approach is
one of 'bottom-upwards' integration: the assembly into time-ordered sequences of the most minutely
distinguishable local faunal horizons--distinguishable in the sense of evolutionary change--which may
or may not subsequently be found to have more widespread value for time-correlations and
biochronology. This was the method introduced by Buckman a hundred years ago to describe the
ammonite biostratigraphy of the Inferior Oolite of Dorset, in response to the need for the finest
attainable time-resolution in phylogenetic palaeontology. The time-equivalents of such faunal horizons
were termed hemerae.
Polyhemeral chronostratigraphy went into abeyance with Buckman's death in 1929, but its
equivalent, in terms of the faunal horizons themselves, has been revived. A faunal horizon is defined
as a stratigraphical entity within which no further biochronological subdivision can be made, so that
the bed or beds embodying that horizon must, on the evidence of the fossils alone, be regarded as
internally isochronous. A succession of faunal horizons becomes the record of well-spaced instants:
the record is presumed a priori to be full of gaps of unknown duration waiting to be filled by new
discoveries. The measure of chronostratigraphical finesse is the average time-interval between the
moments represented by the faunal horizons, 6t, the secular resolution. The relative ability of groups
of guide-fossils to resolve time-intervals 6t in rocks of age t is their secular resolving-power, R = t/6t.
The current state of Jurassic chronostratigraphy is reviewed. The guide-fossils of choice are the
ammonites, whose secular resolving-power exceeds that of any other group and which can give
time-resolutions of 150000 years in rocks of age 150 million years (R >1000). These figures are
compared with those attainable elsewhere in the Mesozoic and Palaeozoic. Resolution-analysis of the
Jurassic shows that, at the level of resolution of ammonite faunal horizons, the geological record is
highly incomplete, nowhere more so than in the Inferior Oolite. As Buckman concluded, the more
complete the fossil record of a system becomes, the more incomplete turns out to be its lithochronology. This has important consequences in sedimentology, and in sequence stratigraphy.
Rock-time duality
observation is that of beds specified by heights in a

succession, thicknesses and compositions: their lithostratigraphy and, if c o m p o s i t i o n includes fossils, their biostratigraphy. T h e next step introduces Steno's Principle of
Superposition (1669), which states that in a n o r m a l
succession of sediments the higher lying are the younger.
This transforms a static description in terms of height into a
dynamic one in terms of local t i m e - - r e l a t i v e t i m e - - a n d is an
interpretation. Specification of rocks in a stratal succession
according to their relative ages we refer to today as their
chronostratigraphy, although this t e r m appears to have b e e n
first explicitly i n t r o d u c e d only by H e d b e r g (1954). The third
step involves the linking of local successions t h r o u g h
time-correlations. These allow the ages of rocks at one place
to be c o m p a r e d with those at another. T h e fourth step t h e n
b e c o m e s the synthesis of a standard t i m e - o r d e r e d succession
of rocks, correlation with which allows any local rock to be
dated in terms of its relative position in the implied
conjugate chronostratigraphic time-scale. Only in the fifth
and final step is this standard chronostratigraphic time-scale
calibrated in absolute terms, in years, by radiometric
methods.
So m u c h for principles. In practice, everything d e p e n d s
T h e history of the E a r t h is r e c o r d e d in the rocks a r o u n d us.

To reconstruct this history we n e e d to measure the ages of
the rocks. This allows us to present the history as a
compilation of what has occurred, and such compilations
m a k e up the greater part of text-books on historical geology.
But perhaps even m o r e interesting today, it allows us to
estimate the rates of underlying processes--tectonic,
plutonic, m e t a m o r p h i c , s e d i m e n t a r y and biological. T h e s e
rates range over m a n y orders of magnitude, and being
derivatives with respect to time, the ability to measure t h e m
d e p e n d s not so m u c h on the m e a s u r e m e n t s of the ages
themselves as on the ability to m e a s u r e small differences in
ages, to resolve time-intervals, to distinguish closely-spaced
m o m e n t s in time. Alas, as we all know, although we n o w
have powerful m e t h o d s of directly dating rocks t h r o u g h the
m e a s u r e m e n t of radioactive decay, they are applicable to
only a minority of cases.
In taking stock of the present position in the
g e o c h r o n o l o g y of fossiliferous s e d i m e n t a r y rocks, on which
so m u c h of our history of the E a r t h is based, it is relevant to
recapitulate five steps in the argument. T h e first and basic
127
128
J.H.
CALLOMON
on successful time-correlations. But, being a matter of

interpretation, how can they be assured? How precise can
they be made?
In the early stages of the evolution of our geological
time-scale, correlation was largely lithostratigraphic, for
sediments with bedding-planes are clearly at least locally
synchronous. Formations were characterized, mapped and
placed in succession. Such successions give the impression of
being regionally complete but discretely subdivided records
of geological time, for in their very nature non-sequences,
representing time-gaps at formational boundaries or partings
between beds, are not readily evident. There evolved
therefore the concept of 'the standard geological column' as
a complete and continuous record of geological time,
subdivided into a succession of distinguishable segments.
The outline of its major features was substantially complete
a century and a half ago and is shown in Fig. 1. (For a recent
review from a Palaeozoic viewpoint, see McKerrow this
volume.) It continues to provide part of the basic vocabulary
of our subject even today and calls for only a few comments.
Firstly, it can be read in two ways. On the one hand, the
boxes represent slices of the geological column: Systems,
rocks. In this representation, the horizontal lines delimiting
the boxes signify time-planes in t h e rocks. On the other
(Lyell. 1873)
RECENT
I'LEISTOCI';NE
CAINOZOIC
(Phillips
....
(Lyell 1839)
I'LIOCEN E
(Lycll 1833)
MIOCENE
(Lyell 1833)
OLIGOCFNE
(Bcyrich
EOCENE
(Lycll 1833)
PALAEOCENE
(Scllimper 1874)
1841)
1854)
CRETACEOUS
(Omalius d'Halloy 1822)
JURASSIC
(i3rongl~ial'l 1829)
TRIASSIC
(Albel'ti 1834)
PERMIAN
(Murchison 1841)
CARBONIFEROUS
(Conybeare 1822)
I'ALAEOZOIC
DEVONIAN
(Sedgwick/Murchisola 1839)
(l:'hillips 1840-4 I)
SILURIAN
(Murchison 1833)
ORDOVICIAN
(Lapworlh 1879)
CAMBRIAN
(Sedgwick 1835)
MESOZOIC
(l~hillips
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
Rock
Eonothem
Erathem
System
Series
Stage
Zone
Subzone
Time
Eon
Era
Period
Epoch
Age
Chron
Subchron
hand, the boxes represent durations of time vertically (Eras)

and the horizonal lines represent time-markers (instants) in
a vertical time-scale. This rock-time duality may seem
obvious, but failure to remember it can still cause confusion,
for it is vital to one aspect of the all-important act of
time-correlation implied in dating a rock. Whereas the
time-markers and their conjugate time-planes define the
chronostratigraphic units to which we assign rocks when we
date them, the recognition of the unit to which a rock
belongs is by means of what lies between the planes, not of
the planes themselves; for, except perhaps very locally,
time-planes can generally not be recognized other than at
the point in a section at which they have been defined. The
corollary is that all stratigraphical time-correlations are
Secondly, the figure shows a classification that is made
up of the top three tiers of a hierarchy of successive
subdivision (Table 1): Eons (I), Eras (II) and Periods (Ill).
Such a process of refinement can clearly be taken further.
Thirdly, the foundations of this classification were
predominantly lithostratigraphic--formations and their superposition. That individual formations had their own
characteristic fossil assemblages was fully recognized and
these assemblages were described in considerable detail.
But, with some exceptions, their use as important tools in
time-correlation came later.
1841)
skeletal rnacrofi)ssils appear

0
(Gulfflint Formalkm)
ol.,a~
.
Level
approximations.
111
lI
Table 1. Rock-time duality and the hierarchy of

standard chronostratigraphy and geochronology
,:,o
Fig. 1. The standard geological column at the highest three levels of

the chronostratigraphic hierarchy. Additional categories intermediate between levels II and III in use today include subdivisions of
Cainozoic (Cenozoic) into Tertiary (as redefined by Lyell in 1833)
and post-Pliocene Quaternary (Morlot 1854).
Biostratigraphy and time-correlation: William Smith

to Leopold von Buch
The limitations of lithostratigraphy in attempts to refine and
extend time-correlations were soon recognized. Not only
were rocks of similar lithology not necessarily of the same
age, but also, conversely, rocks of the same age could be of
different facies (Gressly 1838). The first practical use of
fossils for time-correlation is usually attributed to William
Smith (1816). It is based on what might be called the
Principle of Biosynchroneity: rocks containing similar fossils
are of the same age. But fossil species have ranges. 'Same'
therefore means 'more or less the same', depending on these
ranges, and on what is understood by species and how
closely they can be identified. Some fossils are clearly better
for correlation than others, and those whose distributions
(biozones) approximate most closely to synchroneity were
called 'Leit-Muscheln' by von Buch (1839, p.64): the
guide-fossils of today.
The context was a review of the Jurassic of Germany and
Switzerland. He comments (p. 61) on earlier attempts to
classify the German succession by means of correlations
with the then much better-known succession in England,
based on claims to have recognized a lithologically similar
TIME FROM FOSSILS

order of formations. For instance, lithological comparisons
led Murchison (1831) to assign the 'slates' of Solnhofen and
those of Stonesfield to the same 'geognostic horizon' ]sic]
and to conclude therefore that the equivalents of the whole
of the Upper Oolites of England must be missing in
Germany. Such correlations were refuted by the 'zoological
character' of the formations, 'which alone should decide the
identity ]equivalence] of the formation'. What was needed
was a catalogue of reliable guide-fossils, and these yon Buch
proceeded to enumerate. At the same time he refined the
standard classification by subdividing the Jurassic further,
into the three universal parts of Lower, Middle and Upper
Jura. These correspond to our Series of today, at .level IV of
the standard hierarchy. Of the 102 species of guide-fossil he
lists for the Jurassic, 30 are ammonites. The pre-eminence of
ammonites as guide-fossils in the Jurassic gave that System a
lead in the development and testing of the techniques of
chronostratigraphical refinement through biostratigraphy
that it has maintained to the present day.
Standard chronostratigraphy: d'Orbigny, Oppel and

beyond
The next step was taken by d'Orbigny (1850, R~sum~
g~ologique, p. 600). He subdivided the Jurassic into ten
Stages ('6tages', 'Stufen' in German). The importance of this
work and some of its shortcomings in execution were
reviewed by Arkell (1933, p.8), who also provided an
English translation of the key passages in the introductory
pages of the classical R~sum~. Arkell's analysis reads as
freshly as when it was written but two points are worth
re-emphasizing. The first is that the Stages are undoubtedly
what we would today call chronostratigraphic units. They
explicitly represent the record in rocks of 'successive distinct
geological epochs', recognized by their characteristic fossils.
The second is that they are subdivisions of a larger
continuous unit, slices of the geological column, defined by
the dividing time-planes. They are therefore standard
chronostratigraphic units, the rock-equivalents of a standard
geological time-scale, and constitute the next level
downwards in the hierarchy of classification by subdivision,
level V. Arkell makes great point, implicitly perhaps rather
than explicitly, of this difference between d'Orbigny's Stages
as part of a standard classification and numerous other
entities masquerading under the same title as 'stages'
already in the literature at the time, such as Marcou's
Vesulien, Argovien and Sequanien, variously interpretable
as local litho-, bio- or even chronostratigraphical units--a
list that had grown in 1933 to over a hundred for the Jurassic
alone. Standard classifications generate standard nomenclatures; and it is the analogy between stratigraphical and
zoological nomenclatures that guided Arkell in his
subsequent proposals (1946) for a Code of Rules of
Stratigraphical Nomenclature, analogous to those of
Linn6an zoological nomenclature, in which d'Orbigny's
R~sum~ g~ologique of 1850 marks the starting-point for a
Rule of Priority in naming Stages in the same way as
Linnaeus' Systema Naturae, 10th Edition (1758) does for
naming species in zoology.
Finally, Oppel's Zones (1856-58). In the introduction to
his seminal work, Oppel made it quite clear that he was
following the principles laid down by William Smith and
Leopold von Buch, but taking the refinement of the
chronological classification of the Jurassic of NW Europe
129
even further, down to the level of Zones. And although

there can be few works on Jurassic stratigraphy during the
past century in which 'zones' are not used, professedly in the
Oppelian sense, there has been a longstanding uncertainty
as to precisely what it was that Oppel meant by the term, an
uncertainty that has caused much confusion in the past and
that persists even today (e.g. Harland et al. 1990, p.21; Guex
1987). As Arkell wrote (1933, p.16): 'It is remarkable that
Oppel nowhere defined what he meant by a zone. He is
frequently credited with the first use of the word, but it had
in fact been employed by several French geologists before
him [including d'Orbigny, as alternative to "6tage"], and a
definite meaning was already attached to it. Oppel adopted
the term and accepted its meaning and no doubt it seemed
to him in consequence unnecessary to give a definition . . . . If
he had given a definition.., it would have been in fact
superfluous, for his meaning is apparent on almost every
page of the book'. Apparent, perhaps, but clearly in
different ways to different readers.
For an authoritative second opinion, however, nothing
could have been clearer than the re-statement by Oppel's
student, Waagen. In the introduction to his article defining
and characterizing 'die Zone des Ammonites sowerbyi' in
the lower Middle Jurassic (1867, p. 511-13), he explains the
purpose to be achieved. It is not merely to give detailed
descriptions of any particular bed or of the organic remains
it contains: rather, by means of such descriptions, 'ein neues,
bestimmt fixiertes Glied in der Zeitskala des Bildungsprozesses des Jura nachzuweisen'--to demonstrate the
presence of a new [i.e. hitherto unrecognized] segment of
the time-scale of the formation of the Jurassic. He makes no
claim either that this segment can always and everywhere be
distinguished from those adjacent, or that its characteristic
fauna will never be found mixed with those below or above;
but he confidently asserts that whenever a bed with this
fauna by itself is found, it will always lie at the same relative
position in the succession. And finding this to be the case in
most of central Europe, are we not justified, 'diese Schicht
als einen Zeitabschnitt to betrachten,.., als solchen fur sich
besonders zu beschreiben und als Zone mit einem Namen zu
belegen': in regarding this stratum as [equivalent to] a
time-interval to be explicitly described and named as a
Zone? And in our attempts to refine ever further the
zonation of the Jurassic in the face of variable lithologies
('Bestand') and localized or migrating faunas and their
individual species, how are we to arrive at firm conclusions?
'Das Mittel i s t . . ,
die Feststellung einer NormalSchichtenreihe, nach welcher die Bildungen in anderen,
entfernter liegenden Distrikten beurtheilt werden kSnnen':
the answer lies in the determination of a standard succession
[sic] with which formations at other, more distant localities
can be compared, i.e. correlated. And 'ein solches Glied der
Normal-Schichtenreihe m~Schte ich denn in der Zone des A.
sowerbyi festzustellen suchen': it is as such a member of the
standard succession that I seek to recognize the Zone of A.
sowerbyi. '[It] falls into the time-interval [sic] between the
occurrence of A. murchisonae and the appearance of A.
sauzei . . . . The Zone is therefore bounded below by the
beds containing A. murchisonae and above by those with A.
sauzei'. (Waagen's Sowerbyi Zone spans today a succession
of 15 distinguishable ammonite faunal horizons, see below).
Oppel's meaning of 'Zone' is brought out unambiguously
by careful attention to definitions in stratigraphical
nomenclature (e.g. Callomon 1985a). There are two sources
130
J.H.
CALLOMON
of confusion. The first has already been alluded to, and

derives from the distinction between definition of a unit
(here an Oppelian zone) and its recognition and use in
correlation. The definition is clear from the numerous tables
to be found throughout Oppel's book, but particularly in the
summaries in table 63 (p. 822, reproduced in part by Arkell,
1933, p.18, Table III) and table 64. The Zones are
continuous subdivisions of d'Orbigny's Stages, which are
themselves subdivisions of the three parts, Lower, Middle
and Upper, of the whole of the Jurassic. Their definition lies
in their bounding time-planes, which we are attempting
today to fix objectively and typologically by means of
markers ('Golden Spikes') in type-sections. Their function is
to provide a standard scale of reference against which all the
known formations of Europe could be classified (correlated)
according to their relative ages. Oppel's Zones are therefore
standard chronozones. Their recognition is by means of the
guide-fossils they contain, i.e. the biozones of the fossils. In
general, the biozones used are concurrent-range assemblage
biozones, in modern parlance, for the simple statistical
reason that, in handling approximate data, the larger the
data-set the closer the estimate of the quantity to be
determined from it, in this case geological age.
The second source of confusion has been the failure to
distinguish between guide-fossils and index-fossils. Whereas
d'Orbigny's Stages were named after places, Oppel chose to
name his Zones after species of fossils (p.813), to emphasize
the biostratigraphical basis of his classification. 'I have
named individual Zones each after one of its more
important [sic] species...'. He immediately goes on to warn
against the subconscious bias that the choice of one
particular species to label a Zone might introduce into our
interpretation of it, carrying over to the Zone as a whole
what might have been largely a local accident of range or
relative abundance. 'Important' is a relative concept. H e
discusses briefly the alternative of place names, as for
Stages, but concludes that the dangers of bias arising from
the association of a zonal name with its particular
development at the eponymous locality are even greater.
The function of the index is purely name-giving. It helps if it
is at the same time a good guide-fossil, but this is not
essential. All that is required as a minimum is that it at least
occurs, and preferably that its type horizon lies, in its
nominal Zone. Unfortunately, Oppel's remarks have been
widely ignored, especially in Germany. There has resulted
an often impenetrable confusion of zonal nomenclature as
authors changed the choice of index every time they thought
another was more appropriate. Often, the index-species has
become the guide-species, i.e. what purports to continue to
be a standard chronozone has become transformed into a
single-taxon total-range biozone. The subjective and
ephemeral nature of such biozones has been stressed
elsewhere (Callomon 1985a). Their use in standard
chronostratigraphy is almost as unsatisfactory as is that of
lithostratigraphical units. And it was mainly the need to
bring order into this nomenclatural confusion that led Arkell
to propose his Code of Stratigraphical Nomenclature (1946),
the first attempt at what has become a flourishing
multinational industry.
Such, then, was the legacy of the founding fathers. The
number of standard Zones into which the Jurassic had been
divided at the end of Die Juraformation in 1858 was 33, of
which 22 were named after ammonites. The tragic death at
the age of 34 of Albert Oppel, the Mozart of the Jurassic,
cut short a career that would have given us many further

contributions to Jurassic stratigraphy. The problems of
biogeographic provincialism among the ammonite guidefossils, for instance, were becoming apparent as his interests
spread further afield, to the Mediterranean and the
Himalayas, indicating limits to the applicability of the
standard classification he had created. The process of
refinement was however carried forward by his successors
and continues at the present day. As we have seen, it is a
process of subdivision through the insertion of new
boundary time-planes, reflecting the incorporation of new
discoveries. This can be done in two ways: by delimitation of
new Zones, or by splitting of existing Zones into finer
subdivisions at a yet lower level in the standard hierarchy,
level VII: Subzones. Oppel himself already introduced the
category of Subzone a number of times, albeit somewhat
tentatively, and their popularity has grown. The distinction
between Zones and Subzones is largely a matter of choice,
and taken by most authors to reflect the interrelation
between the finesse of stratigraphical resolution that can be
attained and the areal extent over which it can be
recognized. By and large, the category of standard Zone is
retained for units that can be recognized over at least
sub-continental distances, whereas Subzones may be
recognizable over lesser but still useful extents. At least one
International Stratigraphic Guide (Hedberg 1976) makes
provision for yet further subdivisions, as Zonules, but these
have not been widely used. A modern example of an
analysis of standard chronostratigraphy down to the level of
Subzones, taking into account an assessment of biostratigraphy, correlation and Arkell's Rule of Priority in
nomenclature, may be seen in the seminal classification of
the Lias of NW Europe by Dean et al. (1961). It stops short
only of the final step, the typological definition of the
subzonal boundaries.
Two further technical points remain to be made. The
first is orthographic. Standard Oppelian chronozones and
fossil biozones, including those of chronozonal index
species, being conceptually different entities, the difference
should be apparent from the way they are written. I have
therefore strongly advocated (1985a) the retention of, or the
return to, or, especially outside the Mesozoic, the adoption
of a convention consistently followed by Arkell (e.g. 1956),
even if perhaps not invented by him. He indicates standard
chronozones named after an index-fossil by writing the
Linn6an name of the fossil in non-italicized, ordinary
roman letters, with capital initial and, similarly, initially
capitalizing 'Zone' and 'Stage' when used in standard
chronostratigraphic sense. Thus, the Upper Jurassic
Cordatum Zone and cordatum zone are not the same thing.
The latter lies within the former, to an extent depending on
the interpretation of a zoological entity and the state of
knowledge. The former is (or will be) defined in terms of
two bounding time-planes fixed in type sections.
The second point relates to the definition of standard
chronostratigraphic units. Standard chronostratigraphy having a hierarchical structure, units at higher levels in the
hierarchy should be defined in terms of those at the levels
below them, as in zoological nomenclature (Callomon 1965).
The ultimate and only unambiguous fixed point is that at the
lowest level. A genus rests ultimately on the type specimen
of the nominal sub-species of the type species of the nominal
sub-genus. Similarly, a standard Stage should be defined in
terms of the standard Zones and Subzones it contains.
TIME FROM FOSSILS

Standard units being now, by general agreement, defined by
their bases, the ultimate typological anchor of a Stage
should be the basal time-plane, defined in a type section, of
the lowest Subzone of the lowest Zone in the Stage; and so
on, through Series and Stages upwards. A recent set of
Guidelines from the International Commission of Stratigraphy (Cowie et al. 1986) purporting to advise numerous
Boundary Stratotype Working-Groups on procedure, makes
no mention of hierarchy and its consequences.
The present state of subdivision of the Jurassic is
illustrated in Fig. 2. It shows how its standard chronostratigraphical classification has evolved by a process of analytical,
hierarchical top-down subdivision. The number of Zones
recognized today in the classical areas of Europe is about 76,
the number Subzones about 155. All are named after
ammonites as indices. It is a process that may have worked
exceptionally well in the Jurassic through the fortunate
circumstance of its ammonites as guide-fossils, but the
principles apply to all Systems whose chronostratigraphy is
based on biostratigraphy.
Does this process of refinement then take us to the limits
of time-resolution that can be achieved? The answer in the
Erathems &
II
Jurassic is no, but further progress calls for a different

approach. The first to introduce this was S. S. Buckman in
the Geological Society's Journal a hundred years ago.
The limits of biostratigraphical time-resolution: the

hemerae of S. S. Buckman and the classification of
the Inferior Oolite
Sydney Savory Buckman (1860-1929) was a remarkable
man. The oldest son among five siblings, he was born in
Cirencester where his father, James Buckman, was Professor
of Geology, Natural History and Botany at the Royal
Agricultural College, and an enthusiastic naturalist in the
great Victorian tradition. Resigning from his post in 1863
after prolonged conflicts with a recently newly appointed
Reverend Principal, conflicts arising almost certainly from
James Buckman's overt support of Darwin's recently
published theory of evolution (Torrens 1988), the Buckmans
moved to Bradford Abbas, 5 km WSW of Sherborne Abbey
in Dorset, to take u p farming at what is now East Farm.
James' wife (n6e Savory) died when Sydney was only five
years old, so that the boy was brought up largely under the
Series & Stages
Systems
IV
Zones
Subzones
VI
VII
Peterborough
t
Cordaturn
Tithonian
Cenozoic
Cordatum
E
L
Kimmeridgian
v
100 ._ Cretaceousl
O
Oxfordian
~._//////./4
~Jurassic/,
"////////~
200 - ~
:3
"////////////~
gd//././//.///k.
Callovian
,~///////////~
f/I/Ill/Ill/l~
Triassic
Bathonian
o
v
300 -
Bajocian
"o
Aalenian
o
N
o
400
Toarcian
t~
"i
Q.
Pliensbachian
Sinemurian
O
.J
_
Hettangian
600
Faunal horizons
III
01
,00
131
Costicardia
Bukowskii
Praecordatum
Mariae
Scarburgense
Lamberti
Lamberti
Henrici
Spinosum
,L
Proniae
Athleta
Phaeinum
Grossouvrei
Coronaturn
Obductum
Jason
Jason
Medea
Enodatum
Calloviense
Calloviense
Galilaeii
Koenigi
Curtilobus
Gowerianus
Kamptus
Terebratus
Herveyi
Keppleri
Discus
Discus
Hollandi
Hannoveranus
Orbis
Blanazense
[~--;~i0--f3%]
~ g - - q 6 ~ 4 f3-5]
~Z--(o-8~ ;fo~T3]
/ r~---~;~7o-]
/ [2~---~zc-~-.1
/
[~6---8-9-6-~]
/
r~-~---~-8~-1
/
I ~ - - ~ - ~ -]
[r~-- -8-5~:8-6~-]
F?6----9-4-8-~- ]
[~ .... ~--]
[~
78~-792 1
[ 13
760-780]
[I'2--- 691-759 ,]
fi~-- ~i-~~ ]
[1-0--- %~-8~-1
r-9--- ~;~-~-]
I--f----7~;(3g-]
r-6-----~-7-8--]
[-~----;o--~-- ]
r-4-----2~:49--]
.... ~.~-]
-2- -- -~-C
r~ . . . . . ~;2~--]
r ...........
Fig. 2. The subdivision of the Jurassic down to the lowest level of the standard chronostratigraphic hierarchy, the Subzone (VII), and thence to
the limit of biochroological resolution in the example of the ammonite faunal horizons of the Oxford Clay at Peterborough as described by
Brinkmann (1929; see also Fig. 6): numbers refer to stratigraphic heights in centimetres. The Stages are often further subdivided at a level
intermediate between V and VI into Substages. Sometimes these are separately named, e.g. as in the Domerian (upper) and Carixian (lower)
Substages of the Pliensbachian, but Lower, Middle and Upper are more usual. Time-scale at left from CTS89 of Harland et al. (1990).
132
J. H. C A L L O M O N
influence of his remarkable father. He was sent for his

secondary schooling to nearby Sherborne School (1871-78),
which, through the enthusiasm of some of its teachers, was
building up strong interests in natural history and, given its
location, in geology in particular. In this it was strongly
supported by Buckman senior, co-founder in 1875 and first
Honorary Secretary of the Dorset Natural History and
Antiquarian Field Club (Torrens 1978). But besides
nurturing his interest in geology, the school clearly gave
young Buckman an excellent basic education, strong after
the manner of the times in reading, writing and the classical
Greek and Latin languages, a familiarity with which is
apparent in much of his own later writings. Original
intentions to follow school by University and then to enter
the Church came to nothing and, encouraged by his
father-in-law, he set off for a year's study and travel on the
Continent, to see whether he might find an interest in
chemistry, the basis of the occupation as pharmacists in
London of his mother's family and even originally of his
own father, who had started his working life as a pharmacist
in Cheltenham. Sydney Buckman was therefore enrolled for
two semesters in the Chemical Laboratory of the University
of Wiesbaden, but it, too, was not to his taste. It marked the
end of any further attempts at formal higher education and
he returned to Dorset in 1880. He did however later
acknowledge the value of having learned the German
language (Davies 1930b).
Buckman's subsequent career continued to be as varied
and turbulent as had that of his father. After two years
studying to become a land-agent, he married in 1882 and
and took up farming near Andoversford, east of
Cheltenham. 1889 saw the beginning of a new career as
novelist, living near Stroud ('James Corin', as in Corinium,
Roman Cirencester). In 1894 the family moved to Charlton
Kings, today a part of Cheltenham, and in 1904, following a
break-down in health, the Buckmans, now with five
children, moved to Thame, SE of Oxford, where they lived
for the rest of Sydney's life until his death in 1929. Although
his strenuous field-work, much of it by bicycle, came to an
end in 1904, his geological writings continued undiminished.
The list of his publications runs to over 200 titles. His most
famous work, started from Thame in 1909, must be the
monumental Type Ammonites (1909-1930), running to
seven volumes with over a thousand plates which, whatever
may be said about its systematics, continues to be the most
comprehensive description of British Jurassic ammonites.
His active geological career spanned half a century. During
this period, although he undertook occasional paid work for
the Geological Survey and earned something from the sale
of fossils, he never held a position of employment as a
geologist either in a Survey, in industry, or in an academic
institution.
In retracing Buckman's career as a stratigrapher we can
see how the development of his ideas was influenced by a
combination of circumstances. Firstly, under the influence of
his father, he had early become familiar with the general
principles of stratigraphy, systematic palaeontology and the
application of biostratigraphy to the unravelling of
geological time. Secondly, the region in which he grew up
provided almost unrivalled opportunities to apply these
principles to innumerable quarries and outcrops that yielded
an abundance of fossils from almost every bed. Thirdly,
leading amongst these fossils were the ammonites. He was
aware of their renown as guide-fossils through his father
both directly and indirectly, for he had become familiar with
the literature, including Oppel. His acute sense of

observation therefore quickly led him to appreciate the
points stressed by Oppel, that just how good ammonites
were for correlation and hence for time-resolution depended
crucially on two factors: on how closely their species could
be identified, and on how precisely their stratigraphic
horizons were recorded.
The first of Buckman's many papers to appear in the
Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society (1881), published
at the age of 21 and only his second publication, is
prophetic. Under the innocuous title of 'A descriptive
catalogue of some species of ammonites from the Inferior
Oolite of Dorset', it begins firmly with a stratigraphical
introduction, setting up a framework to which the systematic
discussion of the ammonites is then referred. This
framework has two parts. The first consists of field
observations in the form of detailed sections and their
ammonite faunas. The second is a chronostratigraphic
classification in terms of the standard Zones of Oppel and
Waagen, from the Zone of Harpoceras murchisonae to that
of Amm. parkinsoni. But the notable observations relate to
the thicknesses of some of the Zones and hence, conversely,
of just how carefully a section has to be recorded. Writing of
the Zone of Stephanoceras humphriesianum (p. 588), he
notes: 'At O b o r n e , . . . its thickness is about 5 feet, while at
Louse-Hill and Wyke quarries this zone is only represented
by two thin l a y e r s , . . , the two being only about 6 inches
thick, but containing nearly all the species that one finds at
Oborne...'; and of the Inferior Oolite of Sherborne as a
whole, that it 'can be very well divided into four zones,
which are extremely well marked, but vary greatly in
thickness at different localities; and it is probably this
variation in thickness, and sometimes almost complete
absence [his italics] of a zone, that has led to very much
confusion.' In other words, ammonites can reveal not only
those zones that are present but also those that are missing:
they can reveal significant sedimentary non-sequences--the
incompleteness of the geological record. This point was to
assume ever more significance in his later work.
Buckman's next major stratigraphical paper, also
published in the Journal (1889a) was concerned with an old
problem: the age and classification of the Cotteswold,
Midford and Yeovil Sands of Gloucestershire, Somerset and
Dorset respectively. These formations lie between the clays
of the Upper Lias below and the limestones of the Inferior
Oolite above: to which should they be assigned? They
consist throughout their outcrop of very similar yellow,
unfossiliferous fine-grained micaceous sands 30-50 m thick,
interspersed with thin, harder bands of sandstone containing
fossils, including occasional ammonites. These ammonite
'horizons' (p. 442) revealed a succession of clearly
distinguishable faunas. While not all were found at any one
locality, whenever several did occur they always did so in
the same relative sequence. Their homotaxis therefore
indicated synchronism. Their number and distinguishability
showed that ammonite biostratigraphy could achieve
time-resolutions that were much finer than those indicated
by the lithostratigraphy. Hence it should be able to provide
a way of analysing the problem: 'Now the questions arise,
Do these series of Sands begin on the same horizon, and,
including the Cephalopoda-bed, do they end on the same
h o r i z o n ? . . . Are the sands all on one horizon, as stated by
Wright; or are they on two different horizons, as Oppel and
my father thought?'.
The answer to the first question was emphatically no.
TIME FROM FOSSILS

Buckman showed, firstly, that both the lower and upper
boundaries of the Sands were highly diachronous; secondly,
that the lowest and highest ammonite horizons found in the
Sands at one locality could pass laterally into Upper Lias
clays or Lower Inferior Oolite limestones respectively; and
thirdly, that the thicknesses of the sands associated with or
lying between adjacent faunal horizons could vary from 1 to
50 m. Hence, in his own words:
It has been observed that attention to lithology is likely
to ensure success in the matter of correlation. I am
bound to confess, however, that my experience of
Jurassic rocks tells me that in many cases this
observation is quite incorrect. Within the limits of one
basin it may happen that the same horizon can often be
identified by the similarity of l i t h o l o g y ; . . , while in
correlating the strata of one basin with those of
another, such an idea will probably lead to very decided
errors. The strata now to be discussed have suffered
singularly in the matter of correlation from this
similarity of lithology. . . . The celebrated Dr Oppel,
who visited this country about 1855, comprehended the
position of these sands with his usual acute perception;
and had our English geologists given to his work the
attention which it deserves, it ought to have been
impossible for the discussion to be been maintained.
As we would say today, lithostratigraphy can be a poor
guide to chronostratigraphy. But this had been the central
tenet both of d'Orbigny and of Oppel before him: the idea
that a given faunal horizon or zone could transgress facies
boundaries was hardly new. Was Buckman doing anything
more remarkable than importing an idea already well
established abroad, albeit perhaps into the culture of a
somewhat sleepy and sceptical, local Establishment? In
principle, probably not. But in practice, and perhaps
implicitly rather than explicitly, yes: the important point is
that 'diachroneity' implies a time-scale, that of attainable
time-resolution. A n d the diachroneity of the boundaries of
the Midford Sands became apparent only through a
considerable refinement of the ammonite biostratigraphy.
Where Oppel had divided the Upper Lias and lowest
Inferior Oolite into only three Zones, those of Posidonia
bronni, Amm. jurensis and Amm. torulosus, Buckman was
able consistently to distinguish seven successive ammonite
faunal horizons (still variously called 'beds' and 'zones'). His
proposal henceforth to abandon lithology as the primary
character in stratigraphic classification in favour of faunal
successions based on ammonites was certainly quite definite,
even if the word 'time' was not explicitly mentioned. And
the drive to refine the ammonite record and to extend the
refinement over the whole of the Jurassic was to become
one of his main motivations during the rest of his life.
These ideas surfaced explicitly in Buckman's famous
paper on the Inferior Oolite of Sherborne (1893), whose
appearance just a century ago this chapter commemorates.
Buckman was by now well launched into his monograph on
the ammonites of this formation (1887-1907). It had started
very much along conventional lines, as little more than a
descriptive, typological catalogue of the wealth of
beautifully preserved specimens that had accumulated over
the years, largely in the collections of his father and friends.
But in looking for a more natural basis of classification,
Buckman became increasingly aware of evolutionary
connections, both through his own observations and through
his increasing familiarity with the literature. The latter
included, fortunately, the seminal work of Waagen (1869)
133
and, less fortunately, that of Hyatt (1889 and earlier: see

Donovan 1973). His complete conversion to phylogenetic
classification appeared in print almost simultaneously in part
(iii) of his Monograph (March 1889, 'Classification by
descent', p. 125-41) and yet again in this Journal (1889b,
November, 'The descent of Sonninia and Hammatoceras').
There was therefore now a second, palaeontological need
for the closest possible dating of rocks, and of those of the
Inferior Oolite of Dorset in particular. The purpose
henceforth of stratigraphy became primarily to provide
geochronology, and the classification of strata was to be
according to their ages--chronostratigraphical.
Buckman immediately realized the need of a dual
nomenclature: one for rocks, another for their ages. He also
understood the nature of Oppel's Zones, that they were
rock-units, the distinguishable sedimentary expression of
durations of time in a standard scale; that these durations of
time should in principle be, and in his experience were,
further subdivisible through refinements of biostratigraphy;
and that there existed no technical term for the smallest
time-units thus discernible. For this he introduced the word
'hemera' (as in 'ephemeral'). It is worth quoting the critical
sentences again:
On Zonal Correlation.--The geological unit for the
correlation of strata has hitherto been the 'zone'.
Gradually, however, it has been felt that either the
zones must be increased in number, or some
modification adopted, if the true faunal sequence is to
be expressed with that accuracy that is now
necessary . . . .
The term 'Hemera'.--Its meaning is 'day' or 'time'; and
I wish to use it as the chronological indicator of the
faunal sequence. Successive 'hemerae' should mark the
smallest consecutive divisions which the sequence of
different species enables us to separate in the maximum
development of strata. In attenuated strata, the deposits
belonging to successive hemerae may not be absolutely
distinguishable, yet the presence of successive hemerae
may be recognized by their index-species, or some
known contemporary; and reference to the maximum
development of strata will explain that the hemerae
were not contemporaneous but successive. The term
' h e m e r a ' . . . is designed as a chronological division, and
will not therefore replace the term 'zone' or be a
subdivision of it.
Taken by itself, as Arkell remarked, it would be difficult
to imagine anything stated much more clearly than this. But
Buckman went further, driven by the palaeontological
considerations alluded to above. Right at the beginning he
states:
I may, however, remark that the division of the Jurassic
period on palaeontological g r o u n d s . . , is a necessity.
Ammonites have been chosen as the indicators of
horizons [sic], and their rapidity in development
[evolution] makes them peculiarly suitable. Therefore,
as far as possible, the chronological u n i t and the
Ammonite-species should go together: and any system
of grouping the chronological units should depend on
the epacme, acme, and paracme of Ammonite-families.
And later:
The term 'Hemera' is intended to mark the acme of
development of one or more species, lit] will therefore
enable us to record our facts correctly; and its chief use
will be in what I may call 'palaeo-biology'.
Buckman then proceeded to describe and analyse the
134
J. H. CALLOMON
strata around Sherborne. He took into consideration some

20 quarries over a distance of only 12km of outcrop,
recording 17 of them with their fossils, bed by numbered
bed, down in some cases to thicknesses of only 1-2 inches
(3-5 cm). The frame of reference for correlation was now a
succession of 12 hemerae in place of the 4 0 p p e l i a n Zones
used previously. The interesting conclusions were as follows.
Firstly, the thicknesses of the 'strata deposited during the ...
hemerae' (p. 493) could vary dramatically: those of the
Garantianae hemerae, for instance, represented by 6 m (20
feet) of Sherborne Building Stone north of the town, had
shrunk to a mere 5 cm (2 inches) at Bradford Abbas, only
6 km away. Secondly, what appears to be a single bed in one
section can contain the faunas of several hemerae--a case of
what today we would call a condensed deposit. The example
Buckman quoted was the famous Fossil Bed of Sandford
Lane, a single solid bed of limestone only 45 cm thick.
Thirdly, strata representing one or several hemerae could be
absent altogether in a section, and a common reason for this
was synsedimentary erosion, sometimes directly reflected in
the spectacular erosion-planes for which the Inferior Oolite
of Dorset has become famous. 'The "incompleteness of the
record" and the attenuation of the deposits are especially
noticeable' (p.484). In either case, a faunal condensation or
a total stratal non-sequence at one locality can be
demonstrated only by correlation with the succession at
another at which it is more complete. The logical conclusion
of this argument, which Buckman seemed to wish to indicate
in his introductory sentences quoted above, with their
reference to 'the maximum development of strata', is that
we can only be sure that our hemeral succession is complete
when we have pieced together the complete stratal
succession. The dilemma is immediately obvious: but how
do we know when the stratal succession is complete?
The further Buckman cast around for correlations the
less complete the succession around Sherborne turned out to
be. The hemeral succession of Sherborne could be
successfully carried over to the outliers of Inferior Oolite at
Dundry, near Bristol, and to the Cotswolds, with further
dramatic changes of facies and thicknesses. They could even
be identified in continental Europe. His observation (p.494),
that in the Sandford Land Fossil Bed 'no other locality in
England yields the same fauna as the lower part of this bed',
remained true until two years ago; and his recognition that it
does occur around Gingen in southern Swabia in sections
described by Waagen (1867) was a brilliant act of
correlation. (For the first modern description of the Swabian
succession, see Oechsle 1958. The definitive guide-fossil (p.
105) is Shirbuirnia [sic] stephani (S. Buckman, 1882)). In
what were to be his last two papers on the Inferior Oolite
based on his own field-work, he takes in the successions of
the Dorset coast and nearby localities. In the first of these
papers (1910a, table III), the number of hemerae in the
Inferior Oolite has grown to 18. But what is probably the
most important general conclusion to emerge from the
whole study of the Inferior Oolite is summarized in the
introduction to the second paper (1910b, p. 90):
A schoolboy once defined a net as a series of holes
strung together, and the Dorset Inferior Oolite might
be defined as a series of gaps united by thin bands of
deposit . . . . the deposits are so local, the deposits of one
place correspond to the gaps of another. Therefore
many localities have to be placed together to produce
the full tale of the Inferior Oolite.
To paraphrase the introductory motto on the fly-leaf of

Vol. III of Type Ammonites (Buckman 1923), the more
complete the faunal record becomes, the less complete the
sedimentary record turns out to be.
Buckman's field observations have stood the test of time
down to the smallest detail (see e.g. Parsons 1974, 1976,
1980). Almost the only changes have involved even further
refinement rather than revision--the number of successive
ammonite faunas now recognizable in the Inferior Oolite
has grown from the original 12 of 1893 to over 40 (Callomon
& Chandler 1990). Buckman's analysis stands as one of the
all-time classical landmarks of stratigraphy. Its wider
contributions to the subject as a whole were two-fold.
Firstly, it showed how detailed biostratigraphy of ammonites
could be used to resolve geochronology across a complex
mosaic of disparate lithological units formed in a tectonically
quiescent regime, that of Jurassic southern England. This
evokes the interesting parallel with the contemporary
achievements of Lapworth (recently reviewed by Fortey
1993), who showed how the biostratigraphy of graptolites
could be used to resolve geochronology across a complex
mosaic of disparate tectonic units in a monotonous
sedimentary regime, that of the Siluro-Ordovician Southern
Uplands. Biostratigraphy succeeded where lithostratigraphy
had failed. Secondly, it had shown how the time-resolution
of the geological record could be carried well beyond the
conventional
limits
of
Oppelian
standard
zonal
chronostratigraphy.
It remains only to make one further important point.
This concerns the basic principles behind the refining of
time-resolution by polyhemeral analysis. As was shown in
the introduction, conventional refinement of standard
chronostratigraphy proceeds by successive subdivision of a
geological column that is regarded from the outset as being
always complete. The act of delimiting additional smaller
units within larger ones by inserting newly-defined
time-planes does not enlarge the duration of geological time
being classified. It merely provides ways of characterizing
that which was assumed to be already there, even if it had
not been previously recognized. In contrast, polyhemeral
refinement proceeds through the new discovery of hemerae
that are then inserted into the previously known succession.
It makes no assumptions as to what might be there before it
is discovered: the implication is in fact the opposite, that the
record is a priori incomplete, the gaps waiting to be filled.
There is no theoretical limit to the number of hemerae that
could in principle be discovered. The process is therefore
one of successive additions rather than subdivisions, of what
might be called bottom-upwards synthesis. This leads
immediately to the question of the time-duration of a
hemera, and this is discussed further below.
Polyhemerai chronology: difficulties and objections

Buckman's paper of 1893 started a vigorous debate that was
to last for 40 years, terminating in another masterly and
comprehensive review by Arkell (1933, pp. 17-37). Most of
this debate is now of little more than historic interest.
There were objections based largely on misinterpretation, or non-comprehension, of what Buckman had written.
Some of these are to be found in the reports of discussions
following the reading of Buckman's papers at the Society's
meetings. Their only residual value is as entertainment. Mr
H. B. Woodward had some difficulty with the concept of a
TIME FROM FOSSILS

zone (Buckman 1889a, p. 473, repeated in Woodward 1892,
p.298): 'Zones are assemblages of organic remains of which
one abundant and characteristic form is chosen as index'. To
which Buckman is said to have replied that the fossils in a
museum would fit this definition. Professor Blake (in
Buckman 1893, p. 522), on learning of the highly attenuated
beds assigned to a zone or hemera in some sections, thinner
than the ammonite that was its index, foresaw that in such
cases the ammonite would have some difficulty in fitting into
its own zone. Buckman duly showed how this trick could be
done by producing a specimen of an ammonite, probably of
the same species of cadicone Teloceras that can still be
collected at Oborne today, planed off by 'the same
erosion-plane that had attenuated the bed (Davies 1930b, p.
227, and see Fig. 4 below). Even more telling would have
been the pebble lags made up largely of rolled, bored and
epifaunaUy encrusted ammonites found at numerous
horizons, evidence of hemerae whose former sediments had
been totally removed, probably by winnowing. Mr A.J.
Jukes-Browne (1903) and others unnamed had a general
difficulty with time-rock duality. Buckman tried to come to
their help (1902, 1903) by appeal to every-day experience,
including the famous parable of the Dorset labourer whose
lunch--the tangible manifestation of lunch-time--had been
eaten by a dog: would we have said, 'My dinner is gone: one
o'clock is absent'? Further complaints at this level of
discourse clearly reached him from the editors of journals
(ours included) in the form of anonymous referees'
comments, for Hugh Torrens has discovered a previously
unpublished epigram in Buckman's papers that we both feel
should be shared by a wider public, especially in the climate
in which we toil today:
Speak kindly of the referee
Forgive him if he teases
He doesn't do it to annoy
He really thinks it pleases.--S.S.B.
(A not altogether dissimilar passage is to be found in
Dodson 1865).
An illuminating account of the contemporary state of
geological opinion on zonal palaeontology that Buckman so
robustly invaded, has been given by Davies (1930b).
More serious criticisms arose from two causes:
incompleteness, in a failure to follow arguments to their
conclusion and to realize their implications; and overspecification. This led to contradictions and uncertainties,
some of which persist in the practice of stratigraphy to this
day.
The main misunderstanding stemmed from the failure to
distinguish explicitly between the time-duration of a hemera
and the time-intervals between hemerae. It lies at the heart
of the distinction already made above between refinement
by subdivision of a continuum and refinement by addition
through insertion into a discretely-spaced series. Trueman
(1923) realized that even after lengthy debate there was still
no term for the rock-equivalent of a hemera. He therefore
introduced the term epibole, which has led to further
confusion that need not be reviewed here.
Then, how to recognize hemerae? Hemerae of what?
Here we come to problems generated by overspecification.
Buckman referred his hemerae explicitly to the 'acme of
development of one or more [ammonite] species' (see
quotations above). How are such species defined? Few
attempts at zoological classification can have aroused greater
135
controversy at the time than had Buckman's own taxonomy

of ammonites. In successive species of the same lineage,
phyletic classification in palaeontology runs into well-known
problems arising from the dimension of time, discussed for
instance by Bather (1927) who introduced the useful term
transient for a segment of a phyletic chronospecies (see also
the discussion of a particular case among thre ammonites by
Callomon 1985b, p. 557). And what is meant by the 'acme'
of an evolving species? And even if we could define it, how
would we recognize it in the rocks? All we can see are
'ammonite horizons': beds containing ammonites. And if
successive acmes involved members of different co-existing
lineages, could such hemerae overlap? These points were
taken up by Trueman and others. Some beds contain
ammonites, many do not. Could the absence of ammonites
be due to ecological factors? In other words, could
biostratigraphical gaps reflect not only stratigraphical but
also faunal non-sequences? Could fossil horizons be
diachronous? In which case, would the hemera of a species
become something that varied from place to place, and
hence merely a synonym of a local range biozone? Or would
what we see at one place be merely a local manifestation of
part of a hemera, a sort of 'teil-hemera'? And how long, in
years, was the duration of an ammonite hemera and how
long the intervals between them? And why only ammonites?
And so on.
It was uncertainties such as these that contributed to the
demise of further attempts to develop Buckman's
polyhemeral methods in Jurassic geochronology. But the
greatest contributor must have been Buckman's attempts in
his last years to extend them over the rest of the Jurassic.
This made him depend almost entirely on the field
observations of others, when available, or on his own
intuitive deductions of phyletic relationships based largely
on Hyattian 'biogenetic laws' when not. Morley Davies' final
compilation of all the hemerae coined by Buckman,
published in an editorial appendix to the last volume of
Type Ammonites (Davies 1930a), lists some 375. Unfortunately, most of them, particularly in the Upper Jurassic, are
not based on established fact. As Arkell wrote (1933, p. 36):
'It is one of the great misfortunes for Jurassic geology that
when increasing age and frailty prevented Buckman from
continuing active field-work, he lost sight of the distinction
between results obtained with hammer, collecting bag and
field notebook, and those arrived at by speculation and
deduction from matrix at home . . . . the two kinds of results
are almost inextricably interwoven in his later published
works. Only those with intimate local knowledge of the
English Upper Jurassic rocks can hope to distinguish the
two'. Like the clock that struck thirteen: an event not only
raising disbelief but also casting doubt on all that went
before. Arkell's epitaph in effect brought to an end a
chapter in the development of methods of geochronological
refinement.
The limits of biostratigraphic time-resolution:

characteristic faunal horizons
Although Buckman's presentation of geochronology based
on biostratigraphy may have been faulty, his methods of
recording field observations, both of rocks and of fossils,
were admirable. So was his primary goal: to 'mark the
smallest consecutive divisions [of time] which the sequence
of different species enables us to separate'; and the purpose
136
to which he wished to apply the results, the analysis of

evolutionary 'palaeo-biology', seems more appealing than
ever (see the apposite reviews by Paul (1985) and Fortey
(1985)). The needs for high-resolution chronostratigraphy
have only widened (e.g. Hailwood & Kidd 1993), for
instance in the combination of sedimentology and sequence
stratigraphy as analytical techniques in the study of basin
evolution tied to the history of eustatic sea-level.
Interest in the refinement of Jurassic chronostratigraphy
to the limits attainable by means of ammonite biostratigraphy, following Buckman's methods, was revived 30 years
ago (Callomon 1964), when the idea of a characteristic
faunal horizon as the ultimate time-diagnostic infrastandard-subzonal stratigraphical unit was explicitly reintroduced. It has therefore been a relatively simple matter to
revive the core of Buckman's methods, stripping away what
is unnecessary and filling in what had been missing. The
basic approach, already outlined above, is a positivist one: to
start with the record of what is observable in the field as
stratigraphy and then to interpret it with minimal
assumptions of time. The argument that follows has been
generalized to apply not only to Jurassic ammonites, but
equally to other groups of fossils, with modifications that
depend on their time-diagnostic characteristics. The greatest
contrast is probably to be found between the nekto-benthic
ammonites and planktonic micro- and nannofossils, and
their applications to stratigraphy have been compared
elsewhere (Callomon 1994).
(1) Rocks and stratigraphical horizons. The rocks continue
to provide the basic observations from which all else must
be derived, including time. (This is the opposite of
Buckman's approach, in which the epiboles were derived
from the hemerae). A succession of strata in a section define
the stratigraphical horizons at which fossils are found. All
sedimentary successions are at one scale or another
lithologically discontinuous and it is usually convenient (but
not essential) to break them up into distinguishable units, or
beds. How beds are differentiated in practice is a matter of
lithostratigraphical judgment and need not concern us here.
(2) Fossils and faunal horizons. Fossils, singly or in
assemblages of taxa and individuals, may occur at many
horizons in a section at one locality. Taking the taxa one by
one, their known ranges span the strata that are their local
range biozones. ('Known', because we have resolved to
exclude from the argument that which is unknown. Hence
biozones change with the state of knowledge (Callomon
1985a). The 'total range biozone' much cited in theoretical
discussions, which is represented in a section by a local
partial-range biozone, or teilzone, can never be known).
Local range biozones of different taxa usually begin and end
at different levels. Local concurrent-range biozones are
therefore shorter than individual range biozones, and
total-assemblage concurrent-range biozones are the shortest.
Every first and last appearance of a taxon in a section
then marks the boundary of a total-assemblage concurrentrange biozone (the unitary association biozone of Guex
1987) and the faunal succession (or floral: but faunal
hereafter for short) as a whole becomes a time-ordered
sequence
of distinguishable, non-overlapping totalassemblage concurrent-range biozones. Conversely, applying
the Principle of Biostratigraphic Synchroneity, all the
stratigraphical horizons (parts of a bed, a whole bed, or
several beds) making up such a biozone are, as far as can be

judged from the fossils alone, effectively of the same age.
They may therefore be treated as equivalent to a single,
faunally indivisible bed representing the sediments of a short
period of t i m e - - a geological instant. They may therefore be
called simply a faunal horizon. The local biostratigraphical
succession has become a quantized, time-ordered sequence
of distinguishable faunal horizons.
But what makes successive faunal assemblages distinguishable? And which distinctions are of interest?
(3) Guide-fossils and characteristic faunal horizons. Not all
faunal horizons as defined above are of practical value for
geochronology. We are interested only in the subset of fossil
taxa in an assemblage that we believe to be of value for at
least regional time-correlations between sections and hence
for the construction of a regional geochronology--the
guide-fossils. But how do we know which they are?
Distinctions between fossil assemblages may be ascribed
to five factors. The first two are experimental.
(a) Quantity and quality of available material: quantity
includes total absence-collection-failure. Deficiency on both
counts can be made good by more work: improving the state
of knowledge.
(b) Taxonomic skill: the observer's ability to distinguish
taxa.
The next two are ecological.
(c) Ecoenvironmental factors: those factors that determine habitat, seen in changes of faunal compositions of
fossil assemblages (relative numbers of different species,
sexes or ontogenetic stages), including the limiting case of
total absence.
(d) Ecophenotypic factors: environmental factors that
can induce somatic changes in organisms seen as changes of
shape in fossils.
Both ecological factors are time-reversible and likely to
be local; fossils of organisms sensitive to either of them are
facies-dependent. Lastly, and most importantly,
(e) Genotypic evolution: seen as the phenotypic
time-evolution of the morphological characters of the fossils
we collect. It is effectively irreversible (although the
evolution of some characters may be reversible, leading to
homoeomorphies) and likely to be widely independent of
geographical distributions, hence of greatest value in the
selection of guide-fossils.
The identification of time-diagnostic guide-fossils is an
art and proceeds by trial and error, the trials including tests
to assess the importance of all five of the factors enumerated
above. Such trials usually involve tests of conjectural
regional correlations and depend on the characteristics of
the fossil group under consideration. Once the guide-fossils
have been selected, we apply to them the same arguments as
before and describe their successions in terms of their own
effective faunal horizons: the concurrent-range biozones of
restricted subsets specified by the guide-fossils. These faunal
horizons of .guide-fossils are therefore the sought-for
minimally chronologically distinguishable regional stratigraphical units in the stratal succession. They may be referred
to as characteristic faunal horizons--characteristic of the
specified group of guide-fossils:
A characteristic faunal horizon is a bed or series of beds,

characterized by a specified taxon or assemblage of
time-diagnostic guide-fossils, within which no further
stratigraphical differentiation of the fauna can be made.
TIME FROM FOSSILS

A characteristic faunal horizon may be recognized in a
single section if its guide-fossils are already known. It may
be recognized further afield:
Two local faunal horizons at different places are

effectively of the same age if their guide-fossil faunas
cannot be distinguished.
This is the Principle of Synchroneity restated in terms of
faunal horizons and, as before, forms the basis of all
biostratigraphic time-correlations. Such correlations are
clearly subject to the uncertainties of 3(a-b) above, which
are what make them approximations.
(4) Characteristic faunal horizons and geochronology.
Faunal horizons as defined above are rock-units in the same
class as other types of biozone. The periods of time
represented by their fossils and sediments are a priori
unknown. They are the shorter of either the minimum time
needed for one characteristic fauna to have evolved into
another distinguishable one, within the experimental
uncertainties implied by factors 3(a-b) above, or of the times
of formation of the sediments. Any realistic estimates of
what the periods actually were must come from other
sources. The periods of time between faunal horizons cannot
be deduced from the fossils alone either. It becomes
important, therefore, to distinguish clearly between (i) the
time-duration, 6ti, represented by the ith faunal horizon, and
(ii) the time-interval, 6tij, between the times of formation, ti,
tj (the ages), of the horizons i, j.
There seem to be as yet no technical terms for precisely
these quantities, although there is no shortage of terms that
come close. A selection was given by Arkell (1933, pp.
21-22). All of them are deficient in one way or another, but
this is not the place to add to them. Buckman's 'hemera',
stripped of references to 'species' and 'acmes' conveys the
right spirit; but I am attracted by the term 'biochron'
introduced by Williams (1901). It seems sufficiently general
to encompass what is required: the biochron (6t~) of a faunal
horizon.
An interval 6tij represents a non-sequence or sedimentary hiatus: stratigraphical, faunal, or both. Geochronology
deduced from successions of faunal horizons makes no a
priori assumptions, however, concerning the relative
magnitudes of durations 6t~ and intervals 6tij, least of all the
special assumption that 6t~j is zero, that the faunal record is
complete and that 6tij therefore represents the evolutiontime of distinguishable fossil assemblages. Refinement of
biostratigraphic geochronology proceeds in two ways:
reduction of the experimental uncertainties inherent in the
characterization of faunal horizons; and discovery of new
horizons and their insertion into hitherto unrecognized gaps
in the sequence. We can never know when the process is
complete, but is useful to devise some measures of success,
some indices of geochronological finesse, for comparing the
power of one technique with that of another. There are two
that come to mind: (i) the secular resolution: the smallest
time-interval 6t in the geological record that can be
resolved; and (ii) the secular resolving-power, R,: the inverse
of the secular resolution as a fraction of the age of the rocks
in which the time-interval is being resolved,
R, =t/6t
In the geochronology of faunal horizons we assume the
137
duration dti is negligible and that what we resolve is 8t~j,:

R, (faunal horizons) = t~.i/6t~i,
Some estimates are given below.
In summary, the construction of a biostratigraphical
geochronology based on the differentiation of characteristic
faunal horizons differs very little from what Buckman
actually did in practice, as, indeed, have many others, even
if not articulated in these terms. It is a universal method,
one that proceeds from the minimal premise of an
incomplete record that is to be refined by addition at the
lowest levels of observation--the process of bottom-upward
synthesis.
Jurassic ammonites as guide-fossils

Many fossil groups have been successfully used for
high-resolution geochronology in the Jurassic, but almost
always only as substitutes for ammonites when these fail.
What are the factors that combine to make ammonites such
pre-eminent guide-fossils?
Firstly, an average, individual, well-preserved specimen,
treated as an ideogram, is rich in morphological characters
that convey a lot of information. It is the ability to grasp
minute distinctions between such ideograms that singles out
the human eye as a device for pattern-recognition, far
outstripping any combination of ruler and computer
currently available in digitized biometry. This is why
passports continue to carry both the photographs and
signatures of their legitimate bearers. It follows that even
among ammonites, strongly sculptured forms such as
Kosmoceras are better guide-fossils than smooth, featureless
ones. But for its potential to be realized, the human eye has
to be trained, and the limit of what can be achieved with
ammonites as guide-fossils thus depends strongly on the
taxonomic skill of the stratigrapher, perhaps more so than in
many other groups (3(b) above).
Secondly, the number of specimens hence needed to
characterize a stratigraphically diagnostic assemblage is
relatively small. The specimens found at one level can
usually be readily divided into groups differing strongly in
morphology, assigned to different families or genera and
belonging to separate lineages. Phyletic diversity is usually
low, and more often than not the time-diagnostic forms are
those of a single genus or family. The distinguishable taxa
making up the characteristic assemblage tend in fact to be
the variants of single biospecies, the transients of a single
lineage (Callomon 1985b), but such an assignment to a
particular zoological category is irrelevant for stratigraphical
purposes. Typically, in ammonites, 5-10 specimens, if
well-preserved, should suffice to characterize a faunal
horizon, and a similar number to recognize it. Very often,
even a single specimen can limit the possibilities to a very
narrow range.
Thirdly and most importantly, the changes of morphology with time seen in successions of assemblages are
determined almost entirely by genotypic evolution (3(e)
above), which, for reasons still entirely unknown, was so
much more rapid in ammonoids, from their earliest days in
the Palaeozoic, than in any other group of invertebrates
(except perhaps monograptids). The changes one is looking
for are now the smallest detectable changes in the composite
ideogram of whole assemblages of variants of transients of
an evolving lineage, not just of individuals. Sometimes the
138
J.H.
CALLOMON
changes involve no more than a shift of the centre of gravity

of the distribution of the variability. At others, they can
affect mainly one character, such as adult size, in all
variants. Often, however, they involve nuances of sculpture
too subtle to quantify. This point was well brought out in an
attempt to apply Buckman's descriptions of one of the
dominant family of ammonites from the lower Inferior
Oolite, the Graphoceratidae, to their biostratigraphy in the
much more complete successions of southeastern France
(Caloo 1971).
Such delicate changes in morphology can only be relied
upon as time-indicators if alternative explanations can be
ruled out. The most likely would be ecophenotypic (3(d)
above), but ammonites appear to have been remarkably
resistant to such influences. The disproof again comes from
homotaxial correlations, in finding the same successive
changes at localities sufficiently far apart for identity of
biofacies to have been highly unlikely, and this is almost
invariably what has been observed. Ammonite successions
of a single lineage are found to be the same within the whole
of a biogeographic province, which means over distances of
at least 1000-2000 km. I know of only one indisputable
example of ecosomatic modification of Jurassic ammonites,
found in the Bajocian pelagic carbonate sea-mount facies of
the Venetian Alps (Sturani 1971) and perhaps the related
fills of Neptunian dykes in Sicily (Wendt 1971). It takes the
form of dramatic dwarfing, the fully mature adults being
only half or a third as large as usual elsewhere. Yet,
remarkably, this is the only effect. The normal course of
their anatomical ontogeny, including the considerable
modifications seen in their sexual dimorphism, is retained
intact--as are all the morphological nuances characterizing
their faunal horizons.
More serious are ecoenvironmental factors. These can be
local or distant. Locally, the relative compositions and
abundances of assemblages can vary rapidly from place to
place and level to level, as Buckman discovered. In many of
the well-bedded epeiric or shelf-sea sediments with which
most ammonite biostratigraphy has been concerned,
ammonites are in fact rare or absent. Ammonites were
therefore strongly facies-dependent in their local distributions. The problems this creates can be largely overcome by
hard work, as Buckman also showed, relying on the
converse of the Principle of Synchroneity: if assemblages at
two nearby localities are of similar composition but
morphologically distinguishable, it implies that they are of
different ages.
On the intercontinental scale, a further problem
emerges. Ammonites were all more or less provincial in
their habitats. Bioprovincialism could be extreme, when
evolving lineages were restricted to regions of endemism,
such as those traditionally referred to as Boreal or Tethyan.
In such cases, long-distance interprovincial correlations
rarely go beyond the level of zonal precision. But there are
many other groups of so-called cosmopolitan ammonites in
whose evolution rough parallels can be perceived all over
the globe, down to generic level, yet which persistently differ
in details of just the kind that would, within a province, be
ascribed to small differences in age. Here we are almost
certainly concerned with geographic subspeciation. Hence if
two distant assemblages differ slightly in aspect, e.g. in the
Lower Lias of Britain and the Andes, the explanation could
be either age-difference, or geographic subspeciation, or
both, and the two factors may never be separable. Such
uncertainty imposes limitations on the use of ammonites for

correlation.
In summary, time-resolution down to the finesse of
ammonite faunal horizons can be achievable within the areal
extent of a faunal province but not beyond--distances of a
few hundreds or thousands of kilometres. Hence, each
faunal province has to have its succession of faunal horizons
worked out separately.
A m m o n i t e faunal horizons of the Jurassic

Biostratigraphy by faunal horizons was actively taken up in
France by Gabilly in an important and wide-ranging review
of stratigraphical methods at the second Luxembourg
Colloquium in 1967 (not published till seven years later:
Gabilly 1974) and systematically applied by him to a revision
of the Upper Liassic Toarcian Stage at its type-locality at
Thouars (Gabilly 1976). Since then, the method has been
increasingly adopted in the Jurassic both of Europe and
further afield. It can often be applied equally well also to a
re-analysis of older stratigraphical descriptions, many of
which have never been fully evaluated. Few major regional
reviews in recent times have ended without a zonal synthesis
of one kind or another, although precisely what kind is
rarely stated: usually presented in tabular form to resemble
a continuous, standard, chronostratigraphical, Oppelian
scale but, more often than not, revealed by the text to
amount to no more than a succession of selected local
biozones of unknown chronological extent or completeness.
Such stratigraphical information can be recast in the form of
a succession of faunal horizons with no loss of information.
Some selected examples of stratigraphical analyses based on
characteristic faunal horizons are listed in Table 2. There is
room to expand briefly on only two of them: the Inferior
Oolite where it all began, and the Oxford Clay at
Peterborough, made famous by Brinkmann (1929).
The Inferior Oolite of southern England

The list of faunal horizons characterized today is shown in
Fig. 3. It is set against a standard zonation that is becoming
widely accepted, although none of it has yet been formally
defined in terms of boundary stratotypes ratified by
international agreement. The Dorset Inferior Oolite spans
the Aalenian and Bajocian Stages, and the basal Bathonian.
The number of faunal horizons now stands at 56, compared
with Buckman's 18 of 1910 (and the 55 hemerae, largely
conjectural, in the final compilation by Davies in 1930).
Horizons A a - I - B j - 3 are based on the evolutionary
transients of one family, the Graphoceratidae; Bj-4-Bj-12,
on Sonniniidae; Bj-13-20, on Stephanoceratidae; and Bj-21 Bt-1, Garantianinae and Parkinsoniinae. The list is even
now incomplete, for there are indications both in Britain
and abroad of further assemblages and horizons to be
differentiated. The faunal succession of the Garantiana and
Parkinsoni Zones, for instance, has so far received little
more than cursory attention. Figure 3 therefore summarizes
the biochronology of the Inferior Oolite based on
ammonites, presented, as we have seen, as a series of
effectively instantaneous, well-separated snapshots. But how
instantaneous, and how well separated? How complete is
the record of geological time? To attempt to answer these
questions required evidence from other sources, such as
sedimentology.
Table 2. Some Jurassic chronostratigraphical classifications down to characteristic ammonite

faunal horizons
Standard
Europe
L Jurassic, Sinemurian
L. Pliensbachian
Toarcian
M Jurassic, Aalenian (a)
(b)
Bajocian
Bathonian
L. Callovian
M. Callovian
Callovian
U. Jurassic, Kimmeridgian
Arctic
M Jurassic, U. Bajocian-L. Callovian
U Jurassic, U. Callovian-M. Volgian
M - U Jurassic, U. Bajocian-Kimmeridgian
America
M - U Jurassic, U. Bajocian-Oxfordian
U Jurassic, Oxfordian-Tithonian
Stages
V
Zones
VI
Subzones
VII
Faunal
horizons
17
61
18
1
1
1
1
1
6
3
5
8
8
15
4
9
17
11
22
11
16
37
16
3
4a
4b
5
6
1
1
3
2
8
4
16
21
7
8
1
1
6
6
14
11
23
28
9
10
2
3
4
12
28
29
----
37
46
100+
11
12
13
3
3
---
---
47
22
14
15
Notes
(1) Page (1992): Great Britain. Traditionally one of the most finely subdivisible and widely
correlatable parts of the Jurassic, now probably approaching the attainable limits of
time-resolution. Many of these horizons can be recognized all over Europe west and north
of the Alps. The number of Zones and Subzones is unchanged from those of Dean,
Donovan & Howarth (1961).
(2) Phelps (1985): Ibex-Davoei Zones of Britain and France. Analysed in terms of 'zonules',
here interpreted as faunal horizons. Areal extent as note (1). Approaching completeness.
(3) Gabilly (1976): western France. Standard zonation differs in detail from that adopted in
Britain by Dean et al. (1961), summarized in slightly revised form by Howarth (1992);
number of Zones and Subzones almost the same. Still scope for further refinement.
(4a) Contini (1970): eastern France. Most horizons identical with those of Dorset, with some
additions and omissions; close to complete.
(4b) Callomon & Chandler (1990). For comparison, the number of Buckman's hemerae in 1910
was 6. Extent as note (1), especially Scotland and Iberia.
(5) Callomon & Chandler (1990) with additions: southwestern England. Most horizons
recognizable here and there all over Europe, but successions elsewhere indicate still
considerable gaps in the English succession.
(6) Westermann & Callomon (1988). A compilation and review based on the works of many
authors all over Europe, reflecting unusually sparse and scattered occurrences of ammonites.
Scope for considerable further refinement in the Middle and Upper Bathonian.
(7) Callomon, Dietl & Page (1989), Page (1989). The standard Subboreal succession as seen in
Britain and Germany, based on the evolution of only two lineages, the Macrocephalitinae
and Kosmoceratidae; probably now close to the attainable limit.
(8) Brinkmann (1929), as reinterpreted by Callomon (1984a). Subboreal based on the evolution
of the Kosmoceratinae. See Fig. 2.
(9) Cariou (1985): Submediterranean, western France. Widely recognizable at this level of
resolution, especially in Iberia, but still scope for considerable further refinement.
(10) Hantzpergue (1'989): western France, Aquitaine Basin. Faunal provincialism in ammonites
became acute from this level upwards; analysis of the immensely rich successions of faunal
horizons in the Subboreal Province (including Britain) and the Rhodano-Franconian
Submediterranean Province (including the classical White Jura of the Jura, Swabia,
Franconia and southern Poland) has hardly begun.
(11) Callomon (1993b): East Greenland. Independent standard Boreal zonation still not closely
correlatable with that of Europe, but applicable over the whole of the Arctic. Subdivision
into Subzones not yet attempted.
(12) Callomon & Birkelund (1980, 1982); Birkelund, Callomon & Ftirsich (1984): East Greenland. Partly Subboreal and Boreal Provinces.
(13) Callomon (1985b). The faunal horizons of all the known transients of a single lineage, the
Cardioceratidae, wherever found in the Boreal Realm, arranged in time-ordered sequence.
(14) Callomon (1984b): western North America, spanning the craton and at least three
allochthonous terranes in the Cordillera. An almost extreme case of highly discontinuous,
fragmentary successions at widely scattered localities, yet providing a quite respectable
Jurassic biochronology in terms of ammonite faunal horizons. Scope for almost unlimited
refinement in principle, severly restricted by non-fossiliferous facies in practice.
(15) Callomon (1993a): Mexico. Based entirely on re-analysis of previous accounts.
139
140
J.H.
CALLOMON
Standard zonation
(a)
LOWER BATHONIAN
Zones
Subzones
(c)
Standard zonation
AALENIAN
Zones
Bt-3
[ Oxycerites yeovilensis
Bt-2
[ Morplugceras macrescens
Bt-1
Zigzag
[ Parkirtsonia convergens
Yeovilensis
Aa-16
Euhoploceras acavthodes
Macrescens
Aa-15
Graphoceras formosum
Aa-14
Graphoceras concavum
Aa-13
Graphoceras cavatum
Aa-12
Brasilia decipiens
Aa-ll
Brasilia gigantea
Aa-10
Brasilia bradfordensis, similis
Aa-9
Brasilia bradfordensis, baylii

..
Convergens
UPPER BAJOCIAN
Bj-28
[ Parkinsonia bomfordi
Bj-27c
[ Parkinsonia pseudoferruginea
Bj-27b
[ Parkinsonia parkinsoni
Bj-27a
l Strigoceras truellei
Bj-26b
I Parkinsonia rarecostata
Bj-25
J Garantiana tetragona
Bomfordi
Parkinsoni
Truellei
Garantiana
...
..
Bj-24
Bj-23
Bj-22
[ Garamiana dichotoma
[ Leptosphinctes davidsoni
I Caumontisphinctes polygyralis
Bj-21
[ Caumontisphinctes aplous
Bj-20
J Teloceras banksi
.._
.....
Aa-8
Brasilia bradfordensis, subcornuta
Aa-7
Ludwigia murchisonae
Teu-agona
Aa-6
Ludwigia patellaria
..............
]
]
Bj-I 7
Bj- 16
Bj-15
[ Steph. . . . . . . . blagdeniforme
1
I Stephanoceras gibbosum
l
] Stephanoceras humphriesianum 7
Bj-lnb
[ Chondrocera . . . . ighti
Bj-laa
Bj-13
I
I
Chond. . . . . . . . delphinum
bilicum
Bj-12
[. Steph. . . . . . . . . 'rhytum
Bi-1 Ib
Bj-I la
Bj- 10
Bj-9
[
I
]
[
Stepha. . . . . . . . . .
Otoites sauzei
Witchellia laeviuscula
' Witchellia ruber
Ancolioceras opalinoides
Polygyralis
Leioceras bifidatum
Aa-2
Leioceras lineatum
Aa-I
Leioceras opalinum
Bj-8b
[ Shirbuir'nia trigonalis
Bj-8a
L. Witchellia nodatipinguis
.]
Bj-7b
1. Witchelli . . . . . . . ta
Bj-7a
[ Witchellia gelasina
Bj-6c
I Witchellia "pseudoromani" MS
Bj-6b
[ Fissilobi. . . . gingense
Humphriesianum
Sauzei
]
'i.]
Laeviuscula
Laeviuscula
Trigonalis
Sayni
]
"']
Bj-6a
[ Euhoploceras zugophorum
Bj-5
l Witchellia romanoides
Bj-4
['" Bradfordia inclusa
Bj-3
Bj-2b
] Hyperlioceras subsectum
[' Hyperlioceras rudidiscites
I
I
Bj-2a
Bj-1
I'" Hyperlioceras walkeri
[ Hyperlioceras politum
Murchisonae
Murchisonae
Aa-3
Romani
Bradfordensis
Baculata
Namuna evohaa
Bradfordensis
Ludwigia obtusiformis
Blagdeni
Humphriesianum
Gigantea
Aa-4
Fig. 3.
[ Teloceras blagde,,i
Concavum
Aa-5
LOWER BAJOCIAN
Bj- 18
Collcavurn
Garamiana
Banksi
(b)
Formosum
Acfis
Subfurcatum
Ovalis
Discites
Fig. 3. The ammonite faunal horizons of the Inferior Oolite of

Dorset-Somerset. (a) Upper Inferior Oolite; (b) Middle Inferior
Oolite; (c) Lower Inferior Oolite. Note: the labelling of some
horizons with additional letters a, b, c . . . reflects the insertion of
further horizons recognized since the first list was drawn up in 1990,
so as not to have to change the main framework of numbering
introduced in that list. The letters imply no reduction or other
inequality of rank and importance.
Subzoncs
Obtusiformis
Haugi
Scissum
Opalinum
(Continued.)
What the faunal horizons look like in the field may be

seen in Fig. 4, which illustrates three sections in weathering
profile. Their details provide the evidence for the
reconstruction of a long and complicated lithochronology,
the residual record left by many competing processes, each
with its characteristic rate acting for a specific duration,
often in cyclic and repetitive sequences. Some important
processes are listed and categorized in Table 3. The Inferior
Oolite shows records of all of them, although no systematic
analysis appears yet to have been published. Unfortunately,
in any attempt to assess the durations (6t) the effects of the
destructive processes dominate, largely erasing those of the
constructive processes. Although the successions are all well
bedded, in almost no beds have any of the finer sedimentary
structures survived intensive bioturbation by deep burrowers
($7). It is therefore often not possible even to claim that the
top of a bed must be younger than the bottom, and all of it
must be regarded as effectively synchronous with the last
bioturbational turnover. The effects of $9 and S10 are
reflected in the sharp partings and erosion-planes that
separate beds, but again, there is no way of estimating their
durations. Attempts to assess the 'stratigraphic completeness
of the record' in the Inferior Oolite sedimentologically by
such methods as those proposed by Schindel (1980, 1982) or
Sadler & Strauss (1990), which base their time-scales on
sedimentation-rates
(S1
and
$2),
are
therefore
inappropriate.
H o w the succession has been built up from the records of
individual sections is shown in Fig. 5. The 'gaps united by
thin bands of deposit' are evident. The time-durations that
left no record ($8) or whose records have been destroyed
($9, 10) are often greater than the time intervals tij,
between the biochrons of adjacent faunal horizons. What is
less evident, however, is any coherent relationship between
the lengths of the gaps and their positions, such as might be
explicable by simple sequence stratigraphy--and this across
a distance of only 8 0 k m in a single basin. A large
non-sequence at one locality may be correlated with several
TIME FROM FOSSILS
141
HORN PARK
BURTON BRADSTOCK
OBORNE
~S"
5--
":.-__~
19,b ~ _
~-1~
.
~8 i~
.
,
Bathonian
12 i d ~ _ . - ~ - - ~
Bt-2
m-4
~Bt-3
_
-
Bathonian
c6_ B t - l , 2 _
.l't
4 --
-88--'"-- ~
3 -..,',
:.
, c I
I \~ t, ,:~-. '~
, ~ ( h ~)
I 2---,. "~ 6
:,-I
Bj-27b
'1
"
(Bj-24)
N Bj-27
(~ Bj-23
Bj-22
.~ [ b ":* " v..-.x' I
(~ Bj-21
(~ Bj-20
11 ~ ~ . ' ~ . "
Bj-13,-22
Aa-15
Aa-13
,0
2
--
(~ Bj-18
Bj-17
Bj-16
Bj-15
~':~--;.:~"~, @ B j-~2
I~.-'_."~.,-~."_,~ B j-ii
8 ',b a l ~
.-~ Bj-i
7 . / J ~
(~ Bj-19
" @ Aa-4,--Y~,
(~ Bj-14b
_ ; v ]2-.'::Z,-~-"~:.-':,,~..,7~, ~ Aa-2
...(BJ-1 l)
1 --
Bj-10
~
~
,; b ]~:;:.~<'
4 :---t~~
". ... : t
:~ i .".: ".' ".:. :/
" "' " " " l
~a-~
~ Aa-,
-
(~ Bj-9
: . ~ .
3
0 --
Upper
Toarcian
Bj-6,7
Jan
Fig.
4. Three sections in the Inferior Oolite of Dorset shown in weathering profile (nos 1, 4 and 11 in Fig. 5).
Table
3. Ten important processes in sedimentary lithochronology
Positive evidence
S1 Constructive: accumulation of sediment by local chemo- or biogenesis--autochthonous
$2 Constructive: accumulation of sediment by transport---=allochthonous
$3 Constructive: encrustation, chemical or epibiontic
$4 Diagenetic: compaction
$5 Diagenetic: differential concretionary cementation, e.g. of body-fossil or burrow infills
$6 Diagenetic: general induration by cementation or recrystallization
$7 Destructive: bioturbation
Negative evidence
$8 Neutral: non-deposition, omission surfaces
$9 Destructive: differential removal of unconsolidated sediment, winnowing: lag deposits,
conglomerates
$10 Destructive: erosion of consolidated sediment: erosion planes, non-sequences, pebble
conglomerates
The time-duration of each process may be indicated symbolically as 6t($1), 6t($2), 6t($3)... etc.
142
i.,l.,
a5
non-sequences of different ages elsewhere: such is the nature

of negative evidence.
,.4
,'
The Oxford Clay of Peterborough

Bt-4
3
2
Bt-I
B j-28
27c
!.9!--
!?!
~ " d - - ~
!.'?! ".I.U
27b ~
~?u M?J "
27a
26
25
24
23
22
21
i9
.
Bj-2o
Bj-19
18
17
16
15
14b
i.~
L.~
. . .
~,,~
?i
~
.
: :
: : : i
..
!.9!
B,I .,~ ~
: : 9
....
: : : :
2 : Z :
.,
lid
L...~
: :
: i
: 1 ~ - - ~
' - - .~~-.: ~'q
i.'?!
.N .~.
~,~
!
i?s
mi
.
~4~
~,~
~
l"'l
.~..~.
....
....
Im
m.i
....
: :
: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : ::: :
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Im
: : : i : : 1 1 : : i : : : : : 2 : imi
: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
.
~1~
: : : :
: :
:2
: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
~.::
: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
i?!
!?! !?!
. l i t lint Iml
~
id
~
~ : : : im
i~
: i 2 2
::
::
::
.
i i ! i ! i ! i i i i ! i : : : : : igi i"i : i i i
. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . .
md
Imq
....
: :
12
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
lla
isa4
i~
9
8b
8a
7b
!
.
'i
i
.
:
..
6b
6a
5
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
m,I . . . .
~
: : : : : : : : : :: : : : : : : :: : : : : : : :
: : : : : : : : : : :
: : : : : : :::
::: : :
Im~
::
~_i
:
:
:: :

Bj-1
Aa-16
15
14
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
Aa-I
i
. .
'
i.
:
:
i~i
i
. .
:
..
:
:
:
:
i~/
i~i
il~
"~
i i i i ~
.~. ! ! i i i?i
. .
~
. . . . . .
~
: : : : i~
: : : : : : ~
.. .. .. .. .. . . .
:
: i'~i
.
~.
~.~
pm
~
! ! !?i
~
171
. t?t? :" ~.,i
. .... m
:
i~i
:
:
: : i~i
: : : :
: i~
:
: : imi
:
:
: :
~
: :
~
i~i
~
i,~
i~i
I~l
-~--~-
~1
.~.
: : : : i,~
i,~
! : : : ~
~,/
: : ~
. . . . . .
: : : :
i,~i : :
.
1~1
i,~
i.,.i
: :
i,~
.
:
:
Ill[
: 1~1
: i,,,,i
:-~--~-:
: : : : : : i.,,..i i.,,.i
: : : : : : ~.
~.
:::
I~
~-c
: :
~
~
.
i?i
.
""
: :
....
: : ~
i!
,,~
: :
: :
. . . .
i!
"
,__,-c-V
i~i
i?i
:
.
'
~nl
: :
: :
,~,
~
i,,,,i
:
:
i?i
" '
~,,
~.
i,~
i.'?i
i?!
i?i i?i
~,,,t
:
: ::
"
: :
m
....
::
Fig. 5. The ammonite faunal horizons recognized in 13 sections of

the Inferior Oolite of Dorset and Somerset. The horizons are
labelled at the left as in Fig. 3. The localities, across the top, are as
follows: 1 BB: Burton Bradstock (Fig. 4). 2 Ch: Chideock, Quarr
Hill. 3 WH: Waddon Hill, W of Beaminster. 4 HP: Horn Park, W of
Beaminster (Fig. 4). 5 Be-CF: Cockroad Farm, W of Beaminster. 6
Se: Seavington St Mary. 7 LH/HH: Louse Hill and Halfway House,
W of Sherborne. 8 BA: Bradford Abbas, railway-cutting and East
Hill, SW of Sherborne. 9 SL: Sandford Lane, N of Sherborne. 10 CI:
Clatcombe, Upper and Lower, N of Sherborne. 11 Ob: Oborne,
Frogden Quarry, NE of Sherborne (Fig. 4). 12 Br-L: Bruton, Lusty
railway-cutting. 13 Du: Dundry, SE of Bristol. Question-marks:
probably present but not yet identified. Small circles: former
presence indicated by pebble lags in conglomerates.
Brinkmann's epic study of the Oxford Clay of Peterborough

(1929) remains another of the all-time classics of
stratigraphy, undiminished both in its exposition of
principles and in its relevance today. It gains additionally in
interest when looked at in comparison with Buckman's
analysis of the Inferior Oolite. Both shared the same goals:
the biochronology of ammonites at the attainable limits of
time-resolution and its interpretation in terms of biological
evolution. But they differ greatly in the methods used,
imposed by differences of stratigraphical facies that lie at
almost the opposite extremes of the range. The two studies
therefore strongly complement each other in contrasting
techniques but arrive at general results that turn out to be
very similar.
The Lower Oxford Clay (now Peterborough Member)
around Peterborough is 17 m thick. It consists at first glance
of monotonous, grey, fine-grained siliclastic silts and clays
(process $2 of Table 3) with subordinate carbonate and
organic matter (mainly $1). Its structure ranges from fissile
paper-shales to structureless mud-rock, in both of which
macrofossils, notably ammonites, although crushed ($4), are
still largely unbroken and horizontal. Bioturbation ($7) was
thus not sufficiently vigorous to destroy the microbiostratigraphy. Looked at more closely, however, the succession is
subdivided into more or less sharply bounded beds differing
in colour and other details of lithology, ranging in thickness
from 4 cm to 4 m. A recently revised description (Hudson &
Martill 1994) lists a succession of 55 beds. The boundaries
are often marked by shell-accumulations that certainly
indicate sedimentary breaks, probably of omission ($8) and
possibly winnowing ($9), but erosion proper (S10) does not
appear to have been important. The sedimentology is
therefore quite different from that of the Inferior Oolite,
and the thickness of a bed may well be related to the
time-duration of its formation.
Through some 13 m of these clays, Brinkmann and an
assistant over a period of seven weeks collected 3000
ammonites of the genus Kosmoceras, recording the level of
each to the nearest centimetre. (Only those who have
attempted to repeat this exercise can appreciate the
prodigious labour involved. Arkell, in private, did
sometimes wonder whether the results were as real in the
rocks as they appeared to be in print, just as others had
expressed doubts about Buckman's descriptions of the
Inferior Oolite. A n d just as in Buckman's work,
re-examination has fully confirmed Brinkmann's). In 2000 of
these shells, biometric characters such as dimensions and
numbers of ribs were measured. The data were however not
sufficiently numerous at centimetre height-intervals to be
statistically significant. They were therefore combined into
lots over larger stratigraphical intervals: either, in most
cases, over the whole of the bed or, in a few others, over
ranges of 1 - 4 0 c m within a bed. These lots were then
evaluated statistically to give sets of mean values.
One of these sets is shown in Fig. 6, that of the mean
maximum
diameter
of
the
adult
macroconchs,
Zugokosmokeras. The horizontal lines represent the
boundaries between beds that were lithostratigraphically not
further divisible. These beds have been numbered here for
TIME FROM FOSSILS

A, Der Stature
gNgokosrt~'~.
108
Tabelle
89 (hierzu Abb. 98 u. 99)t).
Die phylogenefisehe Entwicklung des Enddurchmessers im
Stsmrn.
g.go~srao~~-
,n6lt/o
l
2
3
4
6
7
L,8
t,3
__t'6
),a
~,5
~,o
k,4
L,8
t,7
L,8
!,2
[,6
~,4
1,3
L,6
1,9
t,2
1,8
=~"
2
,6
,6
....
1[
12
13
14
15
,Y,4_~__
,8
,9
,0
17
'q--
~.
16
,W-
18
,4
,6_
19
,4
20
22
,7___
,5
,7
24
(3
O
___
,8
25
,3
p7
,~"
. . . . . 27 L__ _
1) Die in den f01genden Tabellen nicht aufgeffihrten Schichten 921--960,
.~1--1080 u. 113(;--1270cm enthalten ebenfalls K0sm0ceraten und wurden mtr
aus Zcitmangel nicht mehr abgesammclC
Fig. 6. The evolution of the adult diameter d of macroconch

Kosmoceras (Zugokosmokeras) through the Oxford Clay of
Peterborough (from Brinkmann 1929). Columns from the left:
arbitrary numbering of beds as in Fig. 2; stratigraphic heights in cm;
number of specimens measured; mean value of diameter, d;
standard deviation. At the right: standard chronostratigraphic
classification.
convenience (although this is not the numbering used

elsewhere) and their positions in the standard zonation of
the Callovian are shown in Fig. 2. Successions of such mean
values were then tested for continuity and linear regression
('trends') with stratigraphical height. There were statistically
quite clear examples of breaks in the former, e.g. at
+135/136cm and at + 5 5 9 / 5 6 0 c m . But neither statistically
significant breaks nor linear trends could be found within a
bed, e.g. bed 8, 136-460 cm. The beds are therefore also
biostratigraphically not further subdivisible within the
sensitivity of digitized single-character statistical biometry.
This is confirmed by the non-measurable, visual characteristics assessed by eye. The assemblage of shells from each bed
has its own subtle characteristic aspect that no measurement
has revealed, so that even assemblages that were
biometrically unresolved can readily be distinguished by eye.
The beds conform almost ideally to the definition of faunal
horizons, and the ammonite biochronology of Peterborough
143
can thus be discussed in the same terms as that of the

Inferior Oolite. It is however more direct. The faunal
horizons are all in immediate succession at one locality,
instead of having to be assembled from many, and they are
all based on the phyletic transients of only a single
dimorphic lineage, that of the genus Kosmoceras. The
question whether the morphological discontinuities at bed
boundaries reflect stratigraphical gaps, or evolutionary
punctuation, or both, and if the former, how large the gaps
would have to be, were addressed by Brinkmann himself
and revived by Raup & Crick (1981, 1982). They could not
be resolved on the evidence of Peterborough alone, but the
intercalation of further faunal horizons elsewhere (Callomon
1968) showed that at least in many cases, non-sequences are
the major factor. The faunal horizons at Peterborough must
therefore also be regarded biochronologically as a series of
discrete snapshots well spaced in time.
Almost identical analyses have been applied to
successions of trilobites in the Ordovician of south Wales
(Sheldon 1987, 1988). Pygidial rib-counts and measurements
of carapace width were made on over 3300 specimens,
representing eight parallel lineages, collected in fine-grained
shales from 400 stratigraphical intervals of average thickness
23 cm, totalling 90 m of sediment. Yet, as at Peterborough,
the data had to be combined into lots over more extended
intervals to give statistically well-defined means. These were
finally presented in the form of clumped values from eight
discrete, effectively instantaneous faunal horizons. Comparing the mean values from what are now effectively
successive transients of the eight lineages, in some cases
there are significant discontinuities, in many others not.
Whether results from such a punctuated stratigraphical
record can be claimed to support gradualistic evolution
becomes very much a matter of the definition of
'gradualistic'.
Estimates of biostratigraphical time-resolution

We come now to the final step, the estimation of
time-intervals in absolute terms, in years. There have been
many attempts to date the standard geological column
radiometrically and revisions appear almost annually. They
differ among themselves for a variety of reasons, principally
the residual uncertainties in individual age-determinations
and the still sparse framework of secure anchor-points in the
record. In the Phanerozoic, these differences can lie in the
range of 1-5%. The scale shown at the left in Fig. 2 is
chosen arbitrarily to be the Cambridge Time-Scale (CTS 89)
of Harland et al. (1990). Radiometric age-determinations
within the Jurassic are still not good enough to date with any
reliability the boundaries of lower subdivisions, at Stage
level (V) and below; so these are shown diagrammatically
on an equal-interval approximation. In calculating durations
in the Jurassic, only System boundary-ages have therefore
been used. Elsewhere, estimates may be based on Series
boundaries and, exceptionally, Stage boundaries as well,
where their dating appears to be sufficiently reliable.
Estimates of some time-durations and time-intervals are
collected in Table 4. In reading this, the distinctions between
three kinds of time-estimates must be borne in mind.
The first of these is the time-duration, At = (t2-tl) , of the
largest of the units being considered (System or Series)
derived from the radiometric estimates of the ages of its
beginning (tl) and end (t2). These ages are the basic
144
J.H.
CALLOMON
Table 4. Estimates of biochronological time-intervals
Unit
Number of
units
n
Average duration
Ate, atn
Secular resolving
power
/~' =-{/At, ate
(b)
Jurassic (146-208 Ma B P )
Standard, N W Europe
System
Stages
Zones: ammonites
Subzones: ammonites
Horizons: ammonites
Cf S. S. Buckman (1893-1929)
Ages: ammonites
Hemerae: ammonites
Other groups
Zones: dinoflagelates (a)
nannoplankton (a)
At = 62 Ma
11
At,, = 5.6 Ma
76
c. 155
say 450
820 ka
400 ka
at, = 140 ka
220
440
1260
47
375
16
At,, = 3.9 Ma
22
2.8 Ma
45
63
1
12
c. 56
37
25
At = 81 Ma
At, = 6.7 Ma
1.4 Ma
2.0 Ma
3.0 Ma
73
52
34
2
13
21
At, = 4.0 Ma
615 ka
380 ka
220
360
6
54
At,, : 5.3 Ma
590 ka
140
At = 37 Ma
At,, = 4.6 Ma
1.2 Ma
195
At = 45 Ma
At,, --- 7.5 Ma
6.5 Ma
5 Ma
41
54
Cretaceous ( 6 5 - 1 4 6 Ma B P )
Standard, Europe, all

System
Stages
Zones: ammonites
foraminifera (a)
calcareous nannoplankton (a)
Standard Valanginian-Hauterivian, N Europe
Stages
Zones: ammonites (c)
Subzones: ammonites
Standard Upper Cretaceous, N America
Stages
Zones/Subzones: ammonites (d)
Triassic (208-245 Ma BP)
Standard, Tethys-N America

System
Stages
Zones: ammonites (e)
8
32
Permian (245-290 Ma BP)
Standard, Russia
System
Stages
Zones (o): fusulinids, Japan (a)
ammonites, Canada (a)
6
7
9
Carboniferous (290-363 Ma BP)
Standard, all
System
Stages (a)
Zones: goniatites (a)
forams, Donets (a)
Regional, Namurian, England
'Zones' (Stages)
Horizons: goniatites (f)
25
20
29
7
45
At = 73 Ma
At,, = 2.9 Ma
3.6 Ma
2.5 Ma
At = c. 15 Ma
At,, = 2.1 Ma
at,, = 330 ka
90
130
975
D e v o n i a n (363-409 Ma BP)
Standard, all
System
Stages (a)
Zones: conodonts (g)
Upper Devonian (a)
Zones: conodonts (h)
Horizons: conodonts (h)
Middle- Upper Devonian
Zones: ammonoids (i)
Horizons: ammonoids (j)
7
28
15
30
19
36
At = 46 Ma
At,, = 6.6 Ma
1.6 Ma
At = 14 Ma
At,, = 930 ka
at, = 470 ka
At 23 Ma
At, =1.2 Ma
at,, = 420 ka
235
395
790
310
88O
TIME FROM FOSSILS
145
Table 4. (Continued.)
Number of
units
Secular resolving
power
Average duration
At,,, fit,,
(b)
1
8
30
12
At = 30 Ma
Atn = 3.7 Ma
1.0 Ma
2.5 Ma
425
170
Ordovician (439-510 Ma BP)

Standard, all
System
Stages (a)
Zones: trilobites, UK (1)
graptolites (a)
1
19
c. 34
21
At = 71 Ma
At,, = 3.7 Ma
2.1 Ma
3.4 Ma
230
140
Cambrian (510-545? Ma BP)

Middle-Upper, Standard (n)
Stages
Zones: trilobites, UK (m)
trilobites, Australia (m)
trilobites, USSR (m)
6
35
46
27
At = c. 25 Ma
At,, = 4.2 Ma
At,, = 710 ka
540 ka
930 ka
730
970
560
Unit
Silurian (409-439 Ma BP)
Standard, all
System
Stages (a)
Zones: graptolites (k)
conodonts (a)
(a) Harland et al. (1990); (b) i- (the average age of a System) = (t2 + tl)/2; (c) Kemper (1978) N Germany; (d)
Obradovich & Cobban (1975); (e) Tozer (1984); (f) Ramsbottom (1977) and Riley (in Cope 1993); (g) cited in (a), see
also Aldridge (1987), Sweet (1988); (h) Ziegler (1974), Ziegler & Sandberg (1990); (i) cited in (a), and House & Price
(1985); (j) Becker (1993); (k) Rickards (1976); (1) cited in (a), and Thomas et al. (1984); (m) see (1) and Palmer (1977);
(n) post-Tommotian trilobitiferous Cambrian only, from recent radiometric revisions by Bowring et al. (1993), Landing
(1994), that depart significantly from the estimates in (a) and retaining the older age for the base of the Ordovician
unchanged; for a recent revision of the whole of the Phanerozoic chronometric time-scale, see Odin (1994); (o)
estimates of zonal durations in the Permian are still determined almost wholly by the fragmentary and highly
incomplete state of the biostratigraphic record, and do not therefore say much about the intrinsic biochronological
resolving-power of its guide-fossils.
numerical input to what follows. Their average gives the
mean age of the unit, T. The duration At is the homologue of
what in lithochronological resolution-analysis has come to
be called the temporal scope of an analysis (Schindel 1982,
summarized e.g. by Skelton 1993).
The second, intermediate kind is the mean duration At~
of the n finer standard chronostratigraphic units into which
At may be subdivided (i = 1 , . . . n): the mean duration of a
Stage, Zone or Subzone within a System, etc.
The third kind is the smallest time-interval that can be
resolved by fossils, the secular resolution of the biochronology, the mean time-interval 3t 0 = At~n, where n = n ( m a x ) ,
the maximum number of moment that can be resolved. It is
the analogue of acuity in microstratigraphical analysis of
lithochronology (Schindel 1982, or Skelton 1993). (The
analogy is limited, for the microstratigraphical acuity m has
the physical dimensions of a time-duration, that of the
accumulation-time of an observed thickness h of sediment:
m=h/(dh/dt),
where the accumulation-rate d h / d t is
assumed to be constant and continuous. In contrast, the
secular resolution t~tij is a time-interval between identified
instants, a time-duration of effectively negative evidence).
Lastly, it is interesting to calculate the secular
resolving-power
R,
tij/ ~tij
of the guide-fossils used to distinguish the faunal horizons i
and j, of mean age tij, as a means of comparing them in the

rocks of similar ages, or at different times during the
Phanerozoic. The concept can be extended to the higher
chronostratigraphical units, the Zones and Subzones, by
noting that their mean durations Ati are the same as the
mean intervals of their mean ages,
ati
= (r,-
rj)
Finally, as ti, the age of a faunal horizon, changes during the

course of a System, so does R , even at constant resolution
6tij. It suffices, therefore, also to average R , over the whole
of the largest unit considered, of mean age t:
R, = t / 6tij
The values are given in the last column of Table 4. They
show how fossils of only moderate resolving-power can
achieve time-resolutions in the Cretaceous comparable to
those of high-powered trilobites in the Cambrian. The
resolving-power of magnetostratigraphy in the Tertiary is
even less.
Fine time-resolution and time-correlation are now also
being achieved in various parts of the geological column by
physical methods not directly dependent on radiometric
dating. They fall into two classes.
In the first class, the time-dependence of the quantity
being measured is periodic and the time-resolution that of
146
J.H.
CALLOMON
the periodicity. Best-known is magnetostratigraphy. The

signal is a binary N-R bar-code whose elements vary in
relative lengths that have to be determined against some
other time-dependent process, assumed to be linear and
continuous - in this case, sea-floor spreading (see for
example Mussett & McCormack 1993). It has found greatest
application in the Tertiary (reviewed in Harland et al. 1990).
Time-resolution lies in the range of 0.1 - 1 Ma which, in
rocks 50 Ma old, can give resolving-powers of 50-500. But
the limitations on practical applications lie in being able to
identify the chron in which the age of a particular bed lies.
This requires additional evidence: either from the pattern of
an extended N-R sequence, assuming it to be free of gaps
or, again, from fossils (e.g. Ali et al. 1993). The other
method in this class is the periodic chemostratigraphy of the
stable isotopes of the organic metabolic elements, carbon
and oxygen, reflecting climatic fluctuations that are at least
in part the response to Milankovitch cycles of insolation.
The time-resolution achieved in the Pleistocene is
spectacular: 20 ka in rocks up to 1.6 Ma old (resolving-power
800; Weaver 1993). But the general limitations are similar to
those of magnetostratigraphy--the need to locate individual
levels in the sequence. Both methods are therefore best
suited for use in quasi-continuous pelagic sedimentary
successions, such as deep-sea sediments or polar ice-caps
(Anklin et al. 1993; Dansgaard et al. 1993) Evidence of
Milankovitch cyclicity is growing in pre-Pleistocene sediments (Cretaceous, Kemper 1987; Lias, Weedon & Jenkyns
1990; and see review by Schwarzacher 1993).
In the second class, the value of a measurable physical
quantity varies smoothly, although not necessarily linearly,
with time. The best examples are again chemostratigraphic:
stable isotope compositions of elements sequestered from
sea-water and subsequently preserved unchanged in the
sediments, usually in calcareous fossils. ~3C and ~sO have
been successfully used in the Upper Cretaceous (Jenkyns et
al. 1994) but appear to be more useful for correlating short
anomalous 'events' than for general purposes of dating and
time-resolution. The most promising element so far is
strontium. The marine ratio of ~7Sr/~6Sr in the reservoir of
the world's oceans is expected to be least sensitive to
short-term climatic fluctuations and, in such a heavy
element, the ratio as then recorded in calcareous fossils to
be undistorted by metabolic kinetic isotope-effects. Curves
for the Late Cretaceous (McArthur et al. 1993, 1994) and
Early Jurassic (Jones et al. 1994) are indeed found to be
smooth. Time-resolutions attainable from their gradients are
estimated to be 0.5-0.8 Ma in the former (resolving-power
c. 100-160 in the Campanian) and 0.5-1.0 Ma in the latter
(resolving-power 200-400 in the Sinemurian)--comparable
to 1-2 standard ammonite Subzones.
Practical applications
The refinement of biochronology to its attainable limits,
with the finesse of geological time-resolution it makes
possible, continues to find three important applications, to
each of which Buckman made seminal contributions.
The first is the historical one of general stratigraphical
time-correlation, transcending lithostratigraphical boundaries and facies-changes. Such correlations play probably
their most important role today in basin-analysis, particularly in sequence-stratigraphies, in which sharp time-controls
on facies-equivalences and non-sequences are crucial. The
rocks provide the primary evidence of sedimentary

processes spanning an enormous dynamic range of
time-scales. Their characteristic periods range from those
reflected in sequence-boundaries and systems-tracts at the
upper end (105-107 years), to those of cross-bedded foresets,
tempestites and slumps at the lower (10 2-10 +2 years). As
we saw earlier, one of the first to demonstrate how the
biochronology of ammonites can descend into this regime of
time-scales was Buckman himself, in the case of the
Bridport-Yeovil-Midford Sands of southern England. One
of the most ambitious and detailed modern sequencestratigraphic classifications of a whole System must be the
recent description of the Jurassic of the Normandy-Wessex
Basin by Rioult et al. (1991). It rests entirely on ammonite
biochronology at zonal and subzonal resolution.
The second application is to another age-old problem,
that of estimating the 'completeness of the geological
record'. By this is meant theoretically the fraction of the
total, continuous time-duration At between two specified
moments tl, t2 actually recorded in the rocks. But as we
have seen, bio- and chrono-stratigraphy do not give us
methods of measuring continuous time-durations: they allow
us only to distinguish events at minimum time-intervals
apart, 6t. The operational definition of completeness has
therefore to be modified (Sadler & Strauss 1990): it is the
fraction of all the time-intervals ~t between t~ and t2 that
have left a recognizable record in the rocks--any record, no
matter how short in itself.
In lithostratigraphy, in the special case of discontinuous
but still 'complete' stratified sequences, the measure of 6t is
the acuity, referred to above. It is calculated assuming
uniformitarian estimates of rates of sedimentation ( d h / d t )
taken from recent observations (Schindel 1982). The
completeness is then deduced from the ratio of the observed
total thickness of all the strata between time-planes tl, t2, to
what it would have been, had sedimentation been
continuous. And perhaps not surprisingly, it is found that
the greater the relative acuity, A t / 6 t , the less complete the
record appears to become.
In biostratigraphy, the analogue of the acuity is the
secular biochronological resolution of successive faunal
horizons, 6t~j, or of whatever coarser unit is used. The
numbers taken from the record of the Inferior Oolite shown
in Fig. 5 are collected in Table 5. If by means of fossils the
presence or absence only of Stages or Substages could have
been recognized, the record would have appeared to be
everywhere 100% complete. If standard Zones could be
resolved, the record would have appeared on average to be
only 73% complete. And at the resolution of the faunal
horizons recognized today, the record is on average only
40% complete. But there is here an additional difficulty in
that there is no independent way of estimating the maximum
number of distinguishable faunal horizons ultimately to be
expected between any two given time-planes tl, t2. The
number depends on the state of knowledge: as we have
seen, in the Inferior Oolite it has grown from 18 to 56. A
section with the same nine faunal horizons would have
changed from being biochronologically 50% complete in
1910 to only 16% complete today. As the biological record
becomes more complete as a whole, so the geological record
becomes more incomplete, which is precisely what Buckman
said.
How do biochronological estimates of completeness
based on ammonites compare with those obtained from
T I M E F R O M FOSSILS
147
Table 5. The 'completeness of the geological record' in the Inferior Oolite as indicated by ammonite biochronology
Localities (Fig. 5)
Resolution: Stages
scope*
number
% completeness
Resolution: Zones
scope
number
% completeness
Resolution: faunal
horizons
scope
number
% completeness
BB
Ch
WH
HP
Be-CF
Se
LH/HH
BA
SL
3
3
100
3
3
100
3
3
100
3
3
100
3
3
100
14
8
57
14
11
78
14
9
64
3
3
100
t
9
8
89
3
3
100
14
11
78
3
3
100
t
11
6
43
14
9
64
14
9
64
3
3
100
t
10
8
80
56
20
36
56
18
32
54
21
39
56
23
41
45
14
31
37
10
27
56
21
38
56
22
39
42
20
48
10
C1
11
Ob
12
Br-L
13
Du
Average
1
1
100
2
2
100
3
3
100
3
3
100
100
8
8
100
7
7
100
14
9
64
14
11
78
74
32
22
69
29
20
69
56
22
39
56
29
52
43
* Only the Lower Bathonian is represented in the Inferior Oolite. But even at Substage level (Lower and Upper Aalenian, Lower and Upper
Bajocian, Lower Bathonian), at which the maximum scope would be 5, the representation would be everywhere 100% complete.
t These sections have exposed only parts of the Inferior Oolite, either cut off at the tops by erosion or covered at the base.
Numbers of faunal horizons as in Fig. 5; those shown as queried taken as present.
microstratigraphical lithochronology? Both kinds of estimate
can be made on the Oxford Clay of Peterborough (Figs 2
and 6). Taking the figures of average durations from Table
4, the faunal horizons of the Jason and Coronatum Zones
would represent time-intervals 6tij of 70 000 years. But this
succession of faunal horizons is here so far the most detailed
we have. At the time-resolution of faunal horizons,
therefore, the Middle Oxford Clay of Peterborough appears
to be biochronologically 100% complete. A microstratigraphical analysis of the same succession has been given by
Schindel (1982), at time-resolutions of 10 000, 1000 and 100
years. The estimates of lithochronological completeness are
14%, 4% and 3% respectively. As Buckman would have put
it, large gaps joined by exceedingly thin layers of sediment,
even when the fossil record appears to be complete.
Finally, there is the third field of enquiry to which the
ultimate refinement of biochronology makes an indispensable contribution. It is the mapping of patterns of biological
evolution in the fossils themselves, the reconstruction of
their lineages in phylogenetic classification: its use, as
Buckman put it, 'in what I may call "palaeo-biology'". But
that is another story.
Conclusion
I have tried in this review to show how the refinement

during the last hundred years of Jurassic geochronology by
means of fossils has followed two distinct routes. In the first,
going back to the founding fathers of geology, a geological
column regarded to be at all times a complete
representation of a continuous passage of time is subdivided
successively into ever-thinner slices, the units of a standard
chronostratigraphy that forms the basis of reference against
which rocks are dated through correlation by means of
fossils. It is therefore most widely applied to problems
involving time-correlations over distances, and the precision
with which this can be done at subzonal resolution is
impressive. To stand on beds, never more than a few feet
thick, of clays at Brora on the east coast of Scotland, or on
sands at South Cave in Humberside, or shales at
Peterborough and Weymouth, or limestones near Poitiers,
on the Meuse or in the Ard~che, or ironstones near

Hanover, or clays near Bayreuth, or ironshot oolites in the
Argovian Jura, or sandstones on the Vistula, or clays in the
Oka valley, east of Moscow, or marly limestones in the
Caucasus or trans-Caspian T u r k m e n i s t a n - - k n o w i n g that in
each case one is in the E n o d a t u m Subzone of the
Calloviense Zone of the Lower Callovian of the Middle
Jurassic, in sediments whose age spanned perhaps only
400ka: who could fail to be moved? Clearly, such
time-control is adequate for most meso- and macrogeological problems.
The emphasis in the second route is not so much on
time-correlation as on time-resolution. It was introduced by
Buckman just a hundred years ago, and its results are
equally impressive. To go into any quarry showing a few
metres of Inferior Oolite in Dorset or Somerset, and to be
able to assign any of its beds yielding ammonites to one or
other of some 55 chronologically distinct levels, must also be
cause for wonder. Both methods in the end imply an ability
to distinguish geological events, and the finesse with which
they can do so, discussed above, is comparable. The
distinction between them may appear to be more a
theoretical one, of principle, than one of immediate practical
consequence. This is reflected in much of the stratigraphical
literature, in which the distinction is rarely considered and
even more rarely acted upon, with apparently little loss.
Failure to bear this distinction in mind may however dictate,
even if unconsciously, a choice that can fundamentally
prejudice our whole approach to a geological problem. It
relates to the question of completeness, discussed above,
and how we deduce it (or visualize it) f r o m graphical
representations of field evidence.
W h e n we date beds in a section, such as those s h o w n in
Fig. 4, by assigning them to standard Zones, a particular
Zone is either present, shown as a bed or series of beds
extending over some lithostratigraphical range, or absent,
shown as a horizontal line of zero thickness. The temptation
is to assume that the Zones that are recorded are tolerably
complete. Looking at a graphical representation, the
impression is one of long periods of sedimentation separated
by brief nori,sequences in the partings between beds. This is
148
J.H.
CALLOMON
the representation that appears in chronostratigraphical

compilations of regional stratigraphy, such as the Geological
Society's Correlation Charts (e.g. Cope 1980a, b for the
British Jurassic). It is the graphical representation that
appears in many sequence-stratigraphical analyses, such as
for instance that of the Jurassic of the Normandy-Wessex
Basin by Rioult et al. (1991). It also surfaces widely in
conventional range-charts of fossils. In contrast, the method
of faunal horizons makes no a p r i o r i assumptions about
completeness: rather the reverse, that thicknesses of rock
notwithstanding, most of the time lies in the gaps, in the
intervals between the brief events that are recorded (Fig. 5).
The choice of interpretation bears some resemblance,
therefore, to that of another classical problem. Faced with
the same evidence, the optimist claims that the glass is half
full, the pessimist that it is half empty. It was Buckman's
achievement to have shown by means of fossils that in the
Jurassic with which he was familiar, the pessimists have it. I
fear his conclusions apply to Phanerozoic stratigraphy quite
generally.
I a m i n d e b t e d to H.S. T o r r e n s for m u c h b i o g r a p h i c a l i n f o r m a t i o n
on the B u c k m a n family. T h e details s h o w n in Figs 3 - 5 i n c o r p o r a t e
m a n y n e w a n d as y e t u n p u b l i s h e d results o b t a i n e d in r e c e n t y e a r s
d u r i n g fieLd-work c a r r i e d out in c o l l a b o r a t i o n with R.B. C h a n d l e r ,
A . E . E n g l a n d , W . E . J o n e s ( L o n d o n ) , J.G. H u x t a b l e ( T a u n t o n ) and
D. Sole ( L y m e Regis), w h o s e h e l p is gratefully a c k n o w l e d g e d .
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37. The BA~OClA~ o f the SKBRBORNE DISTRICT: its R~LATION f0
SVBJACENT and SVPE]UACm~T STRATA. By S. S. B v c x ~ ,
Esq.,
F.G.S.
( R e a d J u n e 7th, 1893.)
CONTENTS,
Page
Introduction ..................................................................
I. Section at Stoford, Somerset .............................................
,,
Bradford Abbas, Dorset ....................................
II.
. . . .
(near Vicarage), Dorset ........................
III.
,,
Halfway
House, Dorset .......................................
IV.
. . . .
(in field), Dorset ...........................
V.
,,
Louse Hill, Dorset
VI.
,,
Marston Road, Dorset
VII.
,,
Holway Hill, Dorset ..........................................
VIII.
,,
Sandford Lane, Dorset .......................................
IX.
,,
Combe (Limekiln Quarry), Dorset ........................
X.
,,
Redhole Lane, Dorset ..........................................
XI.
,,
Clatcombe (disused quarry), Dorset ........................
XII.
. . . .
(Farmhouse), Dorset ..............................
XlII.
,,
(on Farm), Dorset .................................
XIV.
Frogclen, Dorset ................................................
XV. ,,
,,
Oborne Village, Dorset .......................................
XVI.
,,
Milborne Wick, Somerset ....................................
XVII.
,,
Dundry, Somerset ............................................
xvni.
,,
Leckhampton Hill, Gloucestershire ........................
XlX.
Correlation of the Strata ...................................................
Conclusion .....................................................................
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Table I.
Table II.
Table III.
Table IV.
Analysis of Sections ..........................................

Stratigraphical Diagram ........................... facing
Correlation of the Strata ........................... facing
Correlation of the Zones and Hemerm ..................
479
484
485
486
486
487
488
490
49]~
492
496
496
496
497:
498
500
502
502
508
5ll
507
518
520
506
508
514
519
[NTROD UCTION.
Definition of the Term 'Bajocia,~.'--For the strata w h i c h are

e q u i v a l e n t to the u p p e r p a r t of the I n f e r i o r Oolite, w i t h a portion
of the Fullers' E a r t h , d'Orbigny proposed the t e r m ' B a j o c i e n . '
Like our own terms ' I n f e r i o r O o l i t e ' and ' Fullers' E a r t h , ' its
boundaries w e r e s o m e w h a t u n c e r t a i n ; and like them, too, it w o u l d
seem t h a t the same palmontological horizon has received different
geological names at different l o c a l i t i e s - - f o r this, probably, a difference
in lithologieal characters m a y be blamed. I n the present paper I
use the t e r m ' Bajocian ' in a m e r e l y conventional sense---for t h e
l o w e r beds of t h e upper part of the ' I n f e r i o r Oolite '; b u t I do not
express any opinion as to its merits. I m a y , however, r e m a r k t h a t
the division of the Jurassic period on palmontological g r o u n d s - disregarding t h e details of its i n c o n s t a n t and m e r e l y local lithology
- - i s a necessity. A m m o n i t e s have been chosen as the indicators ot
horizons, and their rapidity in development makes t h e m peculiarly
suitable. Therefore, as far as possible, the chronological u n i t and
the Ammonite-species should go t o g e t h e r ; and any system of
g r o u p i n g the chronological units should depend on t h e epacme,
acme, and paracme of Ammonite-families. No doubt, in practical
application, the epacme of one family would be found contemporaneous w i t h the p a r a c m e of another, so t h a t possibly it m i g h t be
necessary to consider only two of the developmental phases.
Such terms as Bajocian, Toarcian, etc., m i g h t be used from the
chronological point of view only, to express the successive portions
of time of w h i c h the developmental phases of Ammonite-families
gave evidence. T h e y could be used for palmontological purposes, and
only indircctly would have rcfcrcnce to such strata as m i g h t have
been "dcl)osited d u r i n g . t h e times tl,cy represent. The details of
this schcme, c a n n o t bc discussed now. A t present I use t h e t e r m
' B a i o c i a n ' simply because it is t h e most exactly dcscril)tive t e r m
we possess for the strata intended. I n a f o r m e r paper laid before
the Society, I advocated a p a r t i c u l a r use of the t c r m ' T o a r e i a n . ' ~ I n
t h e present paper the Bajocian will commence w h e r e the Toarcian,
as then defined, finished.
Vertebrate fissure faunas with special reference to Bristol Channel Mesozoic

faunas
ROBERT
J.
G.
SAVAGE
Department o f Geology, The University, Bristol BS8 1R J, UK

Abstract: Throughout the Mesozoic and Cenozoic, tectonically activated joint fissures and karstic
cave systems have acted as reservoirs for terrestrial vertebrate remains. They yield concentrations of
microfaunal elements rarely if ever preserved in other situations. In the 1850s, Charles Moore realized
their potential and exploited them, to discover the earliest known mammals in late Triassic fissure
infillings in the Carboniferous Limestone of Somerset. The history of that discovery and its associated
problems of interpretation are recorded. His work greatly influenced succeeding generations of
palaeontologists and, as techniques developed, fossil fissure discoveries have made a major impact on
our understanding of vertebrate evolution.
oldest known mammals, which Moore had isolated from the

sediment. Second, the sediment was no ordinary bedded
deposit; it was a terrestrial Mesozoic infilling in vertically
jointed Carboniferous Limestone at Holwell quarry near
Frome on the Mendip Hills. While not totally original, the
combination was highly innovative, and over the past
century have others built on that work to make some
remarkable palaeontological discoveries.
It is pertinent first to examine the context in which
Moore did his work. Charles Moore was born in 1815 in the
Somerset town of Ilminster. From exposures in the Upper
Lias along Strawberry Bank on the northern side of the
town, the young boy tracked down a six-inch bed (the
Cephalopod bed) which yielded him abundant ammonites
and concretions; the latter he split open to find cuttle-fish,
fish and reptiles.
At an early age Moore began work in his father's
book-selling business and in 1837 moved to Bath to work in
Mr Meyler's book shop. Moore stayed in Bath for seven
years and in that time would have become acquainted with
the galaxy of early geologists in the city who attended
meetings of the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific
Institution. On his father's death in 1844 Moore returned to
Ilminster and for nine years ran the family bookshop for his
sisters. In 1850 he read a paper to the Somerset
Archaeological and Natural History Society on microscopic
fossils; in 1853 he presented another paper, this time on
Fossil Infusoria (i.e. foraminifera). The papers were not
published and no details are recorded.
His marriage in 1853 to Miss Eliza Deare of Widcombe
brought him back to Bath where he remained for the rest of
his life. In 1854 he was elected a Fellow of the Geological
Society. Marriage provided Moore with ample means and
time to pursue his fossil collecting, and soon after he began
work at Dundry Hill, south of Bristol and about 12 miles
from Bath. The hill is an outlier of Inferior Oolite,
recognized by William Smith. The limestones which cap the
hill have been worked for centuries as a local building stone,
In the 1860s, the Mesozoic was seen as the age of reptiles

and particularly of dinosaurs. Many reptiles were known to
have become extinct at the end of the Mesozoic, and the
Cenozoic was the age of mammals. Darwin's work had
made it clear that mammals evolved from reptiles, but the
fossil evidence for a transition was lacking. Primitive
marsupial-like mammals were known from the Eocene beds
of the Paris basin, but their ancestors were not recognizable
there. The Middle Jurassic Stonesfield Slate in Oxfordshire
had yielded toothed jaws of animals which had all the
appearance of mammals. Although .found around 1812, it
was not until Cuvier had pronounced upon them that they
were accepted to be both Jurassic and mammalian. The
discovery of vertebrate concentrations in Mesozoic fissures
pushed back the origin of mammals some 45 million years to
the Late Triassic, almost as far back as the dinosaurs
themselves. While no substantially earlier mammals have
since been found, later workers have built on this
breakthrough to make large collections of the Late Triassic
tetrapods and demonstrate their place on the boundary
between reptile and mammal. It is due to those fissure
faunas that this transition between two major animal groups
is one of the best documented in the fossil record.
Sediments filling underground cavities and open fissures
represent a major source of fossil vertebrate remains. Their
significance is hugely disproportionate to the relatively small
volume of sediment they contain and arises from the
enhanced preservation, compared to surface sites, of both
bones and sediments, and the operation of one or more
concentrative processes (Simms 1993).
Charles Moore and the discovery of vertebrate

fissure faunas
In 1867, the Geological Society published a 120-page paper
by the amateur geologist Charles Moore which was
outstanding on two counts. First it recorded the discovery of
microscopic teeth of Triassic mammals, the geologically
153
154
R.J.
SAVAGE
comparable to Bath stone. Moore collected bags of sandy

clay, which occurs in thin seams in the limestone. This
yielded him a rich fauna of minute brachiopods; of the
twelve species he recorded, ten were species n o v a (Moore
1855).
The question is, how did he get started on separation
and examination of microfossils; the archives do not hold
the answer. Nowhere in his publications does Moore explain
how he prepared the material. The most we get are a few
passing references to washing and looking at every grain
with a lens. If the matrix was clay, washing would allow the
clay to be floated off and he would then be left with a
residue of grains, mostly quartz, with pyrite and organic
particles. He makes no mention of using size fractionation
or density separation techniques to concentrate the residue
further. Although Moore appears to have had a microscope
for the Infusoria, he mentions only a lens for the
brachiopods and vertebrates. This is certainly to be
expected, as in the nineteenth century microscopes were not
built to give very low power magnification (20) with wide
field of view and a depth of focus to enable the complete
specimen to be placed on the stage using reflected light. This
perhaps explains Moore's assertion that he examined over a

million grains.
It was at Vallis Vale near Frome, some 12 miles south of
Bath, that De la Beche (1846) described the striking
unconformity of the Inferior Oolite resting horizontally on
inclined Carboniferous Limestone. He further noted the
occurrence of oyster shells of Inferior Oolite age adhering to
the surface of Carboniferous Limestone at nearby Holwell
(Fig. 1). This was enough to encourage Moore to investigate
the scene. Having got to Holwell (probably in 1855 or 1856)
he found not only a richly fossiliferous seam separating the
Oolite from the Carboniferous, but also numerous fissures
in the quarry which were infilled with sandy clay and pieces
of oolite. Moore had three cubic yards of the clay removed
to the cellars of the Royal Literary and Scientific Institution
in Bath. Moore presented a paper to the 1858 British
Association Meeting on the organic remains from the
Holwell Triassic fissure; he listed his finds of fish and reptile
taxa, comparing them to species discovered in Bristol by
Riley & Stutchbury (1840). When Moore's paper was
published the following year, he added in a footnote that
since reading the paper he had found three mammalian
(a)
~t
- ~
t,~.~4u
S ~ L O t S t T IL ~ t ~
t~
t~
it
to ~
643
Fig. 1. (a) Photograph of Holwell quarry specially taken by J. D. Cogan & F. York for the visit, led by Charles Moore, of the British
Association during their meeting at Bath in 1864. (b) Interpretation of the fissures in the Holwell quarry, with original caption as used by
Charles Moore in his 1867 publication. The drawing is slightly smaller scale than the photograph and shows the northern end (left side) of the
quarry which does not appear on the photograph.
V E R T E B R A T E FISSURE FAUNAS
teeth, identical with Microlestes antiquus recorded by
Plieninger. For several years afterwards he spent several
hours each day sifting through the clay, extracting almost a
million individual fossil fragments; these include over 45 000
Acrodus teeth and 29 mammalian teeth belonging to the
genus Microlestes (Fig. 2).
W. H. T von Plieninger had processed the local Rhaetic
bone bed at Degerloch in Wiirttemberg to yield a large
collection of teeth, one of which belonged to a mammal
which he named Microlestes (Plieninger 1847). The author
describes how the widely distributed bone bed marks the
boundary between the Keuper and the Lias, extending over
shallow coastlands of the Lias sea, with enormous masses of
teeth, scales, coprolites and unrecognizable skeletal
elements of fish and reptile remains. Pleininger had much
material available to him; he records how he washed and
freed blocks from the sandy matrix. The sand thus removed,
he elutriated carefully and examined with great pain in small
portions with a lens. Here he found one completely
preserved molar tooth with two roots and a well-preserved
crown with six cusps; the tooth he compared to a marsupial
from the Paris basin illustrated by Cuvier, concluding his
was also a small insectivorous mammal; hence the name,
meaning 'little thief', a name later found to be preoccupied
by a beetle and changed to Microcleptes, meaning 'little
brigand'. This in turn was also found t o be preoccupied by
another beetle and so it changed for a third time, to
Haramiya, being the same thing in Arabic rather than
Greek.
We do not know when Moore first became acquainted
with Plieninger's work. The Moore papers preserved in the
Society's archives reveal that he was in correspondence with
Richard Owen as early as 1848 about the finding of Liassic
ichthyosaurs. On 6 November 1858 Moore wrote to Owen
enclosing three Microlestes teeth, adding 'I believe you
know that I have from the same bed, teeth of the
Muschelkalk Placodus'. The mention of Muschelkalk
155
faunas, and the correspondence with Owen, suggests that

Moore was well acquainted with current continental work.
It seems probable that Moore went to Holwell primarily
to examine the unconformity and was immediately intrigued
by the fissure infills, 'Liassic dykes' as he called them.
Moore clearly recognized the nature of these 'abnormal'
deposits and their potential to yield microfossils. In his
seminal 1867 paper to the Geological Society he noted that a
deposit of clay 12 feet thick and containing Liassic shells,
occurred at a depth of 270 feet in the Carboniferous
Limestone at Charterhouse (p. 492). He showed remarkably
clear and perceptive judgement in his assessment of the
development of the folded Carboniferous strata of the
Mendips, their denudation to a peneplain by Triassic times
and their island status in early Mesozoic with the seas
lapping the lower slopes. He further recognized that the
sedimentary dykes, while mostly Liassic in age, had a wide
time range from Keuper to Oolitic. He had a clear picture of
the Mendip island inhabited by reptiles and the primitive
mammal Microlestes, whose remains were washed into the
dykes, to be sealed in by later Oolitic sediments. Today that
interpretation can hardly be improved on: only fine tuned to
clarify detail.
When Moore read his 'Abnormal secondary deposits' to
the Geological Society on 20 March 1867, his paper followed
one by H. W. Bristow of the Geological Survey 'On the
Lower Lias or Lias Conglomerate of Glamorganshire'.
Bristow's paper was accepted for publication in the August
number of the Quarterly Journal. Moore's paper had to wait
until December when it appeared as a supplement to the
volume for 1867. The editor noted that the paper was
'unavoidably deferred'. Winwood (1892) recorded that the
delay was to allow time for survey officers to examine the
sites and report back. The Survey regarded the establishment of the stratigraphica| succession as their property,
and it must have been galling for them that an amateur
should be the first to demonstrate the existence of the
(b)
Fig. 2. (a) Crown and side view of tooth

(2 mm long) of Microlestes, RhaetoLiassic mammal from Holwell fissure.
(after Simpson 1928). (b) Upper cheek
dentition of two forms of the mammallike reptile Oligokyphus from Windsor
Hill fissure and (e) reconstructed skeleton (50 cm long) of Oligokyphus. (from
Kiihne 1956).
156
R.J.
Rhaetic in Britain and point out their errors in

stratigraphical correlation.
While it is suggested above that Moore probably chanced
upon the Holwell fissures, his acquaintance with local
geology was thorough and he would certainly have known of
the previous discovery of saurian remains en Durdham
Downs in Bristol (Riley & Stutchbury 1840). That discovery
was announced to the Geological Society in 1836 in a paper
communicated by the President (Charles Lyell), yet four
years elapsed before the paper appeared in the
Transactions. The discoverer was the local amateur Samuel
Stutchbury and to ensure credibility he asked his friend the
eminent Bristol medical doctor, Henry Riley, to join him;
unhappily no record of the geological occurrence was kept.
The jaw fragment and teeth they recovered were by them
allocated to two species of saurian, named Thecodontosaurus antiquus and Palaeosaurus platyodon.
Moore (1881), in his last paper to the Society, discussed
the provenance of these enigmatic reptiles. He noted that
the Dolomitic Conglomerate in which they were found was
believed by Riley & Stutchbury to be Permian; it rested on
Carboniferous Limestone and the authors equated it with
the Magnesian Limestones. This age meant that the reptiles
were the stratigraphically oldest known, yet they belonged
to an advanced stock of saurians. Etheridge (of the
Geological Survey) proposed that the Dolomitic Conglomerate was Keuper in age on the basis of its stratigraphic
relationships (1870). Moore (1881) pointed out that the
conglomeratic facies, sometimes dolomitized, was of
variable age, Keuper, Rhaetic or Liassic. However as
Moore had found the same two reptiles in the Rhaetic of
Holwell and Vallis on Mendip, he deduced that the
Durdham Down site in Bristol was also Rhaetic in age.
Moore visited the Durdham quarry, and although the
precise site of the reptile discovery was unknown, he found
adhering to the sides of a vein enough matrix to extract from
it numerous fragments of bone and teeth. He concluded that
the situation was very comparable with that at Holwell, with
a series of veins whose infillngs derived from different
geological ages. Moore had formulated a very clear and
extraordinarily accurate appreciation of the taphonomy of
the deposits. The only aspect he did not consider was the
time range of the reptile taxa, assuming they had sufficiently
short ranges for Rhaetic taxa not to be found in Keuper or
Liassic strata.
It would appear that the Durdham Down reptile locality
is the first true fissure fossil vertebrate site to be recorded.
In defining it this way we exclude numerous bone
accumulations at cave entrances and pothole infills, mostly
no older than Pleistocene. In his lifetime Moore amassed a
vast collection of fossils, from microfossils to complete
ichthyosaurs, and almost all from the county of Somerset.
Moore left his collections to the Royal Literary and
Scientific Institution in Queen Square Bath. In the century
since his death, the institution and his magnificent bequest
have gone through traumatic times and their future is not,
even at the present time, securely assured.
The legacy--after Moore

Despite this promising beginning to a new area of
palaeontology, there was no systematic application of the
principles for over 50 years from the time of Moore's death
until interest was again aroused again in the 1930s. In that
SAVAGE
time gap vertebrate fossils were recovered from fissure
deposits, but they did not involve the microvertebrates and
processing skills which Moore had pioneered. For example
in 1878, coal miners at Bernissart in Belgium working 322 m
below the surface came across a clay filled pocket in which
they found large dinosaur bones. The site was to yield 29
more or less complete skeletons of the bipedal herbivorous
dinosaur Iguanodon and many other vertebrate remains.
About t h e same time the phosphorites of Quercy in
southwest France were being exploited commercially. The
phosphorite occurred in 'pockets' in the Jurassic limestone.
There was much debate on the origin of the phosphorite,
until is was recognized that the abundant vertebrate remains
found in some of the pockets were those of animals which
had fallen into karstic fissures or caves where they had died
and been preserved, or had been transported there by
running water. The exploitation of the phosphorites as a
source of fertilizer led to the discovery of abundant remains
of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Articulated
skeletons were very rare and the mammals found ranged
through carnivores, ungulates, bats, rodents and primates.
However it soon became apparent that the mammals were
not all of one age and ranged through Eocene and
Oligocene. It was not until the 1960s when the quarries were
reopened that the ages could be elucidated (Buffetaut 1987).
It was in the 1930s in Germany that Richard Dehm
began systematically to explore the Tertiary infillings in the
fissured Franconian and Schwabian Jura. The matrix he
washed and sieved from many sites yielded rich mammal
faunas of Oligocene and Miocene ages (Dehm 1935). At
about the same time that Dehm was beginning his studies,
Walter Kiihne left Germany and came to Britain. His first
objective was to repeat the work of Charles Moore on the
same site. He went to Holwell in 1939 and collected 2 tons
of fissure infill, which on washing and sieving yielded him
some 20 mammalian teeth, all but two of them the same that
Moore had found (Kiihne 1946). However Kiihne did not
work the same fissure that Moore had; Moore's fissure had
been quarried away and Kiihne was well aware that the
fissures were not all of the same age. The successful
repetition of Moore's work some 80 years later was the
stimulus needed for systematic and intense field work to
begin. Kiihne simply took a geological map and noted where
Carboniferous Limestone was exposed adjacent to Triassic
continental sediments. He went to the areas, searched in the
local Carboniferous Limestone quarries for fissures and
examined their infillings for vertebrate fossils. He extended
the search beyond the Mendip plateau, intending then to
continue across the Bristol Channel into south Wales where
the same relationships showed up on the maps.
However it was August 1939 and the war intervened.
Kiihne was interned on the Isle of Man for the duration, but
had sent to him half a ton of matrix from another fissure he
had discovered, that at Windsor Hill near Shepton Mallet.
K/ihne recovered over 2000 bones and teeth of the
mammal-like reptile Oligokyphus from the fissure, which he
dated on the invertebrate content as Liassic. (Kiihne 1956).
Oligokyphus was the only vertebrate in the infilling and
Kiihne in his clear account of the biostratonomy argued that
the animal was completely terrestrial and rodent-like, its
remains accumulating around springs. When the river
flooded, bones were swept into the nearby sea and some
entered the open fissure.
Kiihne was searching for the elusive transition between
VERTEBRATE FISSURE FAUNAS

reptile and mammal. Microlestes appeared to be a mammal
but only teeth were known. Now with Oligokyphus he had
virtually complete skeletal material. It was very close to
dividing line, combining characters from both major stocks.
The final verdict was that it is taxonomically a reptile, but
very mammalian in appearance and mode of life.
Despite this refreshing new start to vertebrate fissure
studies in Britain at the end of the war, Ktihne in 1951
decided to return to Germany. From Berlin he continued his
palaeontological field work, making major Mesozoic
mammal discoveries in Portugal, although in brown coal
deposits and not in fissures. However he left behind him at
University College London two palaeontologists who would
carry the torch, Pamela Robinson and Kenneth Kermack.
157
teeth from the Carboniferous. The vertebrate contents

comprise a range of small reptiles, sometimes though rarely
as partly associated skeletons. Robinson interpreted the
small size of the animals preserved as due to the sparse
vegetation on the hot dry Mendip uplands. Dead lizard-like
reptiles would mummify in the heat; these lightweight
packages could be readily carried in flood waters into the
caves. The absence of mammals was considered to be due to
ecological unsuitability of the habitats on the uplands.
Dating these fissures is difficult; sometimes a sedimentary
cover seals the entrance, as at Emborough where the cave is
capped by Rhaetic beds. In other instances dating is by
comparison of the fauna with those from other parts of the
world where they can be more precisely dated. Robinson
was of the opinion that fissures of this type were all of
Triassic age and probably Keuper (Upper Triassic). Her
work has provided a major breakthrough in our
understanding of fissure formation and the mechanics of
infill.
It was in the cave faunas that Robinson herself went on
to specialize, collecting from the rich deposits at Slickstones
Quarry near Cromhall in Gloucestershire and from
Emborough Quarry on Mendip (Fig 3). The latter quarry,
like Windsor Hill, contained essentially a one species fauna;
in this case it was a gliding lizard, which Robinson named
Kuehneosaurus after her mentor (Robinson 1962).
Kuehneosaurus was the first aerial vertebrate, gliding in
Late Triassic times long before the pterosaurs came on the
scene. Much of the matrix from this fissure is highly calcified
and does not break up in water; fossil extraction required
other techniques.
Fortunately about that time, staff in the Palaeontological
Laboratory at the Natural History Museum in London were
developing methods of freeing vertebrate fossils from
calcareous settings, using acetic and formic acids. Weak
solutions of these acids will selectively dissolve the calcium
carbonate in the matrix but will not attack the calcium
phosphate (apatite) of which bones and teeth are composed
(Toombs 1948; Rixon 1949). However once freed of the
matrix, the fossils are very fragile and need protection; this
was provided by coating them with acid resistant plastics
(Rixon 1976). The pioneering work of the Natural History
T h e search for n e w faunas

Robinson was primarily a geologist and approached the
fieldwork with a determination to create order out of chaos.
The mixture of marine and terrestrial faunas i n fissure
infillings had led to confused explanations of their origin.
Surveying the Mesozoic geology in the west country,
Robinson identified two major types of fissure formation,
each with a characteristic type of infill, a characteristic fauna
and distinctive ages (Robinson 1957). One type is the
Neptunian dyke; these in the Mendip region characteristically infill east-west tension clefts formed in the Carboniferous Limestone while it is covered by the sea; the sea
floor sediments get swept into the fissure along with remains
of terrestrial animals living close to the nearby shore-line
and carried into the sea by flood waters. The Holwell
Microlestes fissures of both Moore and Kiihne belong here,
as does the Windsor Hill Oligokyphus fissure. These fissures
can be dated on their faunas, and range in age from Rhaetic
to Inferior Oolite.
The second type is the underground watercourse. In
Triassic times the Mendip hills stood out as islands in the
early Mesozoic sea. Karstic features included the formation
of pot-holes and joints opening to create fissures, with
phreatic and vadose cave systems developing. The infillings
contain few invertebrates; only the non-marine crustacean
Euestheria along with derived crinoids and bradyodont shark
................... ~
.. ~ - " 7 - 1 " 1 " . / /
L /.C.
....... ", . : d . . . l : - . l . ~ <
-./~/
Y /
/~/~/~;~J
~"
~Londsurface
time of co
LPosition
at
apse
of present
~7.1./~-/Y.Z/./Y-~
I
JURASSIC
....
_-~T~ _'- - . : s . ~ _ s ~ _ ~ _
CA~BONI,EROVS~
TRIASSIC. COLLAPSE
s --~7~--_~_----~s_-~-~-~_
~
I"I.
S~te of
qu~-ry
offlC~
RHAETIC
Fig. 3. The history of the fissure in

Emborough quarry, Mendip Hills, Somerset. (from Robinson 1957).
....
"7 "/
Quaternary
valley
----~.-7-~;-=
....
:~
:.
A -~RhOetic-JtJrclsslc
t l-,'t'l';,
MID - JURASSIC
Triassic
collapsed
OF CAVE
~-
P,hQetic
in subsoil
Jurassic
outlier
_.---~
~
/-.t<,r'-/y/
__~ Present Landsur face
/. ~ - 7 - - ~ 7 " ~ r ~ /
opprox
\ "" ""
LIMESTONE.
.,.
-ill
PRESENT
DAY
"
/
~ Rheletic-
,7 JuraSsic Transgression
i
158
R.J.
SAVAGE
Museum staff in developing these techniques has revolutionized palaeontology and made possible the exploitation of many fissure faunas.
While Robinson concentrated on Triassic cave systems in
Somerset and Gloucestershire, Kermack devoted himself to
the Neptunian dykes on the west side of the Severn estuary
in south Wales. Here a series of Carboniferous Limestone
quarries in the Bridgend area of Glamorgan contain
numerous marine Rhaeto-Liassic fissures, which yielded
Kermack spectacularly rich reptile and mammal faunas.
Kermack is primarily a zoologist and his field objective has
been to maximize the yield of fossils. He collected very large
quantities of matrix and back at University College London
these were washed and the residues concentrated by a
variety of techniques to reduce the non-organic elements. A
major problem with this sort of preparation is that while
there is a richness of fragments, literally thousands of
specimens, there is virtually no associated material. For
example the skulls of these small reptiles and early
mammals rarely have fused bones, so that in fossilization, all
are preserved as individual bones or parts of bones.
Similarly teeth seldom remain in place in the jaws. With
many species of about the same size, this makes it
exceedingly difficult to allocate specimens to their taxon.
The collection forms the basis of a series of papers by
Kermack, his colleagues and students. Evans has published
on reptilian elements, giving detailed accounts of an early
eosuchian (Evans 1980, 1981). The most exciting species has
been the early mammal Morganucodon watsoni (Fig. 4).
Kermack was able to identify virtually all the individual
bones in the skull and mandible and so make a complete
reconstruction of the shrew-sized insectivorous mammal.
The animal possesses essential mammalian features in the
Palatine
L acrimal
Nasal
,,"
I nc,sors
^ ..
.
.j
uroitospnenola
. -~.~--~
,)
dentition, braincase, ear region and jaws. It is, however,

very primitive and close to its reptilian ancestry, arising
from a mammal-like reptile at a time when dinosaurs were
also making their first impact on the terrestrial scene
(Kermack et al. 1973, 1981). A second species of mammal in
the same deposits is Kuehneotherium (Fig. 4), another small
insectivorous mammal but with teeth that suggest it could be
close to the ancestry of the line leading to higher mammals
(Kermack et al. 1968). These fossils give us a remarkably
clear picture of the evolutionary process of transforming a
reptile into a mammal.
Two other more recent advances deserve mention. The
Carboniferous Limestone quarry at Cromhall in south
Gloucestershire first yielded a fissure vertebrate to F. G.
Hudson in 1938; it was the sphenodontid Glevosaurus,
recorded by Swinton (1939). Robinson collected there and
later described the sphenodontid (Robinson 1973). In the
1980s Fraser reworked the site and published on its reptilian
fauna (Fraser 1982, 1988). A n o t h e r sphenodontid reptile,
the small insectivorous Diphydontosaurus, was the subject
of a study by Whiteside; his fossils came from Tytherington,
a Carboniferous Limestone quarry some ten miles north of
Bristol (figs 5 & 6; Whiteside 1986). The Sphenodontida
were a major group of Late Triassic lizard-like reptiles and
are known today from one species, the tuatara in New
Zealand, where it has survived in absence of mammalian
competition. The Tytherington fissure is associated with a
cave system whose infill included dinosaurs. Rhaetian
marine and terrestrial palynomorphs, together with
glauconite in some fissure infills, indicate a marginal marine
location, with fluctuating freshwater and saline environments. Whiteside likened the site to the Blue Holes in
Jamaica.
Epipterygoid (Alisphenoid)
/
~_~_
-- ~
',
Anterior
-~
~nr~rnon
Canine
pseudorotundum
pse~oval e
Lateral Flange
of pterygoid
(a)
Lingual
/
$u"~ngula"
(b)
C~jrl,
k4e~l cu~eule
Prtoeticulof"
"/
Mctaconid
Hypoconulid
~NtC~eCl
CI~Of~ulo
IOmril'~
Poraco-id
~~,,'~
//
Pro~oconid
Fig. 4. (a) Skull and mandible of Morganucodon, Rhaeto-Liassic mammal from Glamorgan; the most completely known early Mesozoic
mammal. (b) Side and crown views of a tooth of Kuehneotherium, Rhaeto-Liassic mammal from Glamorgan. (from Kermack et al. 1968).
These reconstructions are based partly on the Welsh specimens and partly on a skull and mandible belonging to the same genus from Yunnan
Province in China.
VERTEBRATE FISSURE FAUNAS
159
meteoric waters carrying fossiliferous debris

littoral Rhaetian
Sea
[ saline
waters
sea level
10
20
~
~
.~ ~
30 ~
~
'~
40
fresh water
breccia
conglomerate
sandstones
median line of freshsaline water transition
zone
~. ~.,, zone of 'glauconite'

..... speculative cave formation
and infill
salt water
50
Old Red
Sandstone
Lower Limestone~
shales
Black Rock
limestone
60
0.6 km
Fig. 5. Reconstructed palaeoenvironment for the infilling of the Tytherington fissures in the Rhaetian. (from Whiteside 1986).
external
naris
,
choana
(b)
S~
0
"
o t3
, o
"oo!/
:0
qJ
Fig. 6. Skull of sphenodontid reptile

Diphydontosaurus from Tytherington
fissure. (from Whiteside 1986).
o
0
%*[~L
.orb.fen.
160
R.J.
In other parts of Europe fissure faunas have been

exploited, for both micro- and macro-vertebrates. Dehm
and his colleagues in Munich have produced a vast range of
micromammal faunas from the southern German fissure
sites, which he began to exploit nearly 6o years ago. In
southern heel of Italy at Gargano are fissures infilled with
Mid-Miocene mammals; the fauna is highly endemic, the
area being an island in Miocene times and the mammals
having acquired gigantism--including giant hedgehogs,
rodents and owls.
Back to the laboratory

Exploitation of the full potential of fissures as vertebrate
rich sites required advances on two fronts; understanding
the geomorphic, tectonic and taphonomic processes
involved in their formation as traps for vertebrates, and also
development of cheap and efficient methods of concentrating the microfauna. Advances in the first area have come
through studies in karstic geomorphology; the most relevant
are two recent review volumes on palaeokarst (James &
Choquette 1988; Bosak et al. 1989). For example Smart et
al. (1988) discussed the factors controlling the initiation,
development and sedimentation of neptunian dykes and
cavern infills, together with comment on their importance in
palaeoenvironmental reconstruction and interpretation.
They carried out a field study of the Blue Holes (underwater
caves) on the Bahama Banks, which they consider to be
modern examples where active sedimentation processes can
be studied. Ford (1984, 1989) has made extensive studies of
the occurrences of palaeokarsts in Britain. Simms (1990,
1993) has researched Triassic palaeokarsts in Britain, in
particular those which have yielded vertebrate faunas and
has demonstrated the crucial importance of climatic factors
in their formation and infill.
With the growth of taphonomy as a serious study over
the past two decades, attention focused on vertebrate fissure
faunas has brought with it the experimental approach of
testing models. Andrews (1990) has made a detailed study
of the taphonomy of vertebrate cave faunas; his examples
are Pleistocene, but the principles hold for other periods.
Andrews points to the major role played by predators,
especially owls and other birds of prey, in the origin of the
vast rodent accumulations found in some Cenozoic caves.
The Middle Pleistocene cave fauna from the Carboniferous
Limestone cave infill at Westbury-sub-Mendip has been
carefully analysed in a major contribution by Bishop (1982).
Just as the field practices have become refined over the
years with the systematic exploitation of fissure faunas, so
the processing of the matrix changed. With the frequent
need to process tons of the payload, methods had to be
found to do this quickly and cheaply. While the details differ
with each site, the basic approaches are the same. If the
material will break down in water, it can often be done in
the field and so greatly reduce transport costs. If acids are
needed to break down carbonates, then laboratory facilities
will be needed.
While fissure faunas have not been a major feature of
North American discoveries, soft matrices from Eocene sites
in Wyoming were being washed and screened by Wortman
as early as the 1890s. By the 1930s, Hibbard was using
similar techniques to process Cenozoic sediments in Kansas
for small vertebrates and molluscs. Hibbard developed a
screening system using mesh-bottomed boxes which were
SAVAGE
suspended in the nearby streams to process tons of matrix in
situ (Hibbard 1949). Over the following decades, Hibbard
and his students made vast collections of micro-vertebrates
from many parts of of USA, mainly in Pliocene and
Pleistocene sequences. These have given us a detailed view
of the life of small vertebrates, especially rodents, and
added greatly to the overall understanding of their ecology.
The next major step in the screening process was taken
by Ward, who introduced a mechanical means of bulk processing. A 3501itre polythene tank is fitted with two
sprinklers, one oscillatory and the other rotary. These are
fed by a continual 24 hours a day water supply which can
wash 10-15 kg of matrix per hour. Stainless steel mesh
screening of various sizes down to 500 ~um can be used
(Ward 1981). Wetting agents, hydrogen peroxide and
hexametaphosphate are sometimes added to the water to aid
the disaggregation of the sediment prior to screening.
The most obstinate problem in the whole recovery
process has long been that of recovering the vertebrates
from the residue. The fossils invariably make up a minute
fraction of the residue, a few percent at most. Moore
described how over three years he hand picked over a
million particles with the aid of a hand lens. Kiihne had a
similar experience in recovering Microlestes teeth, although
he had the advantage of a simple binocular microscope. The
great advances in microscopy over the past half century have
included instruments which are ideal for hand picking the
residue; stereoscopy, wide angle, low power and good depth
of focus are the prime essentials.
Chemical and physical methods have been tried to
produce vertebrate concentrates from the residues. Chemical approaches have used acids to dissolve the non-organic
elements in the residue selectively; acetic or formic acid to
reduce the calcareous particles, thioglycollic acid to reduce
the limonitic particles (Howie 1974). Physical approaches
have used density fractionation methods. Quartz, which is
often very abundant in residues, has a specific gravity (2.6)
slightly less than bone (2.7-3.0). Hematite (5.2) is much
higher than bone. The problem with high density liquids for
separation is that they are expensive and dangerous
substances to handle; in consequence they have not found
general acceptance. Variations on jigging or panning
techniques used in mineral dressing have been tried, but
again not found widespread favour.
A different and innovative approach has been introduced
by Freeman (1982) using the interface method, which
exploits the lipophilic surface properties of apatite (the
major constituent of vertebrate bone and tooth). The
residue is placed in a two phase mixture of water and a
water insoluble organic liquid. The organic liquid wets the
phosphate particles in preference to gangue minerals, which
are wetted by the water. To recover the phosphate, the
mixture can be briefly agitated and allowed to settle; the
bone will be concentrated at the interface and can recovered
by decanting through a fine mesh. Alternatively a substrate
can be used to attract the phosphate selectively. Freeman
suggests a polystyrene substrate with an aromatic or
gelatinous hydrocarbon; a second possibility is to use a
paraffin wax or petroleum jelly substrate with kerosene as
the hydrocarbon liquid.
The future
Future technical advances will undoubted bring changes in
the ways we process the fissure infillings to obtain the
VERTEBRATE
vertebrate concentrate. At the present time the most

persistent problems centre around the residue sorting.
Mesozoic mammal teeth like those of Microlestes are barely
one millimetre across. Holwell clay yields one such tooth for
every 100kg of matrix. In the Scottish Middle Jurassic
Ostracod Limestone (Kilmaluag Formation) of Skye, such
teeth turn up at a rate of about one tooth per 100 tons. With
yields as low as this, the prize has to be extremely valuable
to justify the time, effort and expense required. But such
efforts are indeed essential if we are to make the big breaks.
Our knowledge of the fossil record can never be complete,
but some of the yawning gaps can with dedication be
narrowed. It is no longer a case of using the swipe and hope
technique, to set out aimlessly and see what turns up.
Successful field work requires careful planning, research of
all available data and a defined objective. For example one
of our biggest gaps in the record of mammalian evolution
lies in Mid-Cretaceous times. We have some (though
limited) knowledge of faunas at the beginning and the end
of the Cretaceous. At the outset of Cretaceous times the
small mammals in the dinosaurian world were descendants
of stocks that stretched back to Rhaeto-Liassic times. The
mammals we see, as the dinosaurs disappeared at the end of
the Cretaceous, were almost all new stocks: the marsupials
and placental mammals that were soon to inherit the Earth.
During the 70 million years that separate these two faunal
sequences, we have only the merest fragments of evidence
of mammal evolution, yet in that period the mammals
underwent radical changes. Continental Middle Cretaceous
sediments are all too poorly known, anywhere in the world,
but the search must continue. Another approach is to use
the original Moore method; identify areas where limestone
plateaus were exposed during Cretaceous times to act as
potential sources for fissure and cave development, to be
sealed off in later Cretaceous or early Cenozoic times.
Recently the Deccan traps of India have yielded Cretaceous
mammals in sediments intercalated with the lavas; though
these are end and not mid-Cretaceous, such sites are prime
tragets for investigation (Prasad & Sahni 1988).
The author is grateful to J. Thackray for assistance with the Moore

papers in the Society's archives and to M. Simms for discussions on
palaeokarsts.
References
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London.
BISHOP, M. J. 1982. The mammal fauna of the early Middle Pleistocene cavern
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systematic and regional review. Elsevier, Amsterdam.
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Glamorganshire. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London,
23, 199-207.
BUFFETAUT, E. 1987. A short history of Vertebrate Palaeontology. Croom
Helm, London.
DE LA BECHE, H. T. 1846. On the formation of the rocks of south Wales and
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DEHM, R. 1935. Llber terti~ire Spaltenftillungen im Fr~inkischen und
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FAUNAS
161
Distribution of the Reptilian or Dolomitic Conglomerate of the Bristol

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EVANS, S. E. 1980. The skull of a new eosuchian reptile from the Lower
Jurassic of south Walcs. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society,
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1981. The postcranial skeleton of the Lower Jurassic cosuchian
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London, 73, 81-116.
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-
Amsterdam. 51-70.
FRASER, N. C. 1982. A new rhynchocephalian from the British Upper
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7-19.
HOWlE, F.M.P. 1974. Introduction of thioglycollic acid in preparation of
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KERMACK, D.M., KERMACK, K. A. & MUSSE'IVl', F. 1968. The Welsh
Pantothere Kuehneotherium praecursoris. Zoological Journal of the
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-& -1981. The skull of Morganucodon. Zoological Journal of
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1956. The Liassic Therapsid Oligokyphus. British Museum (Natural
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8 ,
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5, 107-128.
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with the Somersetshire and South Wales Coal- Basin; and on the age of
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1881. On Abnormal Geological Deposits in the Bristol District.
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Keupers bei Degerloch und Steinenbronn. Jahresheft des Vereins fiir
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of three distinct Saurian Animals, recently discovered in the Magnesian
Conglomerate near Bristol. Transactions of the Geological Society of
London, Series 2, 5, 349-357.
RixoN, A. E. 1949. The use of acetic acid and formic acid in the preparation
of fossil vertebrates. Museums Journal, London, 49, 116-117.
1976. Fossil Animal Remains: their preparation and conservation.
Athlone Press, London.
ROBINSON, P. L. 1957. The Mesozoic fissures of the Bristol Channel area and
their vertebrate faunas. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society,
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1973. A problematic reptile from the British Upper Trans. Journal of
SIMMS, M. J. 1990. Triassic Palaeokarst in Britain. Cave Science, 17, 93-101.
1993. Emplacement and preservation of vertebrates in caves and
fissures. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, London. (in press).
SIMPSON, G. G. 1928. A Catalogue of the Mesozoic Mammalia in the
Geological Department of the British Museum. British Museum (Natural
History), London.
SMART, P.L., PALMER, R.J., WHITAKER, F. & WRIGHT, V.P. 1988. Neptunian
Dikes and Fissure Fills: an overview and account of some modern
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Springer Verlag. 149-163.
162
R.J.
SWINXON, W. E. 1939. A new Triassic Rhynchocephalian from Gloucestershire. Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Series 11, 4, 591-594.
TooMBs, H. A. 1948. The use of acetic acid in the development of vertebrate
fossils. Museums Journal, London, 48, 54-55.
WARt), D. J. 1981. A simple machine for bulk processing of clays and silts.
Tertiary Research, 3, 121-124.
WmTESIOE, D. I. 1986. The head skeleton of the Rhaetian sphenodontid
SAVAGE
Diphydontosaurus avonis Gen. et sp. nov. and the modernizing of a

living fossil. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, London,
B312, 379-430.
WlNwooI~, H. H. 1892. Charles Moore, F.G.S., and his work. With a list of
the fossil types and described specimens in the Bath Museum, by E.
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Received 19 July 1993; revised typescript accepted 14 August 1993.
Addendum
Since the article was written more information has come to light
(Crane 1993) about the little known Bristol geologist and naturalist
Samuel Stutchbury (1789-1859), who with Riley described the first
dinosaurs from a Triassic fissure in Bristol in 1836. Stutchbury
began his career in 1822 as assistant to Wm. Clift in the Hunterian
Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. He resigned in 1825
(and was soon after succeeded by Richard Owen) to sail as
naturalist on a Pearl Fishing boat to coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean.
Returning two years later he worked as a dealer in natural history
specimens until his appointment in 1831 as curator of the museum

of the Bristol Institution (later to become the Bristol City Museum).
Dr Riley was also a keen anatomist and a founder of the Bristol
Zoological Gardens in 1835 on a site a few hundred metres from the
dinosaur fissure quarry.
Additional reference
CRANZ, M. D. 1993. Samuel Stutchbury (1798-1859). In: Dictionary of
National Biography; Missing Persons. Oxford University Press, 648-49.
From QJGS,23, 449-450.

1. On ABnORmAL COI~I)ITIOZCSOf SZCO~'I)ARY D~.POSITS when connec2ed
with the SOMERSETSHIR:E a ~ d SOUTH WAL:ES COAL-BAsIN; ~/Rd O~
the age of the SUTTO~ and SOUTHm~I)OW~ S:F.a~. :By CKav~,s
:M:ooR~., Esq., F.G.S.
(Read March 20, 1867.~)
[PLATES XIV.-XVII.]
Co~zz~zs.
I. Introduction.
II. The Mendip Hill~
1. Old Red Sandstone.
2. Carboniferous Limestone.
3. Basaltic Dyke.
4. Date of Upheaval.
5. Denudation.
6. System of Secondary veins.
7. Ago of the Conglomerates.
III. Strai.ifled Rocks subsequent to the
Mendip upheaval.
I. The Trias.
a. South of the Mendips.
b. Within the Coal-Basin.
c. Batheaston Section.
2. The Rh~tic Beds.
a. Section of Keuper, Rhmtic,
and Liassic Beds at Camel.
$. Organic renlains in the
Rhmtic White Lisa.
c. Insect and Crustacean Beds.

d. Saurian and Ostrea-beds.
e. Ammoni~s-Tlanerbis Beds.
f. Beer-Crowcombe and Hatch
Sections.
3, Rhseticand Lia~icBeds within
the Coal-Basin.
a. Section of Keuper, Rhsetic,
Lower, Middle, and Upper
Lias, and Oolite at Cameramen.
b. Section in Mungor Road
Quarry.
4. Relative thicknes~ of Secondary
Beds South and North of
the Mendips.
5. Whatley Lisa and Fontaine.
dt~upe-Four.
6. Mells Middle Lia~ and Coal.
8. Value of Zones of Zoological

IV. Abnormal Secondary deposits on
Life.
the Carboniferous Limestone.
VI. The So,th Wales District.
1. Marston Road Section.
1. Penarth Rhmtic and Liassic
2. ]tolwell Carboniferous LimeSection.
stone and Liassie Dykes.
2. Bridgend Liassie Sections.
3. The Microlestes Quarry.
3. Cowbridge Section.
4. Sections in the Vallis.
4. Llanbethian Quarries.
5. Gurney Slade Liassic Dykes.
5. Laleston Quarry.
6. Charter-House Liassic Lead6. Stormy Quarry.
mine.
7. Section at Ewenney.
7. Terrestrial and Freshwater
8. Section at Brocastle.
Fauna.
9. The Sutton Stone and the
V. The Bath District.
Southerndown series.
1. Pinch's Well.
a. Local Deposition of the Sut2. The Ammonites-Bucklandi
ton Stone.
Beds.
b. Organic remains from the
3. Willsbridge Section of Lower
Sutton Stone.
Lias, "~euper, Rh~etic, and
c. The Ammo~zites-Bucklandi
Coal-measures.
Bed.~.
4. Sections near Bristol.
10. Langan Lead-mine.
5. Sections at Keynsham and
11. Inadmissibility of the term
Stout's Hill.
" Infralias."
6. Rhmtic White Lias and Carboniferous Limestone at VII. Conclusion.
VIII. Description of Organic reBroadfield Down.
Sections near Shepton Mallet.
reruns.
IX. List of Fossils.
Triassic pebbles, derived fossils and the Ordovician to Devonian

palaeogeography of Europe
L.R.M.
COCKS
Department of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London S W 7 5BD, UK
Abstract: Papers published by Salter (1864) and Davidson (1870) on the faunas from pebbles in a
Triassic conglomerate at Budleigh Salterton, Devon, are reviewed. After modern reassessment, these
pebbles, although of apparently similar quartzites, have been found to be of four different ages, two
Ordovician (mid-Arenig and late Llandeilo) and two Devonian (Lochkovian-Pragian and Frasnian).
By comparing these four faunas with those contemporary in adjacent palaeocontinents, it can be
shown that, apart from the earliest one, they have affinities closer to those of the Armorican peninsula
of Brittany and Normandy than to the rest of Britain and that these Armorican faunas are in clasts
which were transported northward by Triassic rivers. Consideration of all the various faunas in the
whole of northwest Europe reflect the earliest Ordovician of southern Britain as part of the vast
Gondwanan continent, from which it became detached by the mid-Ordovician, with a widening Rheic
Ocean between the two palaeocontinents; and the subsequent merging of Avalonia with Baltica and
Laurentia to form Laurussia by Mid-Devonian times. New palaeogeographical maps depicting phases
from the Ordovician to the Devonian are presented.
and described by the leading brachiopod specialist of the

nineteenth century, Thomas Davidson, who published his
results firstly in the Society's journal (1870) and
subsequently in greater detail in a Palaeontographical
Society Monograph (1881). It was Davidson who recognized
that the faunas first described by Salter were in fact of two
quite different ages, one Ordovician and the other
Devonian, and that individual pebbles with more than one
fossil on them never contained any mixture of the two
faunas. This removed the anomaly of the 'oldest' spiriferid.
However, this triumph of palaeontology was somewhat
marred (1870, p. 73-74) by Davidson's reluctance to
endorse Salter's separation of the Ordovician faunas
between those of the Gr~s Armoricain and the May
Sandstone. Nevertheless, Davidson's work was all that was
required to resolve any apparent palaeogeographical
problems, particularly in the light of the 'fixist' biogeographies then believed.
So matters rested until comparatively recently, when
firstly Sadler (1974), in reviewing trilobites from a
tectonically complicated belt near Gorran Haven, Cornwall
(Fig. 1), asserted that one of the Budleigh Salterton
trilobites originally described by Salter was Neseuretus
tristani (Brongniart), characteristic of inshore midOrdovician facies across much of Europe. Then Cocks &
Lockley (1981) reassessed the Ordovician part of the
Budleigh Salterton brachiopod faunas and confirmed
Salter's original findings, that there were in fact two
separate Ordovician faunas in the pebbles, one of Arenig,
probably middle Arenig, age (Fig. 2), in the same
lithological facies as the Gr~s Armoricain of Brittany,
Normandy and Sarthe, France, and the second of latest
Llandeilo age (Fig. 3), comparable to that from the Gr~s de
The Budleigh Salterton Pebble Bed is of Triassic age,

about 25 m thick, and is well displayed in cliffs along the
southern English coast around Budleigh Salterton, Devon
(Fig. 1), and the eroded pebbles from it largely make up the
local beaches. The pebbles are of indurated quartzite and
an average geologist might spend an afternoon there
thinking them to be unfossiliferous. However, in about 1835
a Mr Carter first found some fossils in a Budleigh Salterton
pebble and brought them to the attention of a local amateur
geologist, W. Vicary. Vicary paid local workmen to find
more and by 1863 was able to read to the Geological Society
a paper on the Pebble Bed (Vicary 1864), attached to which
was a substantial note on the fossils (Salter 1864) figuring 30
species and mentioning four more. Salter's work was
shrewd, since he realised that these fossils were unique in
Britain; quite different from faunas at the 'Silurian System'
sites in Wales and the Welsh Borderlands, and different
again from faunas from western Scotland which had
American affinities. The Budleigh Salterton fauna was like
those of central Europe (France, Spain and Bohemia) and
the age was 'Lower Silurian', what we would now term
Ordovician, and Salter equated them directly (1864, p.287)
with the Grrs Armoricain and May Sandstone of France.
However, Salter was puzzled by a spiriferid brachiopod,
which he named Spirifer antiquissimus, which was
considered by far the oldest of its group to have been found
anywhere.
After that communication to the Society, collecting
proceeded apace and by 1869 over 400 specimens had been
collected by dedicated amateurs, chiefly Vicary and R.H.
Valpy, both of whom subsequently bequeathed their
collections to the British Museum (now the Natural History
Museum). The brachiopods in these collections were revised
165
166
L. R. M. COCKS
]/
._I/
COR~WALL~
tBR, AN
0:o
-~
Salterton pebbles, all of them in an apparently identical

indurated quartzite facies; two Ordovician and two
Devonian--Figs 2-5 show characteristic elements of the
fauna and full faunal lists are in Cocks & Lockley (1981) and
Cocks (1989). So how may these four faunas (all transported
in ~Triassic times at least some distance, and perhaps as
much as 300 km, from their original place of deposition) be
used to elucidate the palaeogeography of Europe? Each one
is of separate significance, as will now be reviewed.
DEVON
Budleigh Salterton
~ut~
~X../ -
tNORMANay
.
Le Mans
Fig. 1. Southwest England and the Armorican peninsula, showing

the position of Budleigh Salterton and other localities.
petit May, for example at May itself, near Caen, France
(Fig. 1). Trilobites occurring with the second brachiopod
fauna have been revised (S.F. Morris pers. comm.) to
include Eohomalonotus vicaryi (Salter, 1865), Iberocoryphe
serrata (Tromelin, 1877), Neseuretus tristani (Brongniart,
1817), Kloucekia cf. mimus (Salter, 1864) and Crozonaspis
aft. incerta (Deslongschamps, 1825). However, a surprise
came when the Devonian brachiopods from Budleigh
Salterton were analysed in further detail (Cocks 1989) and
were discovered also to be of two quite separate ages (a)
Lower Devonian (Lochkovian-Pragian), and corresponding
in facies and fauna (Fig. 4) to the Gr~s ~ Orthis monnieri
(now termed the Landrvennec and Gahard Formations) of
Brittany; and (b) Upper Devonian (Frasnian). These
Frasnian forms, whilst corresponding in some species to
faunas of similar age from France, are found in a quartzite
facies not exactly matched by described faunas from
northwest France in rocks of that age (Fig. 5).
Thus, to summarize, there are no fewer than four quite
separate faunas and ages represented in the Budleigh
Lower Ordovician
In the Early Ordovician (Tremadoc-Arenig), what is now
western Europe was divided into three separate palaeocontinents (Fig. 6). Most of the area formed one corner of the
vast Gondwanan continent which stretched half way round
the world to include South America, Africa, India, most of
Arabia, Antarctica and Australia (Cocks & Fortey 1988).
The European corner of Gondwana was at high latitudes,
completely lacking carbonate deposits and with widespread
but low diversity faunas in shallow-water clastic facies,
consisting of a few trilobites and bizarre inarticulate
brachiopods such as the oldest fauna at Budleigh Salterton
(Fig. 2). These brachiopods are also known from France
(from Brittany, Normandy, Sarthe and the Montaigne
Noire), the Iberian Peninsula, Czechoslovakia, Morocco,
Libya and Algeria. Although these bizarre inarticulates are
not known from elsewhere in southern Britain, the
Stiperstones Quartzite of Shropshire is developed in a
similar facies to the Gr~s Armoricain, and the contemporary
Arenig trilobite faunas of South Wales show strong
Gondwanan affinity (Fortey & Owens 1987). Sedimentological studies of the Armorican quartzites also support the
integrity of both southern Britain and Amorica as being
attached to the north African part of Gondwana (Noblet &
Lefort 1990). Gondwana was separated from the tropical
continent of Laurentia (principally North America, but
including Scotland and northwestern Ireland) by the Iapetus
Ocean, and from Baltica (which included all of northern
Europe eastwards to Novaya Zemlya and the Urals) by the
Tornquist Sea. These separations were originally identified
on faunal criteria (Wilson 1966; Cocks & Fortey 1982) at a
time when palaeomagnetic data were equivocal; but more
Fig. 2. Inarticulate brachiopods from pebbles of Arenig age in Triassic conglomerate, Budleigh Salterton, Devon: (a) Lingulepis crassipyxis
Havli~ek, B 21675 x 2; (b), Ectenoglossa,.lesueuri (Rouault), B 14419 1; (, d), Lingulobolus hawkei (Rouault), ventral and lateral views, B
14327 x 1.5, W. Vicary and T. Davidson Collections.
O R D O V I C I A N TO D E V O N I A N P A L A E O G E O G R A P H Y
167
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(~
Fig. 3. Articulate brachiopods from pebbles of Llandeilo age in Triassic conglomerate, Budleigh Salterton, Devon: (a, b, d) Corineorthis
erratica (Davidson), (a, b) latex cast of exterior and natural mould of ventral interior, B 20936 1.5; (d) latex cast of dorsal interior, B 20936
x 2; () Salopia? pulvinata (Salter), latex cast of dorsal interior, BB 70910, x 2.5; (e, f) Tafilaltia valpyana (Davidson), (e) latex casts of
dorsal exterior and interior, BB 95940, x 3, BB 95941, x 2.5.
recent palaeomagnetic results have confirmed them, with

the surprising additional information that Baltica had
rotated through nearly a right angle during the Ordovician
(Torsvik & Trench 1991). Whether Southern Britain was
truly in the place shown in Fig. 6a is quite uncertain;
perhaps a more realistic position would have been further
along the African coast, maybe even as far as Mauretania,
since a preliminary analysis of late Cambrian and Tremadoc
facies and faunas show some affinities which indicate such
positioning (R. Feist, W.S. McKerrow pers. comm.).
However, at some time during the Ordovician, Avalonia
became detached from the main continent and was carried
northwards. This was a segment or segments of Gondwana,
comprising some of the eastern seaboard of the United
States; part of the maritime provinces of Canada,
particularly Nova Scotia and eastern Newfoundland;
southeast Ireland; England; and Belgium and adjacent
areas. Opinions are divided on the date of the separation;
some believe it to be as early as Tremadoc, but it is shown
here (Fig. 6) as post-Arenig, and was most probably
Llanvirn; although positive evidence for separation on
faunal grounds is somewhat later. The divorce of Avalonia
from Gondwana resulted in the progressive narrowing of
both the Tornquist Sea and also the Iapetus Ocean, so that
Avalonia and Baltica merged in the late Ordovician and
both collided with Laurentia in the late Silurian and early
Devonian. The widening area between Avalonia and
Gondwana was the site of the Rheic Ocean. Opinions differ
as to whether the western Avalonian area of what is now
North America, and eastern Avalonia (southeast Ireland,
England and the Brabant massif) were originally one
microplate or more, for example Ziegler (1990, p. 27)
regards them as three separate microcontinents; however,
the Cambrian facies and faunas were the same in both South
Wales and Newfoundland, and there were certainly the

same ostracode and fish faunas in Nova Scotia and Wales in
the Silurian, and thus the two halves of Avalonia are shown
together in the reconstructions presented here (Fig. 6).
During the past ten years much discussion has centred on
the detailed timing of these events and also on the relative
configurations and positions of the main land masses,
including Armorica (northwest France). For example, the
shallow-water marine benthic faunas of eastern Avalonia are
quite different from those of Baltica during the early
Ordovician, but from Mid-Ordovician times onwards they
became progressively more similar. The time when
Tornquist Sea finally closed as Baltica and Avalonia collided
is less certain. A calc-alkaline volcanic arc is now known
from northeast of the Anglo-Brabant massif and this was
active during the late Caradoc and possibly the early
Ashgill. The collision may have caused the intrusion of the
buried granites along Tornquist's line and running eastwards
from the southern North Sea (Ziegler 1990 p. 19 and fig. 2)
which have been dated at about 440 Ma, close to the
Ordovician-Silurian boundary; the ostracodes were essentially the same in Avalonia and Baltica by the early
Llandovery (Berdan 1990). Woodcock (1991) has reviewed
the hidden Caledonides under eastern England and
Belgium. The Iapetus closed progressively from late
Llandovery times in the north (northern Norway and
Greenland) to early Mid-Devonian, with a strike-slip
component of considerable but unknown dimensions.
Middle Ordovician
In contrast, the second Budleigh Salterton fauna (Fig. 3), of
late Llandeilo age is not Avalonian or Baltic, but of
Armorican aspect, with identical brachiopod species known
168
L.R.M.
(a)
COCKS
(b)
(d)
(g)
(c)
(e)
(It)
(r)
(i)
~j)
(k)
Fig. 4. Brachiopods from pebbles of Lower Devonian (Lochovian-Pragian) age in Triassic conglomerate, Budleigh Salterton, Devon: (a)
Salopina adventita Cocks, natural mould of ventral interior, BC 6576 3; (b) Platyorthis monnieri (Rouault), natural moulds of several ventral
and one dorsal interiors, B 21586 x 1.5; (c) Zthyris? incerta Davidson, natural mould of dorsal interior, B 21711 2; (d), Mclearnites rouaulti
(Davidson), natural mould of ventral interior, B 21600 1.5; (e) Leptostrophia etheridgii (Davidson), latex cast of dorsal interior, B 21539
1.8; (f) Shaleria vicaryi (Davidson), natural mould of ventral interior, BC 6088 2; (g, h) Howellella cortazari Carls, natural mould of
dorsal interior, BB 70944 3; (i, j) Katunia? vicaryi (Davidson), natural mould of conjoined valves, B 21530 x 3; (k) Nucleospira vicaryi
Davidson, natural mould of dorsal interior, B 21549 2.
not only from Normandy but also from Czechoslovakia, and
with the trilobite fauna matched with the Botella Quartzite
of Spain (S.F. Morris pers. comm.). This helps to establish
that the shallowest-water biofacies of the two continents
were distinct by the Mid-Ordovician, and that the southern
boundary of Avalonia lay to the north of the Armorican
quartzites. This deduction is supported by the small fauna
described by Bassett (1981) from boulders within a
Devonian tectonic and sedimentary melange at Gorran
Haven, Cornwall (Fig. 1); although none of the five
brachiopod genera there are actually conspecific with
Budleigh Salterton forms and they appear to be of a slightly
different (and probably a little older) Llandeilo age.
Thus the Budleigh Salterton pebbles may be regarded as
'Brittany in Britain'. Probably the products of a Triassic
fluvial braided stream environment (Warrington & IvimeyCook in Cope et al. 1992, p. 98), they had a southerly
provenance (Audley-Charles 1970, pl. 7) and were perhaps
eroded from a mid-Channel position (as postulated by
Davidson more than a century ago). Their origins would,
like the rest of the Armorican craton, have lain to the south
of the putative Rheic suture and the mid-European
Caledonides. Evidence from the Brabant Massif (which was
in the same tectonic block as the London platform and to
the north of the Rheic suture) dates an initial phase of
compressional deformation along the southern margin as
mid-Caradoc, after which there was back-arc extension
which triggered tholeiitic basaltic magmatism (Ziegler 1990,
p.23 and encl. 2). The faunas subsequently reflect this, with
the deeper-water Foliomena brachiopod fauna known from
the Ashgill of Belgium to the north of the Rheic suture
(Sheehan 1987; Fortey & Cocks 1992).
Turning further afield from Budleigh Salterton, in the
past few years much collatory work has been published on
the Lower and Middle Palaeozoic of the mainland of
Europe. Apart from the relatively undeformed Bohemian
massif, these areas have been subsequently heavily
overprinted by the compressive Variscan (late Visean to late
Westphalian) and Alpine (Tertiary) orogenies, leaving the
true palinspastic early Palaeozoic reconstructions of the area
21 . . ,,
169
~:
(n)
(b)
(e)
(i)
(c)
(t)
(j)
(d)
(g)
(k)
(h)
(!)
Fig. 5. Brachiopods from pebbles of Upper Devonian (Frasnian) age in Triassic conglomerate, Budleigh Salterton, Devon: (a) Petrocrania
transversa (Davidson), natural internal mould, B 21544 2; (b, ) Douvillina edgelliana (Davidson), natural internal moulds of dorsal and
ventral valves, B 21534 x 2; B 21541 x 1.5; (d) Douvillina? budleighensis (Davidson), natural internal mould of ventral valve, B 21538 2;
(e) Anoplia sp., latex cast of dorsal and ventral interiors, BC 21550 and B 21725 x2; (f, g) Productella vicaryi (Salter), internal moulds of
ventral valves, B 21550 and B 21725 x 2; (h) Cryptonella? sp., natural dorsal internal mould, BC 6435 x 1.5; (i) uncinuliform rhynchonellide,
natural ventral internal mould, BC 21528 x 1.5; (j) "Camarotoechia' valpyana (Davidson), natural mould of conjoined valves, B 20984 x 3;
(k) Cyrtospirifer verneuili (Murchison), natural ventral internal mould, B 21542 x 1.5; (!), Cyrtospirifer? micropterus (Davidson), natural dorsal
internal mould, BC 6090 x 1.5.
rather problematical (Coward 1990). Ziegler (1990)
reviewed the whole area in a masterly fashion and this
been augmented by reviews by Erdtmann (1991)
Germany, Verniers & Grootel (1991) on Belgium,
Sch6nlaub (1992) on Austria.
has
has
on
and
Silurian
The Silurian (although not represented at Budleigh
Salterton) was a period of cosmopolitan faunas, since the
major continents were not far enough apart to encourage
provinciality in the common brachiopods, trilobites and
other benthic fauna. The exception was the ostracodes
(Berdan 1990), which were the last group of organisms to
reflect the separate sides of the Iapetus Ocean, and
continued to do so until the early Devonian. Exceptions to
the general cosmopolitanism are the two peripolar faunas,
the Clarkeia fauna to the south and the Tuvaella fauna to
the north (Cocks & Scotese 1990). In northwest Europe the
Rheic Ocean was widening, which was indicated first by
different brachiopod species in comparable facies (e.g.

between Shropshire and Bohemia) in the Wenlock and some
different genera by Ludlow times.
Devonian
The two younger faunas in the Budleigh Salterton pebbles
are of Lower Devonian (Pragian-Lochkovian) and Upper
Devonian (Frasnian) age. There are very comparable Lower
Devonian quartzites bearing similar brachiopods in northwestern France, for example the Land6vennec and Gahard
Formations of Brittany (formerly known as the Gr~s
Orthis monnieri, after the same common brachiopod which
is also abundant at Budleigh Salterton, Fig. 4b). However,
there are no known late Devonian described faunas from
quartzites in Armorica comparable to those forming the
Frasnian Budleigh Salterton pebbles, although there are
some sandstone beds, known as the Gr~s de Goasquellou,
within the Frasnian Traonliors Formation which crops out
sporadically some 20 km east of Brest. The only brachiopods
170
L. R. M. C O C K S
Laurentia
"J~Y
" Siberia
(a)
lapetus ocean
- 30 S
lapet us
30 S
v,f~cear~
2"roqu/.st
-60 S
'
Rheic ocean
Baltica
kx.__~
-60S .......
\
Siberia
CARADOC
c::2
(c)
Laurussia
Laurentia
Eq
SOS~
..W
gt~e~Cocea6 f x
Africa
%
,2
30 S "
~ L A N D O V E R y
Fig. 6. The palaeogeography of northwest Europe, (a) in Mid-Arenig times, with southern Britain attached to Gondwana, (b) in early Caradoc
times, with Avalonia, including the London-Brabant massif, detached from Gondwana, () in late Llandovery times, showing the Avalonian
fusion with Baltica and the narrowing Iapetus Ocean and (d), in mid-Devonian times, after the closure of Iapetus. Arm., Armorica; Ib.,
Iberia; Fla., Florida.
listed from the Gr~s de Goasquellou are Apousiella cf.
bouchardi, 'Atrypa' and Douvillina dutertrii, but Productella
subaculeata, Cyrtospirifer cf. verneuili, and various other
phyla are known from the surrounding Traonliors
Formation, which is described as very poorly fossiliferous
(Babin et al. 1982). Thus it seems likely that these two
Devonian faunas from Brittany are also the same as those in
the Budleigh Salterton pebbles, although the actual source
area for the latter may well have come from a now-eroded
northward extension of the present Armorican outcrops.
The palaeogeography of late Devonian times has not yet
been satisfactorily elucidated in the region; in southern
Devon itself there were deep-water sediments being
deposited in a very unstable tectonic situation (Bluck et al.
in Cope et al. 1992, p. 65); however, the quartzites forming
the Budleigh Salterton pebbles themselves clearly originated
elsewhere. Various published palaeogeographies (e.g.
Dreesen 1989) show a 'Condroz Shelf' of shallower-water
sediments in a fringing belt lying to the south of the
London-Brabant high, but of course those deposits lay on
the northern margin of the Rheic Ocean in contrast to the
Budleigh Salterton pebbles which originated to the south.
Certainly the contemporary faunas found in quartzites in
Belgium and Germany, which lay to the north of the Rheic
Ocean, are quite different from those of Budleigh Salterton.
Conclusions
It is not so long since the criteria underlying the correct use
of fossils to elucidate palaeogeography have been clarified
(Cocks & Fortey 1982). They are; (1) similarity of faunas
alone does not necessarily indicate geographic continuity;
(2) recognition of facies belts parallel to the edges of former
continents can be used in conjunction with the differences
displayed by faunas of the inner shelf (assuming comparable
sediments) to distinguish separate continents; (3) planktonic
or epipelagic faunas are primarily related to palaeolatitude
and not to palaeocontinental distribution; (4) larval
dispersal differences cause different faunal groups to cross
oceans and other barriers at very different times; and (5)
faunas from oceanic islands may have mixed affinities
compared with those from neighbouring continents. Thus
some key fossil groups are more useful than others (Fortey
& Mellish 1992). Through the careful analysis of the Lower
Palaeozoic faunas, such as those from Budleigh Salterton,
the relative positions of palaeocontinents can be deduced,
and these results can be combined with palaeomagnetic and
other data generated by quite different branches of the
Earth Sciences.
The four palaeogeographical maps presented here (Fig.
6) are ostensibly based on a variety of relatively recent
sources, including Cocks & Fortey (1982), McKerrow et al.
(1991), Torsvik & Trench (1991), and Ziegler (1990).
However, the truth is that they are actually built upon a
marvellous variety of previous work, stretching well back
into the nineteenth century and continuing forward into the
active present. From the original concept of rocks dated by
fossils, stratigraphy was born; but the fossils have always
also been used to try to determine relative relationships;
what would now be called ecology, basin analysis and
palaeogeography. This palaeontological and biostratigraphical work has become progressively teamed with other
disciplines of geology ranging from geophysics and
palaeomagnetic studies through structural geology to
171
petrology and mineralogy, so that the end results can be

seen as a real contribution to the understanding of the
history of the Earth. The Geological Society of London,
with its substantial volumes of varied publications over
many years, has always been at the centre of this learning
progression and looks likely to remain so.
I am grateful to S. Morris for re-evaluating the Budleigh Salterton
trilobites, to Claude Babin for information on French localities, and
to R. Fortey and S. McKerrow for discussion. The figured
specimens are deposited in The Natural History Museum, London
(B, BB and BC).
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L.R.M.
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Received 2 October 1992; accepted 29 October 1992
From QJGS,20, 116, 286.

l. On the P~BBLZ-BZDof BUDr.~.IOHSXLTERT01~. By W. VICARr, Esq.,
F.G.S. With a Norp. on the FossiLS; by J. W. SALTER, Esq.,
F.G.S.
[The publication of this paper is unavoidably deferred.]
(Abstract.)
THE south coast of Devonshire from Petit Tor, near Babbacombe
Bay, to a little beyond Sidmouth, exhibits cliffs of New Red Sandstone, one of the beds of which, near Budleigh Salterton, is composed of pebbles of all sizes and of a flattened oval form ; this bed
attains a maximum thickness of about 100 feet, and some of the
pebbles composing it were found by Mr. Vicary to contain peculiar
fossils.
Mr. Vicary gave a description of the physical features of the area
over which the pebble-bed extends, and entered into the stratigraphical details of this and the associated strata, referring to Mr.
Salter's Note for information upon the affinities of the fossils.
In his Note, Mr. Salter observed that, on comparing the fossils of
the Budleigh-Salterton pebbles with those from the Caen sandstone
in the Society's Museum, he found that all the species contained in
the latter collection were also represented in the former. The
general aspect o f the fossils was stated to be quite unlike that exhibited by English Lower Silurian collections ; and Mr. Salter therefore suggested that the exact equivalent of the Caen sandstone does
not exist in England. This difference in the two faunas appeared
to him to favour the theory of the former existence of a barrier between the middle and northern European regions during the Siluri,~n
period.
Note on the FossILs from the BUDI,EIOH SALTERTONPEBBLE-BF~.
By J. W. SXLXZR,F.G.S., A.L.S.
W m ~ I first examined the pebbles from the Budleigh Salterton beds
in the choice cabinet of Mr. Vicary, of Exeter, the impression made
upon me was that anything and everything might be expected on
British soil. Familiar as we had long been with the great variety
of forms displayed by our own Silurian series, there had, nevertheless, been so far among them a great uniformity of type, and that a
type shared by the fossils of the whole of the northern or Scandinavian area, as Sir R. I. Murchison and others have long ago indicated. We knew that the principal forms found in Russia and
Sweden were represented more or less perfectly in the sandstones
and shales of the Border-counties, and the slates of our Welsh and
Cumbrian series. Nor would it have surprised any student of the
palaeozoic rocks to find a large development of North American
forms in our western limits, as, for instance, the Canadian fossils
found by Sir R. I. Murchison in the West Highlands, or the New
England types discovered and described by General Portlock in the
county of Tyrone.
From QJGS,26, 70-71.

1. Notes on the BR/tCrrIoPoDA hitherto obtained from the " P~.BBL~BED " o f BUDLEIOK-SALTERTOI~, near EXMOUTH, "in DEVONSHIRE.
By Trro~xs Dxv~so~r, Esq., F.R.S., F.G.S., &c.*

(PLArZs IV.-VI..)
I~oDu~IO~.
O~ the 16th of December, 1863, ~fessrs. W. icary and J. W. Salter
made an important communication to the Geological Society on the
"pebble-bed" at Budleigh-Salterton, wherein some thirty-six
different fossils were described and illustrated; of these, ten or
twelve were Brachiopoda.
Since that period Messrs. Vicary, alpy, Edgell, Box, Winwood,
* Thispaper was read at the Exeter meeting of the British Association, in
August 1869, but has subsequentlyundergone considerablerevision.
and others have been zealously at work collecting additional information, and every specimen that might assist in determining the age
of the rock from which these drifted pebbles were derived has been
carefully preserved*.
Sedimentary structures: Sorby and the last decade

J.R.L.
ALLEN
Postgraduate Research Institute for Sedimentology, The University o f Reading, P.O. Box 227, Whiteknights,
Reading R G 6 2AB, UK
Abstract: Henry Clifton Sorby pioneered in the last century the description and especially the
hydrodynamic interpretation of sedimentary structures, together with their use as palaeocurrent
indicators. Research completed since the last syntheses were published a decade ago shows that work
along these lines continues to be necessary and relevant, particularly as regards the physical
explanation of structures, and to present significant challenges and opportunities. Perhaps the most
pressing needs are for a better understanding of (1) bedforms in gravels, silts and carbonate
sediments, (2) tidal and especially sand-wave bedding, (3) hummocky and swaley cross-stratification,
and (4) soft-sediment and dewatering structures in turbidites. Many sedimentary structures present a
little-exploited opportunity to quantify process-rates and define short time-periods from the rock
record.
Henry Clifton Sorby (1826-1908) of Sheffield may with

every justification be called the 'Father of Sedimentology'.
In his great Presidential Address to the Geological Society
of London (Sorby 1908), he drew together into one bright
beacon some of the glimmers of sedimentological thought
which had guided his independently financed scientific
career lasting more than half a century. In papers dating
from the 1850s, he had pioneered the descriptive and
hydrodynamic study of sedimentary structures, together
with their application to palaeocurrent and palaeogeographic analysis, the latter topic receiving no general
synthesis until another century had passed (Potter &
Pettijohn 1963). He had also introduced new ways of
observing and of reasoning about sediments and sedimentary rocks in general, from the experimental, to the
chemical, to the petrographic using the microscope. Always
his approach was quantitative, and it is perhaps partly this
which, while his brilliance was acknowledged by his
contemporaries, delayed the widespread acceptance of his
viewpoint and methods.
The description and especially the hydrodynamic
interpretation of sedimentary structures was what Sorby
(1908) emphasized in his Presidential Address. Others at
about this time took up work on these questions (Cornish
1901; Gilbert 1914; Kindle 1917; Bucher 1919), but interest
was short-lived. In 1948, however, Shrock published his
Sequence in layered rocks. Although written from the
standpoint of the structural geologist concerned to establish
way-up in deformed strata, this book had the incidental
effect of drawing attention in an emphatic way to the variety
and richness for environmental interpretation of sedimentary structures, sparking off a tradition of structure atlases
(e.g. Pettijohn & Potter 1964; Gubler et al. 1966;
Conybeare & Crook 1968; Ricci Lucchi 1970). In parallel,
there has grown up an interest in marrying sound
descriptions of sedimentary structures to an understanding
of their origin and interpretation, in term of natural
environmental factors, loose-boundary hydraulics, and the
fluid mechanics of disperse systems (e.g. Middleton 1965;

Allen 1968, 1982a; Collinson & Thompson 1982). Allen's
(1982a) two-volume work aimed to be a comprehensive and
critical synthesis of the field which would serve to focus
research activities for some time to come. Although the
work of description cannot be described as complete, the
emphasis today is unquestionably on obtaining a fundamental understanding of sedimentary structures, through
instrumented field work, critical laboratory experiments,
and theoretical (including numerical) studies. With his
appreciation of the value of precise measurement in
geology, Sorby would not have felt out of place
intellectually among those researching today on sedimentary
structures, but he would almost certainly have expressed
amazement at the number of investigators now active, the
sophistication of their techniques, and the extent of their
understanding. In the decade or so since the preparation of
the last syntheses (Allen 1982a; Collinson & Thompson
1982), many more advances worthy of attention have been
made in the field pioneered by Sorby. The following
introductory outline, while defining the nature of these
advances, cannot claim to be exhaustive.
Aeolian bedforms and bedding

The publication of McKee's (1979) A Study of Global Sand
Seas heralded a substantial renewal of interest in aeolian
processes, landforms and bedding structures, expressed
partly through major reviews (Greeley & Iversen 1985; Pye
& Tsoar 1990). To these may be added Fisher &
Schmincke's (1984) account of the sedimentary features
generated by sediment-laden gaseous flows related to
explosive volcanicity.
Fryberger (1979) made an important advance by linking
dune types to wind regimes, evaluated so as to reveal the
way the potential for sand transport varied with wind
direction and frequency. Typically, barkhan and transverse
dunes depend on unimodal sand-transport regimes of little
175
176
J.R.L.
directional variance. Such dunes can preserve in their

internal cross-bedding a record of daily fluctuations of wind
strength and direction (Hunter & Richmond 1988).
Dome-shaped dunes, beginning to be detected in the
rock-record (Karpeta 1990), also arise under conditions of
unimodal sand transport. Longitudinal (seif) dunes, with
their bimodally distributed patterns of internal crossbedding, are related to a range of sand-transport regimes
(high-variance unimodal, bimodal or complex) and in some
instances form where there are only small, but distinct,
seasonal shifts of wind direction (Tsoar 1982, 1983; Rubin &
Hunter 1985). Complex transport regimes may create
longitudinal dunes capable of oblique movement (Sneh
1988; see also Clemmensen & Blakey 1989). Star dunes, the
most complicated in terms of internal structure, arise in
complex sand-transport regimes, in which the wind either
more or less boxes the compass or shows two diametrically
opposed, commonly seasonal modes (see also Clemmensen
1987; Lancaster 1989). Aeolian cross-bedding patterns
(Rubin 1987) have now been evaluated regionally for a
number of epochs (Glennie 1983; Peterson 1988), to the
great benefit of palaeoclimate studies.
Zibar and granule ripples are now better known (Neilson
& Kocurek 1986; Fryberger et al. 1992), and Anderson
(1987) has shown theoretically that the wavelength of
ballistic ripples in sand depends on grain size and sand
transport rate. Adhesion structures take many forms and are
important indicators of aeolian deposition on damp surfaces
(Kocurek & Fielder 1982; Olsen et al. 1989), such as playas
and the intertidal zone of beaches.
Sediment drifts accumulated at obstacles in the path of
the wind are common features not only in terrestrial deserts
(Hesp 1981; Clemmensen 1986; Gunatilaka & Mwango
1989) but also on other planets possessing an atmosphere
(Greeley & Iversen 1985). Experimental work by Paola et
al. (1986) has refined our understanding of the complex
patterns of flow and surface drag force which shape
structures of this general class.
Aqueous sandy bedforms in unidirectional currents

Continuing attention is rightly being given to the naming,
classification and general hydraulic relations of sandy
bedforms generated by unidirectional aqueous currents, a
topic in which Sorby (1908) was a pioneer, with his
categories of 'ripple-drift' and 'drift-bedding'. Ashley (1990)
presented a wide-ranging scheme of classification which
clarifies a number of issues and could help international
communication. To Allen's (1982a) general review and
synthesis of bedforms and their hydraulic stability fields may
be added that of Southard & Boguchwal (1990a, b), in
which new experimental information is included (Costello &
Southard 1981; Boguchwal & Southard 1990). Southard and
his associates present the data partly in velocity-depthgrain size graphs and, like Allen (1982a), stress the role of
temperature (viscosity) in controlling the positions of
boundaries between stability fields. The role that water
temperature plays in influencing the character of bedforms
in aqueous environments certainly is too little appreciated,
when it is recalled that the temperature of a sandur stream is
little above 0 C, whereas that in a tropical lagoon can be as
high as 25 C. Mantz (1992) made an important study of
bedforms generated in quartz silts and very fine sands; a
wide variety of ripple marks, for example, can arise in these
ALLEN
by no means uncommon grades of sediment. Sumer &
Bakioglu (1984) provide a rigorous theoretical explanation
for the well-known grain size-limitation of current ripples,
and Gyr & Schmid (1989) link the initiation of ripples to
sweep events in the innermost turbulent boundary layer.
Better models have been proposed for the shape of, and
flow over, ripples and dunes (Haque & Mahmoud 1985;
Wiberg & Nelson 1992). Miiller & Gyr's (1986) work
suggests how 'boils' on the surface of a river may be linked
to the two- transforming to three-dimensional vortices
generated in the mixing layer of the separated flow
downstream of dunes. A hydraulic sequence of bedforms
similar to that in quartz sands is reported from detrital halite
(Karcz & Zak 1987). The major gaps in knowledge,
however, remain the character and hydraulics of bedforms
in gravels and in carbonate sediments. Although well known
to arise during exceptional events, such as breakout floods,
gravel dunes (Fig. 1) are proving to be common structures in
macrotidal estuaries and in ephemeral stream systems where
intense flows are more normal. However, these structures--and the rock-record affords many examples of
them---cannot yet be interpreted hydraulically in the same
way as their counterparts in sand-grade sediments, because
of a lack of experimental data.
Despite much recent attention, upper-stage plane beds,
and the parallel lamination linked to them, remain
enigmatic and controversial. The seemingly invariable
association of parallel lamination with upper-stage plane
beds means that the sedimentary surface is only nominally
plane, and that the lamination records the existence and
passage over the bed of extremely fiat sediment waves
(Alien 1985a). What remains unclear from these almost
exclusively experimental studies is whether these waves
should be attributed to a bed-water surface interaction,
turbulence effects (burst-sweep events, large coherent
structures), sediment grading and sorting, or to some
combination of these factors (Allen 1985a; Bridge & Best
1988; Cheel & Middleton 1986; Paola et al. 1989; Cheel
1990; Best & Bridge 1992). The first possibility could be
further explored by experiments in closed, rectangular
conduits. Plane beds could arise when the degree of
sediment suspension reaches a critical stage and dunes are
'washed out' (see below) as local shear stresses become
excessive (Bridge 1981; Fredsoe 1981; Johns et al. 1990).
The work of Weedman & Slingerland (1985) suggests that
some parting lineations found on plane beds--Sorby's
(1908) 'graining in the line of the current'--may be more
widely spaced than predicted by 'sediment-free' models,
because of the significantly enhanced viscosity (effective
viscosity) of the bed-load layer over plain water under
conditions of intense grain transport.
An experimental study by Arnott & Hand (1989)
provoked renewed interest (Allen 1991) in massive bedding
and the long-standing contention that, at sufficiently high
rates of sediment deposition, lamination cannot form
because of grain occlusion (review in Allen 1982a). Under
conditions of very unsteady flow, such as typify flooding
rivers and turbidity currents, the sediment deposition rate is
effectively independent of the instantaneous hydraulic
conditions (Allen 1982a; Lowe 1988). As Sorby (1908)
stated, it is essential to regard such structures as climbing
ripple cross-lamination as recording geologically significant
processes operating on time-scales of minutes or hours (see
also Ashley et al. 1982). This concept of the time-scale of
S E D I M E N T A R Y STRUCTURES
177
Fig. 1. Dunes in pebble gravel, Hills

Flats, Severn Estuary. Ebb tidal stream
from upper right, with spade for scale.
many sedimentological events has been accepted for some

time, but his statement must have greatly surprised many of
Sorby's contemporaries.
Studies in the rock-record have further strengthened a
recognition of the complexity of bedforms in rivers (Allen
1983a; Haszeldine 1983; Kirk 1983), and that many fluvial
channel sand-bodies present a composite of mainly bar- and
channel-related 'architectural elements' (Allen 1983a; Miall
1985).
Many gravel-bed rivers are steep enough for supercritical
flow to occur locally or during flood stages. Transverse ribs
(Rust & Gostin 1981), a common feature of their beds, may
record an interaction between the current and the gravel in
transport such that zones of alternately subcritical and
supercritical flow arise along the stream (Allen 1983b).
Tidal bedding
Shallow-marine tidal environments are complex, partly
because of the multiplicity of periods on which the tide
varies, but also on account of the seasonal but otherwise
random, frequently substantial influence of storm surges
(Pugh 1987). Progress in understanding tidal bedding
patterns continues on some fronts to be slow.
Work on contemporary and sub-fossil sandy bedforms
confirms intraset discontinuities in all their variety in
cross-bedding units as a major criterion of tidal sedimentation and guide to tidal regime (Dalrymple 1984a; De
Mowbray & Visser 1984; Langhorne & Read 1986; Terwindt
& Brouwer 1986; Dalrymple et al. 1990). In addition to
spacing patterns indicative of the spring-neap cycle, it is now
possible to recognize evidence of the diurnal inequality
typical of semidiurnal tides (Allen 1985b; De Boer et al.
1989). However, with subtidal bedforms, particularly the
larger and deeper-lying ones, little progress has been made
on the question of internal structure; this is likely to present
as equal a variety as the tidal regimes that are recognized.
Langhorne (1982) was able to show in some detail how a
particular sandwave varied in position and shape over short
periods in relation to changing tidal (and wave) conditions,
but his method is highly labour-intensive and provides only
a general insight into the internal structures generated.

Some subtidal sand waves are known to include seismic
reflectors pointing to an internal 'master bedding' (Bern6 et
al. 1988), as suggested by some models of sandwave internal
structures (Allen 1980).
From the rock record, Allen (1982b), P.A. Allen &
Homewood (1984), Kreisa & Moiola (1986), and Uhlir et al.
(1988) described tidal cross-bedding with internal features
indicative of the operation of semidiurnal or diurnal tides
and of the spring-neap cycle. Some of the sequences
described showed clear evidence of the diurnal inequality.
Partly because of their importance for a n understanding
of the Earth-Moon system over geological time, great
attention has been paid to lamination patterns in mixed
muddy and sandy sediments accumulated vertically under
tidal conditions. Work in modern environments shows that a
single tide can give rise to a variety of complex patterns of
lamination, but that, from a succession of laminae,
semidiurnal or diurnal, fortnightly, and annual (seasonal)
layerings are nonetheless recognizable (Van den Berg 1981;
Tessier et al. 1989; Allen 1990; Dalrymple et al. 1991; Roep
1991). In rocks, in many respects more easily handled than
loose, contemporary sediments, sophisticated techniques of
time-series analysis have allowed several tidal periodicities
to be isolated among complex patterns of vertically accreted
laminae (Kvale et al. 1989; Tessier & Gigot 1989; Tessier et
al. 1989; Brown et al. 1990; Kuecher et al. 1990; Kvale &
Archer 1990, 1991). Undoubtedly the most penetrating and
rigorous of these studies is that of Williams (1989) on the
reinterpreted, late Precambrian Elatina Formation of South
Australia. In the complex signal represented by the vertical
sequence of lamina thicknesses preserved in the Elatina
mudstones, he could identify the semidiurnal, diurnal,
fortnightly and monthly periodicities, as well as the lunar
apsides and nodal cycles.
Lee-side processes and stratification

The processes of grain settling (fallout) and avalanching
(grainflow) on the leeward side of steep bedforms strongly
influence the profile of these structures and the kinds and
178
J.R.L.
ALLEN
relative importance of the stratification they preserve

internally (Allen 1982a). Sorby (1908) took a keen interest
in these processes and, in particular, made a detailed study
of angles of repose and their variation with grain size and
packing; he noted that the slope of a heap of grains was
significantly greater when failure occured than after
avalanching had ceased.
Chakrabarti & Lowe (1981) and Anderson (1988)
devised theoretical models of grain settling, and Hunter &
Kocurek (1986), Anderson (1988) and Hand & Bartberger
(1988) further explored the process experimentally. They
confirm that the deposition-rate profile becomes less
concave-up with increasing sediment transport rate, and also
with decreasing bedform height, patterns which affect the
shape of the leeward profile and may bear on the conditions
under which, as noted above, subaqueous dunes pass into
upper-stage plane beds (Chakraborty & Bose 1992). Grain
size also declines with increasing distance from the bedform
crest. Anderson (1988) found a deposition-rate maximum
very close to the crest of aeolian dunes, and a similar
maximum of grain size, known experimentally, was
predicted by Chakrabarti & Lowe (1981).
Lobe-shaped sandflow cross-strata are now known to
occur within large subaqueous as well as aeolian bedforms
(Buck 1985; Hunter 1985a), and prove overwhelmingly
dominant over fallout laminae. Hunter (1985b) has
succeeded in producing a rigorous theory for the frequency
and duration of avalanches as a function of sediment
transport rate.
position sketched a decade ago (Allen 1982a). Mainly

theoretical studies have confirmed the intrinsic instability of
an erodible bed beneath an oscillatory current (Blondeaux
1990), the transition from rolling grain to vortex ripples with
increasing bed relief (Vittori & Blondeaux 1990), and the
unsteady vortex but steady, cellular streaming currents
associated with the vortex bedforms (Du Toit & Sleath
1981; Longuet-Higgins 1981; Hara & Mei 1990a; Blondeaux
& Vittori 1991). Brick-pattern ripples, formed at high
Reynolds numbers (Vongissessomjai 1984), turn out to be
associated with a three-dimensional pattern of steady,
cellular streaming (Hara & Mei 1990b; Vittori 1992; Vittori
& Blondeaux 1992), as sketched for the bed in Fig. 2, and
seem to be due to centrifugal instability (Hara & Mei
1990b). The character of ripples in combined oscillatory and
steady currents remains poorly understood, but there is
some evidence that crests become sinuous in cross-flows
(Lee Young & Sleath 1990). Field studies have added to the
record of large wave-related ripples on the continental shelf
in depths up to 160 m (Forbes & Boyd 1987; Leckie 1988).
Because several controlling factors are involved, it is
impossible to make unique inferences about ancient wave
conditions from the size, shape and grain size of
wave-related ripples preserved in rocks. Within this
constraint, P.A. Allen (1984), Clifton & Dingier (1984) and
Diem (1985) offer some useful refinements on the older
interpretative models.
Bedforms related to wind waves

Several important advances in knowledge, understanding
and application of these structures have been made on the
While there is a growing appreciation from the rock-record

of the abundance and distinctiveness as a facies of storm
beds, typified by hummocky and/or swaley crossstratification (Kreisa 1981; Brenchley & Newall 1982;
Hunter & Clifton 1982; Mount 1982; Brenchley 1985; Surlyk
& Noe-Nygaard 1986; Leckie 1988; P.A. Allen & Underhill
1989; Smith & Ainsworth 1989; DeCelles & Cavazza 1992),
progress in understanding has been slow, partly because it is
very difficult to measure and record complex, high-energy
storm processes in the contemporary environment.
Field evidence indicates a link between hummocky
cross-stratification, two- or three-dimensional wave-related
ripples of large size, and surface wind-waves (typically
three-dimensional and, if only for this reason, generating
three-dimensional bottom-current patterns) of storm scale
(Swift et al. 1983; Duke 1985; Greenwood & Sherman 1986;
Leckie 1988; Cheel & Leckie 1992). Experimentally,
oscillatory flows similar to those expected from storm waves
can generate large bedforms and internal structures
resembling hummocky cross-stratification, under conditions
apparently equivalent broadly to the dune-upper plane bed
transition (Arnott & Southard 1990; Southard et al. 1990;
Myrow & Southard 1991). A decline in wave-current
strength as a storm abates can be expected to generate a bed
with a distinctive vertical pattern of structures and textures
(see also Allen 1982a), including a possible, early massive
portion (DeCelles & Cavazza 1992) due to a high rate of
sediment fallout (Allen 1982a, 1991; Lowe 1988). The
available evidence, such as it amounts to, is against the
storm-surge ebb (Mount 1982) and unidirectional flow (P.A.
Allen & Underhill 1989) models for hummocky and related
bedding, but in favour of combined flow ( e . g . P . A . Allen
1985; Duke 1985; Nottvedt & Kreisa 1987; Leckie 1988;
Duke et al. 1991; DeCelles & Cavazza 1992). Fabric studies
woves
Fig. 2. Schematic pattern of calculated streamlines representing the

steady streaming at the bed associated with a field of brick-pattern
wave ripples. The streamlines converge toward the crests of the bed
features. Based on Vittori (1992).
Marine storm bedding
SEDIMENTARY STRUCTURES
(e.g. Cheel 1991) could go far toward proving the expected
strongly three-dimensional character of the storm-wave
currents involved in making hummocky and swaley bedding.
Myrow (1992) argues that pot and gutter casts are related to
storm conditions.
Secondary flows and related bedforms

Sets of flow-aligned, counter-rotating bottom vortices, that
is, secondary flows, have many causes (Allen 1982a; Dyer
1982), and have been held to account in a number of ways
for a variety of flow-aligned bedforms in aqueous and
terrestrial environments (Allen 1982a; Flood 1983). Direct
field evidence, however, of a link to secondary flows has
been hard to obtain. Allen (1987a) found water-surface
features suggestive of secondary flow in association with
streamwise erosional furrows on estuarine mudflats.
Viekman et al. (1992) measured cross-currents converging
on debris-filled furrows on the floor of Lake Superior, as
had been hypothesized (Flood 1981, 1983; Allen 1982a).
Desiccation fractures
These common structures typically of muddy sediments are
not just proofs of short-term atmospheric exposure but,
when examined systematically, at least in intertidal settings
(Plummer & Gostin 1981; Allen 1986a, 1987b), begin to
reveal hitherto unsuspected details concerning the duration
of, and controls on, the processes of formation. Fracture
systems (Fig. 3) can evolve over periods of up to weeks or
months, the stress field changing as the fissures ramify, thus
altering the directions of crack growth, and their very varied
geometry is as well strongly affected by sediment and
environmental conditions. A related important advance is
the careful dismissal by Astin & Rogers (1991) of the origin
by either synaeresis or an intrastratal process of the fracture
patterns widespread in the Devonian lake sediments of
Scotland. Giant fracture patterns, attributable to either
179
desiccation (Loope & Haverland 1988) or thermal

contraction (Tucker 1981; Tucker & Tucker 1981; Kocurek
& Hunter 1986), have recently been described from playa
and evaporite sequences. The geometry of the giant
fractures in the British Trias locally has a tectonic control. It
may be suspected that desiccation and related fractures hold
many unexploited clues to depositional patterns in
environments subject to repeated submergence and
emergence.
That a sandy surface was once exposed to the
atmosphere has always been difficult to prove (but see Allen
1982a). Microdeltas due to runoff are increasingly
recognized as a potential exposure indicator in cross-bedded
sandstones (Dalrymple 1984b).
Soft-sediment deformation and dewatering structures

Sorby (1908) not only pioneered research on sedimentary
structures due to the action of sediment-transporting
currents, but he also described, from the Langdale Slates,
structures which recorded soft-sediment deformation, noting
that the affected sediments must have been semi-liquid.
Wide-ranging interest in the deformation of unconsolidated
and partly consolidated sediments has led to renewed
attempts to classify soft-sediment and dewatering structures,
and to identify their causes and controls (Owen 1987;
Leeder 1987). Although unsophisticated by comparison,
shaking tables similar to those long-employed by earthquake
engineers are now being used by sedimentologists to
understand soft-sediment deformation (Owen 1992).
Allen (1986b) exploited empirical studies by seismologists and earthquake engineers to develop a model
showing that, in fault-bounded sedimentary basins, the
stratigraphic frequency of (externally generated) softsediment deformation structures (e.g. Bartsch-Winkler &
Schmoll 1984; Clague et al. 1992; Roep & Everts 1992)
declines steeply with distance from the fault zone (see also
Fig' 3. Desiccation cracks spreading over the surface of an intertidal mudflat, Berkeley Pill, Severn Estuary. Arrows show directions of crack
propagation. Note the evidence for shear along some of the fractures; observe the growing tips and the young fractures that turn orthogonally
towards established ones. Scale box measures 50 mm square.
180
J.
R.
Leeder 1987). The rock-record provides some support for

the model (Leeder 1987; Ord et al. 1988) and further
research is justified. Descriptions of wave-related softsediment deformation structures, however, are reminders of
what even modest, internal triggers can perform (Dalrymple
1979; Allen 1985c). In shallow-marine and lacustrine
environments, for example, storm waves could be a more
important cause of soft-sediment deformation than an
external seismic trigger. However, many aspects of the
mechanics of these aseismic soft-sediment deformations
remain puzzling. Wrinkle marks (Allen 1985c) have on some
sloping intertidal mudflats been seen to take the general
form of groups of huge circular 'dendrites' each more than a
metre across. Ourtward growth from a series of nuclei can
be inferred, but the slope of the sedimentary surface seems
to have had no significant influence on the process.
The question of the true origin(s) of dish structures
remains unresolved. Allen's (1982a) stoping model calls
only for the hydraulic injection of water into an existing
sequence of unlithified beds, and is not discounted by Hurst
& Buller's (1984) finding that the clay minerals in dish
structures apparently can be intrastratal in origin. Cheel &
Rust (1986) found dish structures associated with ball-andpillow in a late Quaternary subaqueous outwash deposit.
This association points to the formation of dish-structures
some while after rather than during deposition, as is also
demonstrated in some turbidite contexts by either the
presence of a veined roof to the dish-structured zone or
evidence of the prior formation of convolute lamination
(Allen 1982a). Fluidization, however, does not seem to be
the answer, for in their experiments Tsuji & Miyata (1987)
could not reproduce the closely clustered, almost en echelon
dishes so typical of field examples. True fluidization is in any
case a highly disruptive process, after which little if any
primary lamination will have survived.
Consideration should be given to the possibility that
columnar to sheet-like pillar structures (Lowe & LoPiccolo
1974; Lowe 1975) can be explained in terms of the instability
of a settling dispersion of ill-sorted particles. Work by
chemical engineers has afforded some suggestive parallels
(Whitmore 1955; Weiland & McPherson 1979; Fessas &
Weiland 1981 1984; Weiland et al. 1984; Batchelor & Janse
van Rensberg 1986; Law et al. 1988; Cox 1990; Revay &
Higdon 1992).
Conclusion
Rightly, sedimentary structures remain a focus for research,
in terms of their intrinsic interest and the light they can shed
on environmental conditions and on processes inherently
difficult or at present impossible to observe directly. They
present perhaps five immediate challenges and one major
opportunity.
Although great attention has been paid to bedforms in
unidirectional aqueous currents, the character and hydraulic
relations of these features in gravels and in silts, neither by
any means uncommon, remain largely ignored. There is
little understanding of the transport and bedforms of
carbonate sediments, which present many contrasts,
especially in particle shape and overall density, from typical
siliciclastic debris. The intensification of research on tidal
bedding has many spurs. However, there is more
speculation about the internal structures of subtidal sand
waves than there is empirical knowledge. It is not sufficient
L.
ALLEN
to claim a sand-wave origin from some rock sequence; what

we need are comparative data based on some technique for
exploring very large samples from contemporary sand
waves, perhaps by freezing and then raising large volumes of
sediment from forms on the sea bed (cf. the sinking of mine
shafts). Equally challenging are the problems of hummocky
and swaley cross-stratification, where again today there is
more speculation than knowledge founded in the contemporary environment and on (very difficult) experiments. The
widespread and volumetrically important turbidite facies
presents many soft-sediment and dewatering structures
which are poorly understood at a fundamental level. A
better understanding of these structures, as the result of
experimental and theoretical approaches, could increase our
appreciation of a set of processes observable with great
difficulty if at all in the natural environment.
There is growing interest among sedimentary geologists
in the sedimentological expression of time, for example,
orbital and related cyclicities. Sedimentary structures have a
largely untapped contribution to make to this work, for very
many of them represent a direct record of the passage of
time and of process-rate, for example, climbing ripple
cross-lamination, a point which Sorby (1908) was quick to
appreciate.
This paper is Reading University PRIS Contribution No.
261.
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WILLIAMS, G.E. 1989. Late Precambrian tidal rhythmites in South Australia
and the history of the Earth's rotation. Journal of the Geological Society,
London, 146, 97-111.
Received 14 December 1992; revised typescript accepted 21 January 1993
From QJGS,64, 171.

10. Or* lhe APPLICATION of QUANTITATIVB METHODS tO the STUDr
of the STRUC'rURE and HlsTOSr 03" RocKs. By the late
HZNRr CLI~'TON SORBZ, LL.D., F.R.S., F.L.S., F.G.S. ( R e a d
J a n u a r y 8th, 1908.)
[Pr.ATZS XIV-XVIII.]
CONTENTS.
Io Introduction
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
Vii.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XlII.
XlV.
XV.
XVI.
XVlI.
XVIII.
XlX.
Page
...................................................
171
Final Velocities ............................... ....... ..........

Angles of Rest of Sand and of Small Pebble8............
The Effects of" Currents .......................................
Ripple-Drift ..............
Varying Size of'the Grains'"~iiiiiii~ii~ii~i~iiiiiiii:iill
Drift-Bedding ...................................................
Joints of Encrinites, etc.....................................
Very Fine-Grained Deposits. ................................
The Green Slates of Langdale ..............................
Washing-up, eta. of Clays .................................. ...
On the Interspaces between the Constituent Grains of
Deposited Material .......................................
Segregation .....................................................
Contraction of" Rocks after Deposition ..................
Concretions ......................................................
5pots in Welsh Slates .......................................
Slip-Surfaces ...................................................
Surfaces of Pressure-Solution ..............................
Determination of the Pressure to which Rocks have
been Subjected ............................................
172
174
17ti
181
185
186
189
189
196
199
200
203
214
215
~20
222
2~4
227
I. INTRODUCTION.
I~ the case of nearly all branches of science a great advance was

made w h e n accurate q u a n t i t a t i v e m e t h o d s were used instead of
m e r e l y qualitative.
One great advantage of this is t h a t it
necessitates more accurate t h o u g h t , points out w h a t r e m a i n s to be
learned, and sometimes small residual quantities, which o t h e r w i s e
would escape attention, indicate i m p o r t a n t facts. Since it applies
to nearly all branches of geology, it is necessarily a wide subject,
but so connected t o g e t h e r t h a t it seems undesirable to divide it.
My object is to apply e x p e r i m e n t a l physics to the study of
rocks.
At least six different kinds of physical questions are involved,
some of w h i c h have been sufficiently studied, b u t others require
e x p e r i m e n t s which would be very difficult to carry out, and all t h a t
I can n o w do is to endeavour to deduce plausible results from w h a t
is k n o w n . I n doing this, it may be necessary to assume cases
sufficiently simple for calculation, which may . b u t imperfectly
correspond to natural conditions, so t h a t the results may be only
a p p r o x i m a t e l y correct. Ill some cases, facts seem to show t h a t
there are important properties connected w i t h subsiding material
Structure and origin of limestones

B.
W.
SELLWOOD
Postgraduate Research Institute for Sedimentology, The University, Whiteknights, Reading R G 6 2AB, UK
Abstract: Sorby's Presidential Address of 1879 on the structure
and origin of limestones was

essentially an interim report of research in progress. His petrographic approach to limestones,
stemming from three decades of research, laid the foundations for a wide range of research lines,
some of which were not fully exploited for almost a century, such as fluid inclusion studies in
diagenesis. The significance of many of his discoveries (e.g. that some Jurassic ooids and Palaeozoic
corals were originally calcitic) had geochemical implications that have only recently achieved research
prominence (e.g. CO2 and the 'greenhouse' Earth). In addition, Sorby's legacy was the example of his
peerless approach to research, applying ruthless empiricism to the problem at hand. In the case of
limestones, this involved an application of meticulous descriptive petrography and innovative experimentation. His approach to understand more fully the complex problems posed by carbonates
remains unsurpassed, involving a thorough integration of detailed observation, imaginative thinking
and judicious use of analytical techniques.
By the time of his monumental Anniversary Address, as
President of the Geological Society of London in 1879,
Henry Clifton Sorby had researched for more than 30 years
upon 'various questions essential to the proper elucidation'
of the structure and origin of limestones, and yet he felt
'painfully conscious how much still remains to be learned'.
His 1879 Address is rightly regarded as a landmark, seminal
to much later research on the petrography of limestones.
The strength of Sorby's work came from the lucidity of
his deductive reasoning based upon a wealth of detailed
observations and a wide range of experiments. And all this
from a wealthy amateur who received no formal university
training and never held a geological post. Folk (1972)
regarded reading Sorby's Address of 1879 a being almost
like reading the Bible. Sollas (1909) drew analogy between
Sorby and Faraday, noting that both these great men had
published their first scientific contributions on the analysis of
'a piece of lime'.
Sorby's discourse had not been spontaneously generated.
It drew upon his own vast observational experience, his
invention of techniques, and his adaptation of methods
developed by others. Of the utmost significance was the
method of preparing thin transparent slices of rocks and
minerals, devised around 1830 by William Nicol and first
described in Witham (1831). Indeed, shortly before Sorby's
death, at the age of 81, Geikie (1908) paid glowing tribute
to his pioneering works on optical petrography which,
Geikie proclaimed, had transformed petrography from the
neglected branch of geology to 'the dignity of an almost
independent science'. The Geological Society of London,
according to Geikie, could take pride in the fact that Sorby
had announced the birth of optical petrography 'within our
walls'. He was referring not merely to Sorby's first paper,
published in the Quarterly Journal in 1851, but to a series of
papers published over the next eight years culminating in an
epoch-making demonstration (Sorby 1858) of the application of optical microscopy to rock description, and to the
interpretation of rock genesis. This masterpiece, although

setting out to prove whether particular crystalline materials
were deposited from solution in water or from igneous
fusions, also laid the foundations for fluid-inclusion analysis
which today is a major technique in diagenetic studies.
His last paper (Sorby 1908), published posthumously by
the Society, underlined the importance of quantification in
rock studies. By applying experimental physics to the study
of rocks he also realized that results obtained on artificial
and pure end-members would only approximately relate to
the complex systems of the real world. Nonetheless, he
attempted to determine the porosity of a wide variety of
rocks, including many limestones, using both optical and
boiling water techniques. These techniques are now both
outmoded, the one involving the weighing-out of components scrupulously drawn on card from a camera-lucida
projection, the other measuring the loss in weight of an
artificially water-saturated sample. But the important thing
was Sorby's visionary appreciation of what each method
showed. The petrographic method gave an evaluation of
how the rock had been changed by the emplacement of
cement, whereas the water-porosity method measured the
porosity 'as it now exists'. The former thus permitted
quantification of parageneses, the latter provided practical
data; the stuff of petrophysics.
Sorby was a great empiricist. Cemented shell sands from
a Quaternary raised beach near Torquay were described
alongside samples from Bermuda and the deep-sea
Challenger Expedition. He knew that limestones had the
potential to form in a wide range of settings, and that they
were not just tropical in origin. But researches into modern
carbonate environments have, since the earliest regional
investigations, such as those of the Bahamas (Agassiz 1894,
1896) and Florida (Vaughan 1910), concentrated on tropical
areas. Only over the past few years have temperate-water
carbonates been seriously studied (e.g. Chave 1967; Lees &
Buller 1972; Nelson 1988). However, it is now realized that
185
186
B . W . SELLWOOD
such calcite-dominated carbonates may be more comparable, in both mineralogical and diagenetic terms, with
some of the carbonate systems of the past (James & Bone
1989, 1991). A Sorby-like approach might have brought this
realization 70 years earlier.
The last section of his Address consists mostly of
descriptions of the major British limestones and it would be
appropriate at this point to refer to British monographs,
following up Sorby's works, comparable with those
produced in France by Cayeux (1929, 1935); but there are
none. Cayeux (1935) makes brief reference to Sorby's
works, referring to his discussion of the origin of
concretions, dolomite, ooids and cone-in-cone structure. In
contrast, the mighty works of Murray & Renard (1891) from
the H.M.S. Challenger expedition, and the results of the
Funafuti boring (e.g. Judd 1904) are prolifically cited. It is
curious to note that Sorby is himself a little short (3 lines,
p. 77) in dealing with deep-sea sediments, stating that so
much attention had been paid by others (presumably a
reference to the Challenger scientists, Murray and Renard)
to deep-sea sediments that he would use his time describing
less well known subjects, such as the Tertiary limestones of
the Isle of Wight, and the Chalk!
I have organized this tribute to Sorby broadly in the
manner of his own address, and with some of his own
headings. Within sections I have attempted to show some of
the modern derivatives of his research and a few of the
significant intervening works. This has had to be a very
selective procedure. In place of an account of British
limestones (which comprises the last 18 pages of Sorby's
Address), I chart some of the post-Sorby developments in
the study of the origin of limestones, and briefly consider
some possible future trends. Sorby excluded a general
discussion of dolomitic rocks from his Address, and so I
have omitted dolomites from this review.
of the plate, or parallel to the axis of the spine or j o i n t . . .

in perfect crystalline continuity'. Such fragments were usually
cemented by singly-crystalline overgrowths of calcite
optically continuous with the host grain. Microtexture, as
well as mineralogy, strongly influence preservation potential
in carbonate grains, not only of petrographic detail, but also
of geochemical signals useful today in diagenetic or
palaeotemperature investigations (e.g. Marshall 1992).
Microscopical structure and mineral nature of shells
(1) grain still aragonite;

(2) original feature now a mosaic* of generally calcite spar
Sorby's 1879 Address begins with a bold overview:

'Limestones, being mainly derived from broken-up and
decayed shells and corals, it is in the first place necessary to
understand the structure and mineral constitution of modern
calcareous organisms'. It is a fitting tribute to this approach
that Bathurst's (1971) masterwork also begins with the
petrography of skeletal materials.
Before Sorby, the detailed microscopical character of
modern shells had been researched from the biological
viewpoint by Carpenter (1844, 1847)~ In addition, Sorby
measured hardness and specific gravity, and used optical
petrographic techniques (e.g. determining optic figures
etc.), to become the first to document which shells were
aragonitic and which were calcitic. In most cases, and
without the special help afforded by stains (Friedman 1959;
Dickson 1966) and X-ray diffraction techniques available
today, his determinations closely match those currently
accepted (Tucker & Wright 1990). He noted the similarities
between the skeletal structure of crabs and those of
trilobites. He comments on how the peculiar fibrous
structure of Sepia might 'have interest in connexion with the
fossilization of Belemnites', and he was particularly struck
by the intimate interrelationship between mineral and
organic structure in the calcitic hard-parts of echinoderms.
'Each plate, each spine and each joint of a single crystal of
calcite, having its principal axis perpendicular to the plane
Influence of original mineral constitution on

preservation
Sorby was the first to realize that mineralogy and structure
had an impact on the mechanical durability and preservation
potential of shells, having already noted (Sorby 1862) that
during weathering aragonite shells selectively dissolve,
whereas calcitic shells are more stable. His experiments
(e.g. keeping shells at 145 C in the boiler of a high-pressure
steam-engine for a month) had shown that, upon heating,
aragonite could convert to calcite but he did not 'know of
any process by means of which calcite can be changed into
aragonite'. It is also clear that he had realized the full
significance of finding well-preserved calcitic fossils associated with 'the mere casts of others', having related his
observations on modern skeletal materials to fossil
counterparts. He observed that when an originally
aragonitic shell is changed to calcite it 'passes into a mass of
crystals' (a mosaic) whereas originally calcitic components
retain their true original structure (figs 3 and 4 of Sorby
1879). He suggested criteria whereby originally aragonitic
components might be recognized. His optical criteria
(* below), when supplemented by more modern approaches,
are still valid and are included in Sandberg's (1983) criteria
by which former aragonite may be recognized. These are, in
order of descending reliability:
containing orientated aragonite relicts;

(3) original feature now a mosaic* but lacking aragonite
relicts; high Sr 2+ contents relative to levels reasonably
expected in primary calcite (i.e. thousands of ppm);
(4) original feature now a calcite mosaic* but S r 2+ values
are either low (hundreds of ppm) or not measured;
(5)* particular grain types selectively dissolved (moulded) or
comprise calcite-filled moulds, this criterion can be
strengthened if skeletal grains known to have been
originally aragonitic, by analogy with modern forms,
have behaved similarly in the same rock (i.e. most
marine gastropods and nautiloids).
Sorby demonstrated that Palaeozoic corals were
originally calcitic and thus different from their modern
Scleractinian counterparts. The significance of such observations, particularly the implications of changes in sea-water
chemistry through time, was not realized for a century (e.g.
Wilkinson 1979). Debate on this important issue continues
today.
Thus, by 1879 Sorby had laid the foundations of
diagenetic studies in carbonates. A few significant edifices
arose on these foundations, like that of Cullis (1904) who
documented the petrography of carbonates in the Funafuti
borehole (Cullis also used stains to distinguish between
aragonite, calcite and dolomite), but several decades were
LIMESTONES
to elapse before significant progress was made (e.g. Bathurst
1958, 1959).
Disintegration of shells and the origin of lime-mud

Sorby deduced that lime-mud could be generated through
the organic degradation (including micro-boring) and
physical abrasion of skeletal material and pre-existing
limestones. He also knew that minute crystals of calcite and
aragonite could precipitate directly from certain waters.
Fine mud, he decided, could never be generated from the
degradation of crinoids, oysters and brachiopods, whereas
he showed that corals kept for a few weeks in water gave
rise to such minute particles that the water became 'like
dilute milk'. The origin of lime-mud became controversial
eight decades later when Cloud (1962) argued that
evaporative precipitation alone explained Bahamian limemud. Later studies (Stockman et al. 1967; Neumann & Land
1975) showed that disintegration of aragonitic codiacian
algae also generated vast quantities of lagoonal aragonitic
mud. Direct precipitation of aragonite needles has also been
demonstrated (Shinn et al. 1989), so both skeletal
degradation and precipitation may contribute to the
reservoir of lagoonal, and peri-platform, lime-mud. But in
modern temperate waters, skeletal disintegration is probably
the most important source of fine-grained carbonate (e.g.
Lees 1975). Sorby thought that aragonitic muds could
change to calcite, thus explaining ancient finely crystalline
limestones. The origins of micrite-grade matrix in ancient
limestones, although becoming more easy to investigate with
the general application of the SEM (e.g. Loreau 1972), are
still to some extent problematic. Using a combination of
optical petrography, Feigl stain, SEM, X-ray and electron
diffraction techniques, Lasemi & Sandberg (1984) demonstrated that welMithified Pleistocene 'micrites' had
resulted from the alteration of predominantly aragonitic
precursors, the mechanism involving a one-step neomorphic
process of calcitization. Further application of geochemical
techniques, such as an investigation of the Sr content (e.g.
Sandberg 1983; Tucker & Bathurst 1990; Tucker & Wright
1990), can help to resolve whether significant amounts of
aragonite were originally present. Sorby does not appear to
differentiate between high magnesian calcite (calcite with 4
mole% MgCO3; HMC) and low magnesian calcite (LMC).
It is only over about the past three decades that our
awareness has increased with regard to the diagenetic
significance of such differences, in particular the greater
potential for HMC to undergo diagenetic change (e.g.
dissolution, Land 1967; and micro-dolomitization, Lohmann
& Meyers 1977).
187
He concluded that where originally aragonitic shells were

represented by casts, dissolution of their aragonite had led
to the re-precipitation of calcite cement. In many cases,
however, he noted that crystallization had obliterated
original textures and grain outlines. That such processes
could not always be attributed to 'the effect of
heat-metamorphism' were proven by the occurrence of
apparently similarly lithified modern sediments and reefs in
the Bahamas and Bermuda. Thus, he recognized that early
lithification and cementation typified many carbonates, but
it was to be many decades before readily acceptable criteria
were established whereby cementation textures could be
distinguished from those produced by recrystallization
(Bathurst 1958, 1959). Some recrystallization phenomena
are still difficult to identify, particularly at the ultra-fine
scale of individual coccoliths and foraminiferans.
Early cementation in carbonate beach rock (Ginsburg
1953; Tracey in Emery et al. 1954) and observations on early
diagenesis in south Florida carbonates confirmed Sorby's
original view that carbonates need not be deeply buried in
order to become cemented. Subsequently, submarine
cementation was described in reefs (e.g. Ginsburg et al.
1968; Macintyre et al. 1968; Land & Goreau 1970) and on
the sea floor (Shinn 1969). It is now accepted that
penecontemporaneous cementation took place in many
Phanerozoic reefs (e.g. James 1983; Schroeder & Purser
1986) and sea floor cementation in now known from a wide
range of settings from carbonate sand belts (e.g. Dravis
1979), the deep sea (Dix & Mullins 1988) and in submarine
caves (Whitaker & Smart 1990).
Even though complicated classifications of spar types
were proposed (e.g. Folk 1965), the wider realization that
particular types of early cement could be environmentally
specific has really come over the past 25 years (e.g.
foregoing references and Dunham 1971; Halley & Harris
1979; Longman 1980; Tucker & Bathurst 1990). Given &
Wilkinson (1985) have attempted to explain why aragonite,
HMC or LMC precipitation is favoured, and why cements
have a particular morphology, by reference to the
interrelationships between Mg/Ca ratio, and rate of
carbonate ion supply. Much current research is directed
towards increasing our understanding of the processes of
deeper burial cementation and pressure-dissolution (Scholle
& Halley 1985; Choquette & James 1987). Particular
problems currently being addressed are the role of
pressure-dissolution in the development of bedding in
limestones (Simpson 1985; Bathurst 1991), the origin of
deep-burial cements and the interrelationships between
cementation, the evolution of formation fluids and basin
evolution.
Consolidation of limestones
The porosity of newly deposited carbonate sediment is very
variable. According to Sorby (1879), if grains are 'nearly
spherical, and of the same size, it could not be much less
than of the whole volume'. He found, by experiment, that
varying the grain shape and the amount of infiltrated fines,
significantly altered the porosity. Experimental studies have
subsequently shown that compaction affects grainy limestones less than muddy ones and that a porosity loss of 30%
may occur in shelly lime muds without significant shell
breakage taking place (Bhattacharya & Friedman 1979). In
limestones, Sorby noted that what had been original pore
spaces were generally lined, or filled, with crystalline calcite.
Oolitic grains
Sorby's type examples of oolitic grains were 'Sprtidelstein'
from a mineral spring at Carlsbad and were what we
commonly now term cave pearls (Dunham 1972) or cave
pisolites (Bathurst 1971). As such they might not be
considered ideal, even though he regarded recent oolitic
grains from 'Bahama and Bermuda' as being of the same
general character. Nonetheless, his meticulous observations
(fine concentric structure, a well-defined positive pseudouniaxial figure and appropriate specific gravity) shows that
the grains he studied consisted of aragonite. Sorby suggested
that the thin concentric layers within the grains (Figs 1 and
188
B.W.
Recent
Marine
Ooids
,:'~
Random
SELLWOOD
Radial
- - Tangential
Nucleus /
Ancient
Marine
~IConcentric laminae
Ooids
Pore-filling
sparry calcite
Calcitised aragonite
with relic sructure
--,...
t
---
Micrite
Radial fabric I
Fig. 1. Major types of microstructure seen in modern and ancient
ooids (from Tucker & Wright 1990).
2) did not result from the direct precipitation of crystals
from solution, but by the mechanical accumulation of
minute prismatic crystals with their long axes parallel to the
surface of growth. They were, he proposed, 'mechanically
accumulated round the centre, something like the layers in a
large rolled snowball'. Bahamian ooids had similar
characteristics, but less perfectly developed. He suspected
that this was because they had formed in water rich in the
mud derived from decayed shells, and that the purely
chemical deposit served to collect minute aragonitic granules
onto the spheroidal grains. The dominant modern view,
following many subsequent studies, favours a precipitational rather than accretionary origin for ooids (e.g.
Bathurst 1971; Loreau & Purser 1973), this view being
supported by experimental studies (e.g. Davies et al. 1978).
Fig. 2. Concentric structure in Carlsbad cave pearl (left); calcitic

Jurassic ooid with radial microstructure (centre); originally
aragonitic ooid now preserved as a calcite mosaic (right) (from
Sorby 1879).
Fig. 3. SEM micrograph of porecast (epoxy replica of microporosity within originally calcitic ooids), Great Oolite (MidJurassic) grainstone, 1406 m depth, Weald Basin.
Ooids, their mode of formation and significance,

continued to provoke interest (even of petrographers)
through the post-Sorby years and several memorable papers
were published (e.g. Brown 1914). The mineralogy of ooids
influences both their microfabric and their subsequent
diagenesis, with most modern marine ooids being aragonitic
in composition. Aragonite is the favoured precipitate
wherever Mg:Ca ratios are high, whether in the sea or lakes
(Richter 1983), marine ooids generally forming on shallowly
submerged high energy shoals or shorefaces in tropical seas.
HMC ooids are rare in modern systems whereas LMC ooids
are known from modern streams, caves, lakes and soils.
Various types of microstructure are commonly seen in ooids
(Fig. 1) and individual grains may retain original internal
microporosity to considerable burial depths (e.g. Fig. 3).
Using the petrographic criteria already established for shell
material, Sorby points out quite clearly that some ancient
ooids were aragonitic whilst others (e.g. some from the
British Jurassic) were originally calcitic and had their
principal negative axis arranged in a radiate manner.
Cayeux (1935, p. 225) considered this 'structure radire' to
be a secondary feature, and this remained the favoured
interpretation until the 1970s (see above). Research on
radial aragonitic ooids of the Great Salt Lake Utah
(Sandberg 1975) raised fundamental questions on whether
the compositions of non-skeletal marine precipitates have
remained similar to those of the Recent throughout
Phanerozoic time (e.g Sandberg 1983, 1985). It is now well
established that there were time intervals in the past when
marine precipitates were broadly comparable with those of
the present (e.g late Carboniferous to Permian) and others
when significant differences existed. During the early and
mid-Palaeozoic (Cambrian to early Carboniferous) and most
of the Mesozoic (Jurassic and Cretaceous) LMC appears to
have dominated both cements and non-skeletal grains.
There is an apparent absence, globally, of late Cretaceous
ooids. These changing temporal abundances of aragonite,
HMC and LMC, and grain-types, record significant changes
in the composition not only of seawater, but also of the
whole ocean/atmosphere system (e.g. Wilkinson 1979;
Wilkinson et al. 1985; Sandberg 1985; Berner 1992).
LIMESTONES
The Sorby scientific legacy: the origin of limestones

T o w a r d s e n v i r o n m e n t a l interpretation
To Sorby the origin of limestones was very much bound up
with questions such as: what are the constituents within
limestones and how have they been put together? By 1926,
Twenhofel (p.152) was already convinced that to interpret
the origin of any sediment required a reconstruction of the
environment in which the sediment was deposited.
Interpretation of sedimentary environments, facies analysis,
requires a refined stratigraphic framework, but many
limestone successions lacked the fossil groups then (and
still) vital for precise correlation. Twenhofel was also able to
underline the importance of diagenetic modifications. These
alteration processes had, by then, been specifically
addressed by such workers as Andrre (1911) and Schuchert
(1920).
Stemming ultimately from the classic observations on
reefs by Darwin (1842), and subsequent expeditions such as
that to Funafuti (Bonney 1904), some of the most
convincing attempts at carbonate environmental interpretation were made on ancient reef systems (e.g. Grabau
1903, on Palaeozoic reefs in general; Munthe 1910 on the
Silurian reefs of Gotland and those in the English Wenlock
by Crosfield & Johnston 1914). More generalized environmental studies on Recent systems, such as that of Vaughan
(1910) in Florida and the Challenger reports (Murray &
Renard 1891), allowed interpretations to become integral to
regional stratigraphic papers, among the classics being
Dixon & Vaughan (1911) on the Carboniferous succession
in the Gower Peninsula, S. Wales. Carbonates still posed
intractable problems, however, especially chalks. Although
they had been discovered to contain coccoliths (by Sorby),
and planktic foraminiferans (Jukes-Brown & Hill 1903,
1904), Twenhofel (1926, p. 295) considered chalks to be
shallow-water deposits that accumulated 'under conditions
which are still not understood'. This is an oddly opaque
statement, particularly in view of the detailed descriptions of
pelagic oozes then available in the Challenger reports.
Indeed, these reports were so thorough in their coverage
that no comparably exhaustive survey of oceanic sediments
was undertaken for 50 years (the Deep Sea Drilling Project
and the Ocean Drilling Program; reviewed in Jenkyns 1986).
Sorby (1879), however, had already suggested that Chalk,
although far from being identical with Globigerina-ooze,
was analogous to 'deep ocean mud comparatively free from
volcanic and other mechanical mineral impurities'. He had
recognized the pelagic nature of this shelf-sea sediment,
even though his implication that it accumulated at great
depth is not now accepted (Jenkyns & Hsu, 1974; Hancock
1975).
The discovery of major oil accumulations in North Sea
chalks, preferentially porous in re-sedimented facies
(Scholle et al. 1983; Hancock et al. 1987; Taylor & Lapr6
1987) has led to further re-evaluations of onshore chalks,
some exhibiting slumps and debris flows (e.g. in Normandy
by Quine & Bosence 1991). Rhythmic bedding in chalks,
and other hemi-pelagic carbonates, are providing convincing
evidence (through integration of petrographic and oxygen
isotopic data) for short-term cyclical change in Water
temperature and productivity consistent with Milankovitch
fluctuations (e.g. Ditchfield & Marshall 1989).
A major impetus towards a better understanding of both
depositional and diagenetic processes came when substantial
189
hydrocarbon discoveries were made in carbonate reservoirs,

especially between 1920 and 1930 (e.g. late Jurassic,
Smackover oolites in Arkansas; the mid-Cretaceous Golden
Lane and Poza Rica rudistid reefs in Mexico; the Yates
Field of W. Texas; and the vast Kirkuk Field of Iraq in
which there were several reservoirs, some in Cretaceous
chalks and others in Tertiary limestones). In the Middle
East the work of Henson (e.g. 1950) on Cretaceous and
Tertiary reefs signalled a re-birth of carbonate study, the
reef resurgence continuing in the USA with the classic study
by Newell et al. (1953) of the Permian Reef Complex of
Texas and New Mexico. In hydrocarbon exploration reefs
began to rival anticlines as exploration targets, even though
many of the reefal reservoir facies turned out to be adjacent
to, rather than in, the ancient reefs themselves.
In the 1950s began a series of classic studies on modern
carbonate systems. These researches re-laid the foundations
upon which facies models could be refined, and against
which they could be tested (e.g. Illing 1954; Emery et al.
1954; Newell et al. 1959; Ginsburg 1956; Cloud 1962; Logan
et al. 1970; James & Ginsburg 1979 and many others). A
major difference in approach has distinguished such studies
from parallel studies on terrigenous clastic systems and this
has been the necessity, in carbonates, to integrate a very
wide range of biological, petrological and physico-chemical
observations. Only with the realization, in the 1970s, that
reservoir sandstones undergo profit-damaging diagenesis,
did some siliciclastic practitioners re-discover petrography.
But with carbonates, and particularly using borehole ditch
cuttings, it was soon established that microfacies interpretations could provide a valuable predictive tool in
subsurface exploration. The microfacies schemes evolved by
Wilson (1969, 1975) and Fliigel (1982) are frequently cited
as giving a first-order means of interpreting carbonate
interrelationships in frontier areas. Such approaches are
useful in subsurface studies because wireline logs are often
less informative in carbonates than in terrigenous clastic
successions.
L i m e s t o n e classification
Understanding required classification but, as Folk (1972)
observed, the literature of the 1920s to 1940s suggests that
carbonate knowledge had actually regressed from Sorby's
time. Folk's (1959) classification, inspired by Krynine's
treatment of sandstones, recognized that carbonates could,
in simple terms, be considered to consist of mechanically
transported grains (allochems), carbonate mud matrix
(micrite) and pore-filling calcite cement (spar). The
classification requires a petrographic approach. Not only
does the scheme provide an accurate description, it is also
genetic, the rock class relating to depositional hydraulic
energy (high energy oosparite; low energy micrite etc.).
Folk's classification was re-stated in the volume edited by
Ham (1962) in which the most widely used of all carbonate
classifications also appeared (Dunham 1962). The Dunham
scheme emphasized depositional texture but did not propose
formal terminology for grain types. Dunham's scheme
(defining grainstone, packstone, wackestone and mudstone)
could be used in the field and on whole core, whereas Folk's
scheme mostly required more detailed petrography. Neither
classification worked well for reefal carbonates nor for
carbonates that had been severely altered by diagenesis. A
derivative of the Dunham scheme, that of Embry & Klovan
190
B.W.
SELLWOOD
(1971), has been generally adopted for reefs and more

recently Wright (1992) has proposed a petrographicallybased scheme that attempts to address the problem of
altered and crystalline carbonates.
R i m m e d shelves and ramps, and sequence stratigraphy
During the 1950s and 1960s, and in a growing body of
literature, consideration of the origin of limestones involved
many additional examples being described, and interpretations of ancient depositional environments being
refined. Carbonate successions were usually interpreted by
reference to the newly described modern systems. This was
an essentially uniformitarian approach. A typical example is
that of Roehl (1967) who explained most of the Ordovician
and Silurian facies present in oilfields in Montana and the
Dakotas by direct analogy with the Bahamas. There were
many other such accounts (reviewed in Scholle et al. 1983;
Sellwood 1986). Steep-sided, shoal- or reef-rimmed
platforms (such as those of the Bahamas, Florida and atolls)
were used as depositional models for many ancient
limestone successions. In such systems facies distributions
are generally concentrically arranged, reflecting a concentration of wave and current energy at the rim. However,
as many stratigraphers knew, ancient seaways in which
limestones originated spread over the heartlands of
continents and had minimal slopes ('epeiric seas' of Shaw
1964; Irwin 1965). Ahr (1973) termed such systems ramps
and these were shown to be dominant at times when
reef-constructing organisms were either absent or inhibited
(James 1983). Some very relevant data on the workings of a
modern low-slope carbonate systems came with studies of
the Persian (Arabian) Gulf (Purser 1973), but most
environmental interpretations involving ramps are still
conceptual. Ramp-like carbonate platform successions have
now been interpreted from all parts of the geological record
(Read 1985; Burchette & Wright 1992), having been best
developed in gently subsiding situations such as foreland
and interior basins, and along passive margins.
The broad-scale interpretation of carbonate successions
now involves a thorough integration of geophysical,
sedimentological, geochemical and stratigraphic data so that
the evolving dynamics of such systems may be visualized,
often using computer models (e.g. Sarg 1988; Aigner &
Dott 1990). Although a far cry from Sorby's meticulous
petrographic analysis of limestones, many of the largely
conceptual approaches of recent years have depended upon
such studies. Modern interpretation of the origins of
carbonate successions does not only involve the recognition
of either ancient ramp or rimmed shelf depositional
environments. It also requires a consideration of sequence
stratigraphic context. This is because ramps and rimmedshelves would be expected to behave differently as a result
of sealevel changes, both in terms of the architectural
response of their sediment bodies, and their susceptibility to
the diagenetic effects of meteoric waters (e.g Wilgus et al.
1988; Crevello et al. 1989; Tucker & Wright 1990; Schlager
1991). These concepts, although prominent in current
carbonate research, go well beyond Sorby's essentially
pragmatic approach to limestones.
Limestone diagenesis
As discussed above, it is possible to interpret some types of
cement as formed by near-surface processes, and to relate
them to the early burial history of the limestone. It is even

possible, in favourable cases, to map the distribution of
palaeo-meteoric lenses within ancient carbonate platforms
(e.g. Meyers 1978; Emery & Dickson 1989). The relative
timing of the emplacement of particular cement phases can
be related to basin evolution, fluid (including oil) migration
and burial history (e.g. Prezbindowski 1985; Sellwood et al.
1993).
Refined diagenetic interpretations have been inspired, in
part, by an extension of essentially petrographic techniques
such as staining (Friedman 1959; Dickson 1966), cathodoluminescence (e.g. review in Emery. & Marshall 1989), SEM
and UV luminescence, and are truly part of the Sorby
legacy. Very significant advances have also been made as a
result of sound petrography being supported by the
application of a wide range of geochemical techniques.
These include stable isotopic analyses (e.g. Hudson 1977
and recent review by Marshall 1992), electron probe
microanalysis (e.g. Reeder & Paquette 1989), laser
microprobe (Smalley et al. 1989) and many others (reviewed
in Morse & Mackenzie 1990). The key to sound
interpretation, however, has often been founded upon a
thorough understanding of both the petrography and the
geological context in which the limestone occurs. 'Stable
isotopic analysis is the last thing anyone should do!' (M.L.
Coleman pers. comm.).
Fluid inclusion analysis, is a technique with which Sorby
would have felt familiar, it was in great measure his own
(Sorby 1858). Sorby had investigated 'fluid-cavities' in rock
salt, and also calcite crystals from veins, recognizing the
potential of inclusions as palaeothermometers in a wide
range of minerals. This technique has become increasingly
used in carbonate geothermometry over the past decade
(e.g. Lee & Friedman 1987; Sellwood et al. 1989).
Pressure-corrected homogenization temperatures from undeformed inclusions can be compared with isotopicallyderived palaeotemperature evaluations to help constrain
fluid compositions during crystal growth. Freezing temperatures obtained from fluid inclusions can provide an
independent check on fluid salinities (wt % NaC1
equivalent). The use of such techniques, when combined
with thorough petrography and interpretation of burial
histories, is beginning to define fluid movement within
significant portions of basins (e.g. McLimans 1987; Sellwood
et al. 1989, 1993). Carbonate diagenesis in the deeper parts
of basins may not remain an 'out of sight and out of mind'
issue for much longer (Scholle & Halley 1985).
Origin o f limestones: not just h o w but when ?

The inadequacy of a high resolution stratigraphic framework
has often hampered the refinement of both depositional and
diagenetic interpretations. Sorby did not ask 'when?' in his
1879 Address, but it is a key question today. Not only the
crucial questions of when did deposition occur and how
confidently may units be correlated? We also seek to know
about the time-frame within which depositional conditions
changed, the possibility of short-term fluctuations (Milankovitch cyclicity) and shorter term storm frequency.
Interpretations of basin evolution, and especially those put
to practical use (in the petroleum industry for example),
demand the absolute dating of depositional, diagenetic and
structural events. Without an adequate answer to the
LIMESTONES
'when?' question, other interpretations may become
suspect.
To these ends new methods have been applied.
Biostratigraphic techniques, now vastly improved since
Sorby's day, can be used in conjunction with a range of
chemostratigraphic techniques such as carbon-isotope
stratigraphy (Gale et al. 1993) and 87Sr/86Sr stratigraphy
(e.g. Koepnick et al. 1985; Elderfield 1986). Such advances
have been made as a result of innovative application of
laboratory techniques, scrupulous observations and imaginative thought: the Sorby approach.
Conclusions
In the historical development of our subject Sorby was
unique. He saw both what others had not seen, and what
they had seen. However, not only did he think what others
had not thought (Folk 1972), he also comprehended the
potential of his observations, methods and insights, and
many of their implications. His was inspired empiricism.
I am grateful for many useful discussions with colleagues at PRIS,
and in particular to R. Goldring, A. Parker, G. Price and K.
Ziegler. The paper was greatly improved by two anonymous
referees whose comments I greatly appreciate.
PRIS Contribution Number 280.
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-
Received 16 March 1993; revised typescript accepted 5 May 1992.
From QJGS,35, 39, 56.

THE ANNIVERSARY
A D D R E S S OF T H E P R E S I D E N T ,
:I-IsNRr CLIFTO~X SORDY, Esq., F.R.S.
T A B L E OF CONTENTS.
Introduction ......................pag(e 56 Recent Limestones ............... page

Tertiary Limestones of the Isle of
Microscopical structure of Shells,
Wight .................................
&e. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
56
~[ineral nature of SheDs, &c. . . . . . . 58 Chalk .....................
Structure of Crystals ............ ~..... 6, Kentish Rag
Wealden and Purl~'ec~:'~c"l~;"::::::
General structure of various groups
of Shells, &o......................... 6x ~Portland Oolite ........................
CorMline Oolite ........................
Difference in the properties of
Calcite and Aragonito ............ 64 Kelloways Rock ........................
Cornbrash ..............................
The influence of original mineral
Forest Marble ........................
constitution on the preservation
of fossils.: ............................ 65 Great Oolite ...........................
Structure of Fossils .... ~,............ 66 Inferior Oolite ........................
Disintegration of Shells, &c.......... 69 The Oolites as a whole ...............
Lias .......................................
Preservation of tim external forms
of altered SheD-fragments ...... 7x Cleveland-hill Ironstone ............
Chemical deposition of Carbonate 7x Magnesian Limestone ...............
Limestones of the Coal-measures...
of Lime ..............................
Consolidation of Limestones ...... 7z Carboniferous Limestone ............
Devonian Limestones ...............
Re&.l~e~ment of Lime by Ferrotm
ide, Magnesia, &c................ 73 Silurian Limestones ..................
StTucture of different Limestones.. 7 3 Metamorphic Limestones ............
Travertine and Tufa .................. 73 General Conclusions ..................
Oolitic grains ........................... 74 Tabulated results .....................
76
77
78
79
79
8o
$o
8I
8l
8z
8~.
83
83
84
84
85
86
85
87
89
9o
9I
94
Introduvtion.
I ~ n o w proceeding to the more special portion of m y Address, I
propose to t r e a t on the s t r u c t u r e and origin of limestones, relying
m a i n l y on m y o w n observations, b u t incorporating ~eneral facts
derived f~om o t h e r sources. I have n o w for n e a r l y t h i r t y years
been s t u d y i n g various questions essential to t h e proper elucidation
of m.y subject, and y e t I feel painfully conscious how m u c h s~ill
r e m a i n s to be learned. Some of these questions are not strictly
geological, but y e t are as necessary in studying limestone rocks as
a n a t o m y is for pal~eontology. I shall, therefore, not scruple to e n t e r
into t h e m so far as appears desirable to establish, on a good foundation, the more specially geological conclusions.
Microscopical structure of living Shells, dfc.

Limestones being m a i n l y derived from b r o k e n - u p and decayed
shells and corals, it is in the first place necessary to u n d e r s t a n d the
structure and m i n e r a l constitution of m o d e r n calcareous organisms.
T h e i r general microscopical characters have already been well described by Carpenter and other w r i t e r s ; but they have looked upon
t h e m far too m u c h from a biological point of view for m y present
purpose. The p u r e l y mineral structure of the c a r b o n a ~ of lime
plays a m u c h more important part t h a n has often been ascribed to
Flood basalts versus central volcanoes and the British Tertiary Volcanic
Province
GEORGE
P.
L.
WALKER
Department of Geology & Geophysics, SOEST, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA
Abstract: A controversy in the final decades of the last century developed between Geikie and Judd
over the nature of the volcanoes in the British Tertiary Province. Geikie regarded the lavas as in
Antrim and Skye as plateau basalts (today called flood basalts) erupted from widely scattered fissures,
while Judd regarded the intrusion complexes as in Central Mull and Skye as eroded stumps of major
central volcanoes from which the lavas originated. Soon after, instigated by the controversy, British
volcanology flowered for several decades in what may be called its 'Classic Period'. Detailed mapping
projects were undertaken, and new concepts were developed that are basic to volcanology. This paper
views the controversy and its aftermath, and also briefly reviews recent conceptual developments in
the North Atlantic Volcanic Province of which the British Tertiary rocks are a part. The paper
discusses the present understanding of flood basalts and central volcanoes, and presents new criteria
based on structural features of lava flows (such as the dependence of lava thicknesses, and the
occurrence of pipe vesicles, on ground-slope angle) to distinguish between them. Magnetic fabric
study of magma-flow directions in intrusions and lava flows, and palaeomagnetic study of postemplacement tilting of igneous rocks, have great unrealized potential.
Controversies can be healthy in the advancement of science.

They direct attention to the issues involved, and provoke
others to enter the arena and contribute new data and ideas.
Controversies are, however, not always resolved within the
lifetime of the principals. The pages of the Journal of the
Geological Society record many controversies, some of them
very spirited and having varied outcomes. Quite commonly
the truth, or more correctly the eventual consensus view,
proves to be a compromise. This was the outcome of the
controversy discussed in this article.
This controversy developed just over a century ago
between Archibald (later Sir Archibald) Geikie and John
W. Judd over the exact nature of the piles of lava flows and
associated intrusive igneous rocks (notable in Antrim, Skye
and Mull) in the British Tertiary Volcanic Province. About a
century earlier, the same area had been an arena of a much
more embittered controversy which was fought between the
Huttonians or Plutonists and the Wernerians or Neptunists
regarding the igneous or sedimentary origin of basalt. It is a
matter of history that the Huttonians prevailed.
There are two aims here: to present a personal view on
the G e i k i e - J u d d controversy and the flowering of British
volcanology that was its immediate sequel; and to review the
present state of understanding of the British Tertiary
Volcanic Province, together with that of the North Atlantic
Volcanic Province of which it is an important part.
'successive sheets of basalt have proceeded from no one

centre of eruption. They die out now towards one quarter,
now towards another, yet everywhere retain the universal
regularity and gentle inclination of the whole volcanic series'
(Geikie 1897, p. 194). Furthermore, he observed, the dykes
and volcanic necks that are likely to represent feeders of the
lava flows are widely scattered. These reasons are equally
valid today.
Judd on the other hand directed attention towards the
intrusive complexes such as those in Central Mull and the
Cuillin Hills of Skye, and postulated that these were 'the
denuded cores and basal wrecks of great volcanoes' (Judd
1874, 1881, 1886, 1889). Judd was less persuasive than
Geikie, and partly spoiled his case by apparently getting
wrong the sequence in which the rock-types were emplaced.
Geikie also made mistakes and for a short time considered
that the Cuillin gabbros in Skye were metamorphic rocks of
Archaean age.
Geikie had lived as a youth in Scotland and had
wandered extensively through the Hebrides. He was
understandably annoyed by this outsider entering the field
and forestalling his own plans for publication. H e was also
somewhat resentful because Judd, being a university
professor, seemingly had more leisure to pursue his studies
than had Geikie as a Geological Survey geologist.
The Classic Period of British volcanology

The Geikie v. Judd controversy
Following closely upon and provoked by the G e i k i e - J u d d

confrontation, British volcanology flourished as never
before. I think it is appropriate to call the first three or four
decades of the present century the Classic Period of British
volcanology. It was a period of intensive research rewarded
by important discoveries. The efforts of a few dedicated,
creative and hardy individuals opened up new vistas in
volcanology.
The period commenced with publication of the memoir
by H a r k e r (1904) on the Tertiary igneous rocks of Skye,
Geikie (1871,1984,1897) wrote eloquently about the

basaltic plateaus of Antrim and the Hebrides. H e regarded
these as magnificient remnants of a much more extensive
plateau possibly coincident with the far-ranging Tertiary
dyke swarms of the British Isles and extending as far as
Iceland and the Faeroes. Plateau basalts are today more
commonly called flood basalts, following Tyrrell (1937).
Geikie's reasons for regarding the basaltic lava piles as
remnants of extensive plateaus or flood basalts were that
195
196
G.P.L.
which was a model of careful observation and clear

description, and it strongly influenced many, including me.
Harker made many discoveries. One was that the gabbro
intrusions of the Cuillins and Blaven have a banding (today
it would be called layering) which dips towards a focus.
Another was that a great complex of intrusive sheets (later
called 'cone-sheets') occurs in the Cuillin Hills, inclined
towards the same focus as the inward-dipping layering in the
gabbros. He also recognized that magma-flow directions in
dykes are not necessarily vertical, and can sometimes be
inferred from structural features of the dykes. Harker
followed this with his memoir on the Geology of the Small
Isles of Inverness-shire (Harker 1908) in which he described
the great ultrabasic intrusive core of the Island of Rum.
Two masterpieces of volcano mapping soon followed,
namely Ben Nevis and Glencoe (Clough et al. 1909; Bailey
& Maufe 1916) and Mull (Bailey et al. 1924). The concept of
cauldrons as subsidence features bounded by ring faults and
ring dykes was developed at Glencoe and applied in Mull,
and has proved to be of fundamental importance in
volcanology.
The described cauldrons are relatively deep-seated
structures but their probable relationship to surface calderas
was recognized. Cauldrons and calderas were seen as two
manifestations of the same igneous events exposed at
different levels.
Regarding Mull, never before had such a complex
mapping project been achieved. The 'one-inch to the mile'
(now published at 1:50,000) map of Mull revealed the details
of the core of a major central volcano as had never been
seen before and emphasized how incredibly numerous are
small intrusions in this situation. The ring complexes in Mull
were recognized to comprise broadly two kinds of intrusions
having a ring-like plan view, namely vertical or steep
outwardly dipping ring-dykes, and inwardly dipping
cone-sheets, emplaced respectively by a relaxation of or an
increase in pressure in the magma chamber (Anderson 1936;
Richey 1932).
It is now known that probably all major basaltic and
central volcanoes have great intrusive complexes (the
'coherent intrusion complexes' of Walker 1992) in their
core. Like the innumerable basaltic flows that form the
superstructure of a major volcano, these complexes of small
intrusions are generated by innumerable and frequent
magma excursions out of the magma chamber.
Studies of other intrusive centres in the British Tertiary
Volcanic Province followed, as summarized by Richey
(1932) and Emeleus (1982). Each centre showed distinctive
features. Thus the structures of the Mourne Mountain
Granites (Richey 1928) were such as could be accounted for
by being emplaced as subterranean cauldron subsidences;
the Goatfell granite in Arran (Tyrrell 1928; recently
restudied by England 1992) is a superb example of a diapir,
partly bounded by a ring fault inside which uplift occurred;
and the intrusion-centre of Ardnamurchan (Richey &
Thomas 1930) is remarkable for the large number of annular
gabbroic intrusions. Meanwhile the finding of great
thicknesses of lavas in East Greenland by Wager (1934) and
by others in West Greenland, more or less doubled the size
of the North Atlantic Tertiary Volvanic Province.
This account concentrates attention on structural studies
but acknowledges that the Classic Period also contributed
greatly to petrological thought, as ably summarized by
Thompson (1982a, b) and Wilson (1993 and this volume).
WALKER
The Geikie-Judd controversy followed closely on the birth
of microscopic petrography: Sorby's important paper on the
microscopic structure of rocks was published in 1858 and
Zirkel's 'Mikroscopische Gesteinsstudien' followed in 1863.
Prior to about 1890, microscopic studies were mainly
descriptive petrography, but from about 1890 onward
attention was increasingly directed at chemical relationships.
Harker (1909) and Judd were pioneers in this field.
The mapping in Mull provoked significaant advances in
petrology. The concept of magma type was introduced by
Bailey et al. (1924). The question of the genetic relationships
of Hebridean rocks was pursued by Bowen (1928), and a
petrogenic scheme was proposed by Kennedy (1930, 1933)
and by Kennedy & Anderson (1938) that is a clear
antecedent of today's concepts of basalt magma types.
Meanwhile Wager & Deer (1939) recognized that a
remarkable story was told by the Skaergaard intrusion, and
when they presented this story--the story has been retold
since (e.g. Stewart & DePaolo 1990)--they provoked a
worldwide interest in gabbroic intrusions that is still very
much alive (see for example, the recent study of the Kap
Gustav Holm intrusion by Bernstein et al. 1992).
S u b s e q u e n t research in the British Tertiary P r o v i n c e
The past three decades have seen steadily continued

research in the British Tertiary Province, mostly as a period
of consolidation and quantitative documentation. The big
revolution in volcanology during this period came with the
study of pyroclastic rocks and explosive volcanism, and took
place mostly on young volcanoes elsewhere. A recent topic
has been the relation of the Hebridean volcanic centres to
the Mesozoic basins of the region; Butler & Hutton (1994)
have made a structural analysis of this for the Skye centre.
The North Atlantic Province

Increasingly in recent years attention has tended to shift
from the British Tertiary Province to the larger entity of the
North Atlantic Province of which it is a small but important
part. This change in emphasis has been associated with the
development of ideas on hotspots and mantle plumes, and
with geophysical exploration of the ocean floor.
Geikie recognized that Tertiary dykes are distributed
over roughly half of the area of the British Isles, and
speculated that basaltic flows may originally have covered a
similar area. He considered that the existing lavas as in Skye
and Antrim were remnants of a previously much greater
area that extended to the Faeroe Islands and Iceland.
Tyrrell (1949) pursued this theme, pointing to the basalts
in East and West Greenland and postulating that a vast
basaltic plateau had extended from England to Baffin Land,
a plateau that in East and West Greenland, Iceland and the
Faeroes consists of enormously thick basalt piles. A
prodigious volume of basalts, enough to stretch the most
vivid imagination, was implied. Tyrrell realized however that
Greenland and Scotland were contiguous before continental
drift and hence that the area and volume of basalts,
although great, was less than might appear.
Tyrrell did not know that the Tertiary basalts in Iceland
are significantly younger than those of Antrim, Skye, and
Greenland; non-steady-state conditions were implied, early
Tertiary volcanism being on a much bigger scale than recent
volcanism in Iceland.
F L O O D BASALTS VERSUS C E N T R A L V O L C A N O E S
About this time, studies made on zeolite zonation
(Walker 1960a, b) showed that the lavas of Antrim and
eastern Iceland thin up-dip and hence probably form
remnants of more or less isolated lava lenses (Fig. lg-3),
and with less certainty that the lavas of Mull are remnants of
an eroded upstanding central volcano broadly similar to the
lava shields of Hawaii (Walker 1970, Fig. lg-1).
The up-dip thinning in eastern Iceland is particularly
striking and was detected because the zeolite zones, inferred
to be parallel with the top of the lava pile, demonstrably cut
across the lava stratigraphy (Walker 1960b). Bodvarsson &
Walker (1964) attributed the up-dip thinning and strong
tilting to isostatic sagging, as new lavas were superposed on
preceding lavas that were being conveyed away from the rift
zone by spreading caused by dyke injections. Palmason
(1980) successfully modelled the mechanism for this process
on the basis of steady state volcanism.
The development of the plate tectonics paradigm
including the concept of hotspots and mantle plumes, and
the dating of volcanic rocks in the North Atlantic area by
radiogenic methods and magnetic stratigraphy, together with
the geophysical exploration of the North Atlantic in recent
years, have critically changed our views on the Province.
More or less steady-state hotspot volcanism and spreading
since about 16 Ma have created Iceland, and are in process
of enlarging it. Over a more extended period of 60 Ma, they
created the other volcanic accumulations of the North
Atlantic Province.
Among recent new ideas, that of thinspots (Thompson &
Gibson 1991) explains well the isolation of the Hebridean
Province from other volcanic areas in the North Atlantic
region and concentration of the volcanism in sedimentary
basins; that of incubating plumes (Kent et al. 1992) explains
well the uprise of large silicic diapirs early in the volcanic
history of Mull and other centres. Also the utilization by
magma of structures such as tectonic pull-aparts (Hutton
1988; Butler & Hutton 1994) well explains the localization of
the Mull and Arran centres so close to major faults.
The finding of seaward-dipping reflectors under the
North Atlantic, thought to be basalt accumulations, and the
possible large-scale underplating of the crust by basaltic
intrusions, are among the latest and most exciting
developments (White & Mackenzie 1989; White 1992). The
seaward-dipping reflectors are consistent with the seaward
dip and down-dip thickening of lava piles in East and West
Greenland, and also the down-dip thickening towards the
spreading axis in Iceland. If interpretation of these deep
structures is correct, a truly prodigious output of basaltic
magma from the Province is implied, besides which the
volume inferred by Tyrrell in 1937 and even more so by
Geikie in 1897 fade almost into insignificance.
Central volcanoes: a m o d e r n view

The controversy between Geikie and Judd concerned the
identification of plateau (flood) basalts and central
volcanoes in a setting of deep erosion. Here it is appropriate
to consider the present state of understanding of these
volcanic structures and the nature of the distinction between
them.
Walker (1993a) recognized five kinds of basaltic-volcano
systems, namely lava-shield volcanoes, stratovolcanoes,
central volcanoes, flood-basalt fields and monogenetic
197
volcano fields. Volcanoes of the first three kinds erupt more

than once and are termed polygenetic. Individual volcanoes
in the last two types are monogenetic and erupt only once.
Central volcanoes differ from the others in having
voluminous silicic as well as basaltic volcanic rocks.
Active polygenetic volcanoes possess a high-level magma
chamber, which is sustained by (a) a sufficient input rate of
magma from the source and (b) a sufficient frequency of
upcoming magma batches, to keep hot the magma pathway
from the source to the chamber. The high-level chamber
modulates magma excursions into the volcanic edifice and
inter alia heats groundwaters and sustains high-temperature
geothermal fields; fossil geothermal fields are recognized
from the occurrence in them of such secondary minerals as
epidote.
The concentration of magma input to the magma
chamber of a polygenetic volcano has several consequences:
(a) magma excursions from the chamber are channelled into
narrow rift zones where coherent dyke complexes may form,
or alternatively into coherent intrusive-sheet (cone-sheet)
complexes, and (b) a cumulate prisms grows under the
chamber.
Intrusion complexes and cumulate prisms are responsible
for the large localized positive Bouguer gravity anomalies
such as coincide with rift zones and summit calderas of
volcanoes in Hawaii (Kinoshito 1965; Strange et al. 1965)
and Reunion (Rancon et al. 1989), and the intrusive centres
of Rum, Ardnamurchan and Skye (McQuillin & Tuson
1963; Bott & Tuson 1973).
Shield volcanoes in Hawaii and the Galapagos have
sometimes been regarded as close analogues of Mull and
Skye. They form upstanding edifices having common
sub-aerial slopes exceeding 4 . The British Tertiary centres
however occur on continental crust; they include great
volumes of silicic intrusives, and of silicic volcanics now
largely removed by erosion (Bell & Emeleus 1988). Shield
volcanoes in Hawaii and the Galapagos have negligible
amounts of silicic rock.
Good analogues in rift or hotspot environments occur for
example in Afar and the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden area,
notably the volcanoes of Aden (Cox et al. 1970) and Jebel
Khariz (Gass & Mallick 1968). Other examples such as the
Tweed volcano (Stevens et al. 1989) occur in the eastern part
of Australia. These examples are sufficiently young that the
form of their volcanic edifices may still be discerned, and the
Tweed volcano is sufficiently eroded to reveal the intrusive
core. All are probably smaller and more alkaline than were
the Mull and the Skye Cuillin volcanoes.
Larger analogues occur in Tibesti and Manchuria. In
Manchuria, a flood-basalt field (the Gaima Plateau) covering
about l l 0 0 0 k m 2 occurs astride the China/North Korea
border. Near the middle of the field and rising some
1500 m above the basaltic plateau is the central volcano of
Changbaishan, which is an eruption centre for silicic lavas,
ignimbrites and fall deposits (Machida et al. 1990) with a
caldera 7 km wide.
Flood-basalt fields: a m o d e r n view
Most reviews on flood basalts (e.g. Cox 1980; Yoder 1988)
concentrate attention on the geochemistry. Here attention is
directed at other aspects.
A flood-basalt field is an accumulation of overlapping or
superposed tabular lava sheets that is erupted from scattered
198
G.P.L.
WALKER
(a)
(b)
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...(3'"
.'"J . ~
..'-..
..'"
" " " /
o OUTCROP
.... GENERALISED CONTOURS ON
.lbu TOP OF ZONE (m above s.l.)
Fig. 1. Maps of the Antrim basalts. (a) Structural features. Arrows give dip, in part measured from attitude of prismatic cooling joints in the
lavas. Sub-sea level parts are speculative, mostly extrapolated. (b) More detailed map of Islandmagee area where faulting is anomalously
intense and throw direction is inconsistent, possibly because of dissolution of underlying Triassic salt. (e) Distribution of dykes and volcanic
plugs (after Walker 1959). Plugs are elongate parallel with the dyke trend, and some consist of several discrete bodies on this trend; they
probably evolved by local widening of dykes (d) Generalized contours of the intensity of the dyke swarm, expressed as the percentage of dykes
in the total rock. (e) Outlines of some volcanic plugs, drawn on the same scale. (f) Distribution and elevation of the top of the
analcime/natrolite zone which embraces roughly the lowest 100 m of the basalts. Sea-level contour mostly extrapolated. The zone is
down-bowed towards the subsidence axis although less strongly than the lavas. (g) Possible relationships of zeolite zones to basaltic piles shown
in cross-section. Diagram 1 best fits the basalts of Mull. Diagram 3 best fits the Antrim basalts.
vents and lacks any centralized vent system. The individual
flows tend to have greater volumes (commonly >0.5 km 3)
than are normally erupted from polygenetic volcanoes, and
the whole accumulation has the aspect of a low plateau or
plain. Where lavas infill and flow down valleys, they present
the aspect of flooding the topography. Eruptions tend to be
either from fissures or from point-source vents. It should be
borne in mind that fissure-vents evolve with time into
single-point vents (where volcanic plugs may develop) as
wall-erosion locally widens the fissure (Bruce & Huppert
1990).
In accounts of flood-basalt fields, attention is usually
directed at the giant fields exceeding 100 000 km 2 in area and
100 000 km 3 in volume that are distributed sparsely through
the geological record. Many small to moderate-sized
flood-basalt fields also occur and are better analogues to the
British Tertiary basalts. Good examples of moderate-sized
fields are Rahat and K h a y b a r / I t h n a y n / K u r a in Saudi
Arabia, both 20 000 km 2 (Camp & Roobol 1989; Camp et al.
1991) and the McBride and Nulla fields in Queensland, 5800
and 6600km 2 respectively (Stephenson et al. 1980). The
volcanism in each field has been spread over the past 5 to
10 Ma and each field has the potential to erupt again. Some
of the lava flows particularly in the Queensland fields are
very large (Stephenson & Griffin 1976).
central volcano on the rift zone (Saemundsson 1986). Active

central volcanoes include Hekla, Askja, and Krafla. Several
scores of extinct central volcanoes are known amongst the
Tertiary lava piles of eastern, northern and western Iceland,
each more or less enclosed by flood basalts (Fig. 2).
Studies o f lava -flow structures

Lava flows constitute the bulk of the British Tertiary and
North Atlantic Provinces. In a logical scheme of things they
would attract the greatest attention and might reasonably be
expected to help distinguish flood basalts from central
volcanoes. Strangely however most of the structures
described by Geikie (he commented that 'a more detailed
description of them seems to be required') still have not
been explained. A notable exception from this neglect is the
columnar-jointing shown by a few lava flows.
The occasional spectacularly columnar jointed lavas as at
the Giant's Causeway and Staffa attracted much attention
from early geologists, some of whose explanations for the
columnar rock would be classified today as fanciful.
Tomkeieff (1940) recognized the multi-tiered character of
columnar-jointed flows and initiated the modern terminology of colonnade and entablature for the tiers. The
regularity of the prisms in the colonnade is now attributable
to solidification of lava under static conditions, as when it
infills a depression, and the closer joint spacing in, and
common greater thickness of, the entablature are due to
water cooling (Saemundsson 1970).
Recent morphometric research (yet unpublished) on lava
flows in Hawaii has an important bearing on the
environment of basalt effusion. The thickness of basaltic
lava is quite sensitive to the ground-slope angle. On slopes
exceeding about 4 the average flow unit is about 1 m thick
whereas on slopes under 2 it is 5 m or more thick. The lavas
of Antrim and north-western Skye have thicknesses
generally indicative of slopes of <2 (Table 1).
Recent research shows that the internal structures of lava
Close associations o f flood basalts and central

volcanoes
Distinct types of volcanic systems, notably flood-basalt fields
and central volcanoes, commonly occur in close association
with one another, as in the example in Manchuria cited
above. It is supposed that a central volcano may develop if
and where magmatic activity in a flood-basalt field becomes
sufficiently concentrated. Iceland illustrates the close
association particularly well. A number of active rift zones
from which occasional flood-basalt eruptions take place,
occur in a zone crossing the country, and several have a
'
:~.f..r~
... . . . .
;.'.~'"..~.'~'_~-"~.~".';".~"'::
7 ..............
~..---~-1'A P H Y R I C
t FLOOD
" ............
"'""'"
"'='"':'"
.......... I" ]
":':-:-'..
"-'. . . . . . .
~1
-.-. " . : . - : . ~ . -
...... t!rlf!llfr.
......
. ..........
~...,.
?: . ' . ' "
!'." "":":':'?."'::'.':'~-'.'-:'..".-:;=--
-: ---_7
'" .......
~ ] O L I V I N E RICH
~'BASA~-'I'" .....
'
FELDSPAR PHYRICJ THOLEIITES
....... ~
r[[~CENThAL
VOLCANOES
tl ! THtNGMULI
BREIDDALUR
RHYOLITIC TUFFS
ALFTAFJORDUR
GERPIR
6430
199
.............
-
-...,, .... _,~__,.,. . . . . . . . . . . . .
,,a~-. . . . . . . . . .
....................... ~ ~ 2 .
,
,,:
.. ......
,..-"
"...
--" ~ - -
,...
...~ ..... ----.
................. ;-'
-.~:rIT[T[~I~IIIIIIiG
6500 N . L a t i t u d e
...:
o
6520
Fig. 2. Stratigraphic sequence in the basalts of eastern Iceland showing inferred central volcanoes enclosed in flood basalts. The section records
about 10 Ma of volcanism. Note that the succession is composed of successive westward and upward overlapping of younger flows as the
growing lava pile was transported eastward by spreading. Central volcanoes contain rhyolite and intermediate rocks, show evidence for having
stood up as topographic highs, show rapid wedging of rock unit, have concentrations of intrusions, and show high-temperature hydrothermal
alteration. Flood basalts show uniform dips and strikes and persistent stratigraphic units that can sometimes be followed laterally for 75 km.
200
G.P.L.
WALKER
Table 1. Average thickness of lava flow units

No of units
Rock type
Shield volcanoes, Hawaii and Samoa, on average slopes of 7

Oahu, Hawaii
445
Pahoehoe
127
Aa
Tutuila, Amer. Samoa
246
Mostly aa
Total
thickness
(m)
Average
thickness
(m)
262
276
707
0.59
2.17
2.87
Lavas of the North Atlantic Province, interpreted to be flood basalts

Antrim
106
747
Storr and Quirang, Skye
--Eastern Iceland
900
8800
7.05"
ll.00t
9.80
* Walker (1959)
t Preston (1982)
flows are also sensitive to ground-slope angle. In Hawaii,

pipe vesicles and related vesicle cylinders and segregation
veins are virtually absent from lava erupted on groundslopes of 4 or more (Walker 1987), and are most abundant
in lava on slopes of <2 . These features are extensively
developed in the lavas of Antrim and north-western Skye,
and also in Iceland, indicating that emplacement took place
on prevalent very shallow ground-slopers and favouring the
view that those lavas are flood basalts.
Studies o f m a g m a - f l o w directions
Harker's discovery that magma-flow directions in dykes can
be inferred from structural features of the dykes has not yet
been followed up, apart from the study by Macdonald et al.
(1988) which showed lateral magma flow in the Cleveland
dyke of N England. Meanwhile a powerful technique, based
on the anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility of rocks, has
become available that permits flow directions to be readily
determined from the magnetic fabric. In dykes in the rift
zones of the Koolau volcano in Hawaii, magma flowed
upwards and sideways at an angle varying from 20 to 70 to
the horizontal (Knight & Walker 1988). On a bigger scale,
dykes of the continent-ranging Mackenzie swarm in Canada
(Ernst & Baragar 1992) flowed vertically within 500 km of
the centre of magmatism, and horizontally farther out. It is
not known what magma-flow direction will be revealed by
this magnetic method in the British Tertiary rocks.
A study of flow directions in the Skye dyke swarm and
cone-sheets of the Cuillin Hills has recently been initiated
(Walker 1993b). The anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility
technique also successfully yields the flow direction in lava
flows (Canon & Walker in press) and might be very
revealing when applied to a large basaltic field such as that
of Antrim. Our study of the Cuillin Hills can significantly
contribute to understanding major basaltic volcanoes.
Volcanoes in Hawaii, built on oceanic crust, subside so
much and so rapidly during their first two million years that
erosion can never penetrate deeply into the volcanic core.
Rafted as it is on continental crust however, the core of the
Cuillins volcano is dramatically revealed for study.
A n t r i m : the largest f l o o d - b a s a l t r e m n a n t in Britain
The largest basalt remnant and the most clear example of a
flood-basalt field in the British Tertiary Province is that of
Antrim. As a boy, the writer discovered the challenge and

joys of fieldwork in Antrim. The Antrim basalts cover over
4300 km e and originally covered probably at least twice that
area. The maximum thickness is not known: 769-780 m was
penetrated in two drill holes near the centre of the basin.
Studies of zeolite distribution contribute to knowledge of
the lava structure. In the basaltic pile of eastern Iceland, the
top of the analcime zeolite zone is at a depth of 600 m. In
peripheral parts of Antrim, analcime characterizes a
nearly-continuous zone along the base of the lavas that is
about 100 m thick, and the original lava pile thickness was
therefore 700 m thick. In the Langford Lodge drill-hole the
zone containing analcime and its proxy, stilbite, is 460m
thick, and the lava thickness was therefore originally about
1060 m.
The basalts of Antrim lack any visible intense dyke
concentrations. Instead dykes are scattered through an area
that in south Antrim is 3 0 k m wide, and the maximum
dyke-intensity is only about 5%. No localized large positive
Bouguer anomaly is known that might be interpreted to be a
coherent complex or cumulate prism. No epidote-bearing
altered rocks of fossil high-temperature geothermal fields
are seen at the present exposure level, and rhyolites are
present only in minor amount.
The Antrim lavas have dips commonly of 5 to 15. If, as
now seems probable, the lavas formed mostly on slopes <2
then the present dip must largely be due to tilting. In
general the dip is centripetal and delineates a saucer-shaped
structure elongated NW-SE. The axis of maximum
subsidence lies some distance west of the volcanic axis
along which intrusions are most concentrated and rhyolites
occur.
This structure raises the question whether the dip was

caused by a general isostatic sagging. The attitude of the
zeolite zones shows that the lavas thicken down-dip towards
the middle of the saucer, and lends credence to sagging
caused by the load, but the apparent displacement of the
subsidence axis from the volcanic axis (Fig. lc) would then
be anomalous.
There is an alternative, preferred explanation for the
saucer shape, namely tilting due to a general late-volcanic or
post-volcanic regime of crustal extension. Evidence in
favour of this comes from the orthogonal systems of
N W - S E and N E - S W faults that cut the basalts (Preston
1982; Parnell et al. 1989). These faults in general downthrow
outward away from the centre of the basalt outcrop and the
several faults in each system repeatedly step in the same
direction. This and the considerable dip of the lavas suggest
that the faults are of listric type. One consequence of this
faulting is that the maximum known depth to the base of the
lavas--780m in the Langford Lodge borehole--is significantly less than the 2500 m that would be calculated by
extrapolating the dip of the surface lavas and assuming no
faulting.
There is an exceptionally high concentration of faults in
a narrow zone of subsidence in Islandmagee, and the
fault-throw is not consistent in direction (Fig. lb). It is in
this area that the underlying Trias contains thick beds of
halite, and the suggestion is made that the anomalous
faulting here is related to subsidence due to localized
dissolution of salt by ground-water circulation induced by
magmatic activity. The zeolites that occur in this same area
are also anomalous and include an abundance of the rather
rare sodic species, gmelinite.
201
however go some way towards disentangling the

relationships.
The regional Hebridean linear dyke swarms span both
the flood basalts and the central volcanoes and extend far
outside both. No general model of dyke behaviour is yet
available. Did the magma ascend vertically near volcanic
centres, and horizontally farther away as in the Mackenzie
swarm of Canada (Ernst & Baragar 1992) or, conversely, did
the magma travel almost horizontally in and near volcanic
centres and almost vertically farther away, as maintained in
Iceland by Gudmundsson (1992)? The availability of the
magnetic fabric technique will help resolve this problem.
This is SOEST Contribution number 3819.
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& MCKENZIE, D. 1989. Magmatism at rift zones: the generation of
volcanic continental margins and flood basalts. Journal of Geophysical
Research, 94, 7685-7729.
WILSON, M. 1993. Magmatic differentiation. Journal of the Geological Society,
London, 150, 611-624.
YODER, H. S. 1988. The great basaltic 'floods'. South African Journal of
Geology, 91, 139-156.
ZIRKEL, F. 1863. Mikroskopische Gesteinsstudien. Sitzungbericht Akademie
der Wissenschafien Wein, Mathematisch-naturwissenschafien Klasse, 47,
226-270.
-
From QJGS,27, 279.

2. On the T~RrXARYVo~.cA~c RocKs of the Bm~rls~ IS~DS. By
RC~A~D GEixr~., Esq., F.R.S., F.G.S., Director of the Geological
Survey of Scotland, and Professor of Geology in the University of
E d i n b u r g h . - - F i r s t Paper.
[PL~T~ XlT.]
IN the present communication I propose to offer to the Society the
first of a series of papers descriptive of those latest of the British
volcanic rocks which intersect and overlie our Palaeozoic and Secondary formations, and which, from fossil evidence, are to be regarded
as of miocene, or at least of older Tertiary, date. Materials for this
purpose have been accumulating with me for some years past. I n
bringing forward this first instalment of them, I wish to preface t h e
subject with some general introductory remarks regarding the place
which the rocks seem to me to hold in British geology, and on the
nomenclature which I shall use in describing them. These remarks
will be followed by a detailed description of the first of a succession
~f districts where the characteristic features of the rocks are well
displayed.
Other typical districts will be described in future
memoirs.
GENERAL I~TROI~UCTIO~.
1. Area occ~t2ied by the _Pocks.

The rocks to which I propose to direct attention cover m a n y
hundreds of square miles in the British Islands. They spread over
the north-east of Antrim, from Belfast to Loch Foyle, forming there
a great plateau or series of plateaux, with an area of fully 1200
square miles and an average thickness of 550 feet. F r o m Ireland the
same rocks are prolonged northwards through the I n n e r Hebrides.
They form nearly the whole of the islands of Mull, Rum, :Eigg,
Canna, and Muck. They cover fully three-fourths of Skye, and
extend even as far as the Shiant Isles. But far beyond our own
area they reappear with all their characteristic features in the Farce
Islands, and again in the older volcanic tracts of Iceland. I n
From QJGS,30, 220-221.

23. The S~'.CONDARY ROCKS of SCOTLAND. Second Paper . On the
ANCIENT VOLCANOES of the HIGHLANDS and the RELATIONSof their
Pl~oDvcrs to the MEsozoic STI~A~A. By JOHN W. JUDD, Esq., F.G.S.
(Read January 21, 1874.)
[PLATES XXII. & XXIII.]
CONTENTS.
I. Introduction.
1. History of Previous Opinion on the subject.
2. Volcanic Origin of the rocks constituting the great plateaux of the
Hebrides and the North of Ireland.
3. Subaerial Origin of these old Volcanic rocks.
4. F vidcnces of the Former Elistence of great Volcanic mountains
in the district.
15. Connexion between the Tertiary Volcanoes of the Hebrides and those
of other districts.
16. General conchzsions from the relations of the Volcanic and Plutonic
rocks of the Tertiary period.
III. The Newer-Pal~eozoicVolcanoes.

II. The Tertiary Volcanoes.
1. Lavas of torn and the adjacent islands.
1. Classification of the Tertiary Volcanic rocks.
2. Characters of the Volcanic rocks of Lorn.
2. Nature and origin of the great Volcanic rock-mas~s :--Lavas, Intru3. Relations'of the Volcanic rocks of torn.
sive masses, Volcanic agglomerates and Volcanic breccias.
4. Succession of rocks in Lorn.
3. Relations of the Volcanic rocks to one another and to the o',der
5. Conditions under which the Volcanic series of torn was deposited.
deposits in the island of Mull.
6.
Age of the Volcanic series of Lorn.
4. Sections illustrating the structure of the island of Mull;--Beinn
7. The Newer-Pahrozoic ]avas of the Lowlands of Scotland.
Greig, Beinn Uaig, Craig Craggen, Beinn More.
8. The Eruptive masse~ of the Grampian nlotzn(aln.~.
5. Proofs that the central mountain-group of Mull constitutes the relic
9. :Relations of the igncolls rocks of Beinn Naris and Glencoe.
of a great volcano.
10. Physical Features of Northern Scotland during the Newer-Palaeozoic
6. The Volcano of Ardnamurchan.
periods.
7. The Volcano of Rum.
8. The Volcano of Skye.
IV. Conclusion.
9. The Volcano of St. Kilda.
1. Comparison of the two great periods of Volcanic activity in Scothmd.
10. Comparison of the great Tertiary Volcanoes.
2. Influence of Volcanic action in determining the Characters and Rela11. Dimensions of the great Tertiary Volcanoes.
tions of the Secondary rocks of Scotland.
12. Series of later Volcanic eruptions in the Hebrides, resulting in the
3. The " Geological Record " in the Highlands.
formation of "Puys."
4. Light thrown upon some problems of Physical Geology by the
13. Subterranean Phenomena of the Tertiary Volcanoes.
Volcanic rocks of the Highlands.
14. Ages of the several Volcanic outbursts already described.
Magmatic differentiation
MARJORIE
WILSON
Department o f Earth Sciences, Leeds University, Leeds L S 2 9JT, UK

Abstract: During the past 150 years, a wide range of processes have been invoked to explain the
mechanism by which magmas differentiate.These may be divided into those which operate essentially
in the liquid state, such as liquid immiscibility and thermogravitational diffusion, and those which
involve some form of crystal-liquid fractionation. It is now generally accepted that the latter are the
most important. Many of the models developed during the past twenty years to explain magmatic
differentiation have their roots in ideas first proposed in the early years of this century. This review
presents some of the historical background to the subject and attempts to summarize some of the
more recent developments.
Alfred Harker's perceptive study of in-situ crystallization within a high-level intrusion (Carrock
Fell in the English Lake District), published in volume 50 of the Quarterly Journal of the Geological
Society in 1894, clearly laid the foundations for many modern theories. In 1900 he introduced the
oxide-oxide variation diagram, which is still widely used to depict the geochemical variations within
suites of cogenetic igneous rocks. Studies of phase equilibria in synthetic and natural systems by
Bowen and his contemporaries, during the 1920s and 30s, provided the theoretical background needed
to understand the complex processes involved in fractional crystallization of magmas. In the past
decade mathematical modelling has allowed a more quantitative approach to the problem.
In 1909, in his seminal publication The Natural History of
Igneous Rocks, Harker commented that 'the most
fundamental problem in modern petrology (is) that of the
origin of the great diversity of rock types actually found'.
Eighty one years later Nielsen (1990) was to note that 'one
of the primary goals of igneous petrology is the definition
and evaluation of the roles of the processes responsible for
chemical differentiation'. In the past century an immense
number of publications have appeared on the subject of
magmatic differentiation, a brief, but by no means
comprehensive review of which will be presented here.
Have we actually made any real progress? Of course the
answer to this must be 'yes'. Have we built on the work of
our predecessors ? To this the answer must be 'sometimes'.
In the past decade there has been an ever-increasing
tendency to dismiss anything published in the preceding
decade as 'out of date', let alone anything produced in the
early part of this century. Clearly the present generation of
petrologists cannot read everything previously published on
a particular topic. However by dismissing older publications
there is a grave danger that inadvertently we may 're-invent
the wheel'. Reading the classic works of Harker (1909) and
Bowen (1928) does not leave one feeling trapped in a time
warp; rather with an impression that these were men light
years ahead of their time. What kind of progress would they
have made had they had access to the vast geochemical
databases presently available? This of course is entirely
philosophical. However, it should serve to remind us all to
conduct thorough literature searches as a precursor to new
research projects.
A wide range of processes have, over the past 150 years,
been advocated as potential causes of magmatic
differentiation (Fig. 1). As we shall see in subsequent
sections some (e.g. thermogravitational diffusion, liquid
immiscibility, assimilation) have gone in and out of fashion,
while others (e.g. fractional crystallization) appear to have

stood the test of time. Other processes, such as gaseous
transfer, are probably only significant during the latest
stages of magmatic differentiation and will not be considered
further here.
Early ideas about the causes of magmatic

differentiation
By the turn of the century, it was already well established
(Harker 1909) that the great diversity of igneous rocks and
the compositional variation within many individual rock
bodies
was
mainly
attributable
to
processes
of
differentiation. This had been a common basis for discussion
for more than 60 years, since Darwin's classic 1844
publication Geological observations on the volcanic
islands... Harker's ideas about magmatic differentiation
were profoundly influenced by his studies of the Carrock
Fell gabbroic intrusion in the English Lake District,
reported in 1894 in volume 50 of the Quarterly Journal of
the Geological Society. He was clearly aware of two different
types of differentiation: the in-situ differentiation of a single
magmatic body; and the differentiation, prior to intrusion or
extrusion, responsible for the production of cogenetic suites
of intrusives or extrusives. In the latter case H a r k e r (1909)
reasoned that, as we only see the finished product, we have
to speculate about the processes involved. However, in the
in-situ case both the stages of the variation and to some
extent the nature of the processes themselves may be
studied directly. The significance of this was to gain
fundamental importance, more than thirty years later, in
studies of the great layered mafic intrusions (e.g. Wager &
Deer 1939). Harker, however, was uncertain as to how
conclusions based on a study of in-situ differentiation could
be applied to the more obscure question of the
205
206
M. WILSON
thermogravitational
diffusion
liquid
%
liquid
immiscibility
i!i!iiii!!i:i::i':,:::
i!!i!iiiiiiiiiiiii!iiii
.'
iiiiiii!i!i!iiiii!iiii::,,::iiiiiiiii!i!iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
immiscibility was widely discussed as a potential liquid state

differentiation mechanism at this time (e.g. Harker 1909;
Bowen 1928) but was not considered to be particularly
important. Magma mixing was also viewed as a significant
process in contributing to the chemical diversity of magmatic
systems, although, as noted by Harker (1909) it is actually a
'reverse differentiation mechanism' in that two different
magma compositions become mixed to form one.
Crystal-liquid fractionation
Whilst agreeing that liquid state differentiation mechanisms
could generate localized compositional variations within
magma bodies, both Harker (1894, 1909) and Bowen (1928)
strongly favoured processes of crystal-liquid fractionation as
the main cause of magmatic differentiation. Bowen noted
that 'differentiation in a crystallising mass may be brought
about in two ways: through the localisation of the

crystallisation of a certain phase or phases and through the
relative movement of crystals and liquid'. Eighty five years
later we are still debating about the precise mechanism by
which this occurs!
Harker (1894, 1909) explained his ideas about the
mechanism of fractional crystallization in the context of
progressive crystallization in a d y k e . He envisaged that as a
result of crystallization at the margins of the intrusion the
remaining magma would become progressively depleted in
those components incorporated into the solid phase, as long
as diffusion could keep pace with crystallization. Clearly this
model depends very heavily on the ability of components to
diffuse through a silicate melt, which we now know is
actually a very slow process (e.g. Hofmann 1980). Indeed as
early as 1928, Bowen argued that the rates of diffusion are
too slow to have a n y significant effect in producing
compositional gradients in silicate melts. Harker, however,
believed that diffusion would be important in the early
stages of crystallization but would decrease with falling
temperature as the residual magma became more viscous.
He (Harker 1909) placed great importance on crystallization
in the marginal zones (walls, roof) of magma chambers as a
major mechanism for differentiation. Becker (1897) first
introduced the term fractional crystallization to describe this
mechanism of igneous differentiation, but, unlike Harker,
dismissed diffusion in favour of transportation of components in the liquid phase by convection currents. Seventy
five years later Sparks et al. (1984) were to reach a similar
conclusion, though based on rather different reasoning,
using the term convective fractionation.
The gravitational settling of minerals in a fluid magma
had already been proposed by Darwin (1844) as a principal
cause for magmatic differentiation, based upon his
observations of phenocryst accumulations in the bases of
lava flows. The viability of the process was to remain a
matter of debate for the next 150 years! Harker (1909)
realized that the viscosity of a magma might be sufficient to
overcome the natural tendency of crystals to sink by virtue
of their greater density and as a consequence did not regard
crystal settling as a particularly important mechanism of
differentiation. However, he was well aware of the time
element which meant that while crystal settling to the base
of a small sill might not be very important, it could be in a
large crustal magma chamber cooling very slowly.
Harker had studied the layered mafic-ultramafic igneous
complex of the island of Rhum in the Tertiary volcanic
iliiiii!i!iiiii
!iiiiiiiiii!iiiiiiiiliiiiiiiiiiiiii!i!i!i
ili!i
i!iiiiiiiiii !i!ii i iiii!i i ! !i!iiii i i i !i!i!iit i i iiiiiii i i i i i i iiiiiii
iiiiiiiiiiii
i
ii!iiiiiiii!i!ii!iiiii
i
i;iiiii;!iiiiiiii!i;i!iiiiiiiiiiiiiii;i!iiiiiiiiiiii
Fig. 1. A summary of the major processes responsible for magmatic
differentiation.
differentiation of magmas in an unknown deep-seated

magma reservoir. It may be argued that this is still as true
today as it was in 1909!
In the early part of this century ideas about magmatic
differentiation were divided between
processes of
differentiation in the liquid state and those of crystal-liquid
differentiation or fractional crystallization (Fig. 1).
Differentiation in the liquid state

As part of his studies of the Carrock Fell intrusion, Harker
(1894) discussed the possibility that gravitational stratification of denser components might occur in magma bodies,
but concluded that such a process was incapable of
explaining the symmetrical nature of the compositional
zonation which he observed in the gabbro. He also
considered (and dismissed) the possibility for differentiation
in the liquid state due to temperature differences between
the central and marginal parts of the intrusion (the Soret
effect). By 1909, he had extended his ideas to much larger
scale phenomena, envisaging the possibility of large crustal
magma chambers, in which denser (more mafic) magma
underlay less dense (more acidic) magma, from which
simultaneous eruptions of constrasting magma compositions
might emanate. Models involving such stratified magma
bodies were to come back in vogue more than seventy years
later (e.g. Huppert & Sparks 1980). Silicate liquid
MAGMATIC D I F F E R E N T I A T I O N
province of NW Scotland (Harker 1908, 1909) but did not
recognize the cumulate origin of these rocks and thought
that the banding was due to repeated intrusion combined
with deformation. Had he been aware of the spectacular
evidence for crystal accumulation, which would be provided
by the layered rocks of the Skaergaard intrusion, Greenland
(not to be discovered by Wager and co-workers until thirty
years later), might he have concluded otherwise? It is
interesting to note in this context how our ideas can
sometimes come full circle. Eighty years after Harker's
original study, Bedard et al. (1988) concluded that his ideas
about the origin of layering in the Eastern Layered Series of
Rhum were broadly correct, overturning the models of the
previous 25 years, which proposed crystal accumulation on
the floor of a periodically refluxed magma chamber (e.g.
Wager & Brown 1968).
By the early 1930s (Daly 1933) ideas that layering in
some plutonic bodies was the product of gravitational crystal
settling were gaining widespread acceptance and these were
reinforced by Wager & Deer's classic description o f the
Skaergaard intrusion in 1939. However it was not until after
the Second World War that the implications of these layered
mafic intrusions for models of magmatic differentiation
really became apparent (e.g. Wager & Brown 1968).
Gravitational crystal settling models were to dominate most
discussions of magmatic differentiation during the 1960s and
1970s. However, since McBirney & Noyes (1979) reevaluation of the evidence for crystal settling in the
Skaergaard intrusion, more recent models have favoured
in-situ crystallization. This is yet another illustration of the
ways in which our ideas have come full circle.
Like many of his fellow scientists, Harker (1909)
considered that assimilation of crustal rocks could be an
important process in the compositional diversification of
magmas, particularly in deep crustal magma reservoirs
where extensive melting of wall rocks might occur. However
'the enormous amount of heat needed to raise the solid (wall)
rocks to the point of melting and to melt them' and the lack
of evidence for superheated magmas to provide the
necessary heat source concerned him. Bowen (1928) was
also impressed with the amount of superheat necessary to
assimilate significant quantities of crustal rocks and, whilst
accepting that limited assimilation undoubtedly did contribute to the compositional variability of magmatic rocks,
doubted 'whether the presence of foreign matter is ever
essential to the production of any particular type of
differentiate'. In the 1980s and 90s, models of wall rock
assimilation have come back into favour with the
recognition of assimilation coupled with fractional crystallization (AFC) as an important process in the petrogenesis
of many continental magmas.
Bowen (1928), building on the earlier ideas of Harker,
stressed the importance of developing models for magmatic
differentiation that were consistent with the fundamental
principles of physical chemistry. He showed how a
knowledge of phase equilibria in synthetic silicate systems,
when used in conjunction with detailed field observations
and mineralogical studies of igneous rocks, could be helpful
in interpreting their petrogenesis. In addition, building on
the work of Fenner (1926), he developed the use of the
oxide-oxide variation diagram, first introduced by Harker
(1900, 1909), as a graphical means of interpreting the
chemical relationships within cogenetic suites of rocks.
Bowen also introduced the idea of a Reaction Principle to
207
explain the mineralogical changes which occur during the

progressive crystallization of mafic magma. Fifty years after
the publication of Bowen's classic book The Evolution of
Igneous Rocks (1928), Osborn (1979) reviewed the Reaction
Principle and concluded that the basic idea was still valid.
Whilst the war years (1939-45) undoubtedly slowed the
pace of research, by the time Tilley gave his presidential
address to the Geological Society of London in 1950 on
'Some aspects of magmatic evolution', it was clear how our
understanding of magmatic differentiation processes had
developed since the 1930s. Major steps in establishing the
concept of magmatic differentiation series related to
different parental basalt compositions (alkali and tholeiitic)
had been made by Bailey et al. (1924) in their classic study
of the Tertiary and post-Teriary geology of the Isle of Mull,
Scotland. These ideas were developed further by Kennedy
(1933). Tilley (1950) believed that the alkaline magma series
could be derived from a tholeiitic basalt parent by fractional
crystallization. However, Yoder & Tilley (1962) were later
to show that a low pressure thermal divide precludes this
and a fractionation relationship between these two primary
magma compositions is not generally considered today.
Tilley clearly demonstrated the different evolutionary trends
of the tholeiitic and alkaline magma series on a total alkalis
v. silica Harker variation diagram, still widely used today to
classify volcanic rocks (Le Baset al. 1986). He discussed the
variable nature of the iron-enrichment trends which could
be generated by differentiation of tholeiitic basaltic magma
in contrast with the trend of iron-depletion displayed by the
calc-alkaline series. As we shall see in subsequent sections,
this remains a subject for debate. Additionally he was
concerned about the role of crustal contamination in the
petrogenesis of the calc-akaline association of orogenic
belts; again a subject at the forefront of discussion in the
1980s and 90s.
Mechanisms for magmatic differentiation: a review

of current ideas
M a g m a - m i x i n g processes in open system m a g m a
chambers
Magma mixing is clearly an important differentiation process
contributing to the overall geochemical and petrological
diversity within and between magmatic suites (Philpotts
1990). First proposed by Bunsen (1851), it was considered to
be an important petrogenetic process by many workers
during the later part of the ninteenth century and the
beginning of this (e.g. Harker 1909; Bowen 1928). One of
the more extreme theories was that all magmas were
mixtures of basalt and rhyolite (e.g. Fenner 1938). A wide
range of phenomena have been recognized ranging from
incompletely mixed magmas (Furman & Spera 1985) to
hybrids in which mixing appears complete (e.g. Sparks &
Marshall 1986; Oldenburg et al. 1989). Clearly, in nature,
magma mixing must be common but we rarely see its effects.
For example, repeated injections of new batches of
primitive magma into long-lived, open magma chamber
systems undergoing crystal fractionation undoubtedly
controls the variety of eruptive products we observe at many
volcanic centres.This was recognized at the turn of the
century by Harker (1909). Osborn (1959) showed that
oxidation state plays a fundamental role in the course of
208
M. WILSON
magmatic differentiation and that this may be directly

related to whether the chamber is open or closed to new
magma batches.
In theory, a series of magmas generated by mixing of
two parental liquids should define straight lines on
oxide-oxide (i.e. Harker) variation diagrams, so long as
they were not concurrently fractionating. In contrast, suites
of rocks related by crystal fractionation should, in general,
define curved trends on Harker variation diagrams.
Complex mineralogical relationships can occur if two
partially crystallized magmas are mixed and equilibrium is
not completely re-established in the mixed magma.
The chemical diversity of the 1959 eruptions of Kilauea
Iki, Hawaii, have been cited by many workers as a classic
example of magma mixing (e.g. Murata & Richter 1966;
Wright 1973; Helz 1987). Recently, however, Russell &
Stanley (1990) have suggested that crystal sorting is
sufficient to explain the range of chemical compositions
observed. Eichelberger (1975) proposed that many andesites
and dacites in the western USA are the products of mixing
of primary basaltic and rhyolitic magmas; reviving an idea
more than 100 years old. However McBirney (1980)
critically evaluated the concept and claimed that most of the
petrographic and chemical features proposed as evidence for
magma mixing (e.g. disequilibrium) could be explained by
the eruption and mixing of magmas from compositionally
zoned magma chambers.
The idea that most magma chambers are episodically
replenished by new pulses of magma is widely accepted and
based on a range of evidence from both volcanic and
plutonic rocks. A number of workers have shown that a
variety of phenomena may occur during replenishment,
depending upon the relationships between the densities and
viscosities of the incoming and chamber magmas and the
input rate of new magma (e.g. Huppert & Sparks 1980;
Campbell & Turner 1986; Huppert et al. 1983, 1986).
O'Hara (1977) and O'Hara & Mathews (1981) developed
mathematical models to predict the course of magmatic
differentiation in magma chambers which are periodically
replenished with new batches of primitive magma,
periodically tapped and continuously fractionated. Over the
past decade a range of more complex models have been
devised (e.g. Nielsen 1988, 1990). These will be discussed
further in a subsequent section. Russell (1990) presents a
comprehensive review of the thermodynamics of magma
mixing, using a forward modelling approach to calculate
synthetic data sets for mixed magma systems. The model
data can then be compared against data for natural systems
as an aid in interpreting their petrogenesis.
Nielsen (1990) has shown, on the basis of model
calculations that, in a magmatic system undergoing paired
recharge and fractionation, the liquid line of descent (LLD)
for major elements is similar to that produced by fractional
crystallization. In recharged systems the magma chamber
fractionates only the liquidus phases, and the liquid is
constrained to evolve a l o n g the cotectics in some
n-dimensional phase diagram. As an example, in a simple
ternary system (Fig. 2), if the magma in a chamber is
crystallizing ol + cpx + plag, adding a pulse of more
primitive magma will push it back into the olivine phase
field from which it will evolve back towards the ol-cpx
cotectic. In such a situation the long term amount of
ol + cpx removed from the system will be greater than that
in a closed system.
plagioclase
olivine
cpx
Fig. 2. Magma mixing viewed in the context of a simplified ternary

system. If the magma in the chamber was crystallizing the
assemblage ol + plag + cpx it would lie at the ternary eutectic c.
Re-fluxing the chamber with a new batch of primitive magma (a),
followed by complete mixing, would generate a new chamber
magma composition a' which would then evolve back towards the
eutectic c along the liquid line of descent (LLD) a'-b'-c. The path
a-b-c represents the initial LLD of magma a.
Fractional crystallization
Gravitational crystal settling and differentiation in layered
mafic intrusions. Much of our understanding of the
differentiation of basic magmas is based on the record of
crystallization preserved in layered mafic intrusions (e.g.
Skaergaard, East Greenland; Stillwater, Montana; Bushveld, S Africa). Our knowledge of the petrogenesis of these
bodies is grounded in the classical works of Wager & Brown
(1968), Jackson (1961) and Hess (1960). However, in recent
years, it has become clear that many of the petrographic,
chemical and textural features of layered intrusions cannot
be modelled adequately using the classic assumptions of
gravitational crystal settling on to the floor of a magma
chamber (McBirney & Noyes 1979; Shirley 1987). Many of
the controversies have revolved around the site of crystallization. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s models were dominated by ideas of cumulus crystallization within the main
body of magma and sedimentation by convection currents
(e.g. Wager & Brown 1968). However McBirney & Noyes
(1979) proposed that the layering is actually produced by
in-situ crystallization on the floor (and walls) of the chamber; a complex process involving both chemical and thermal
diffusion, nucleation and crystal growth.
One of the oldest controversies in igneous petrology
(Bowen 1928; Morse 1980) concerns the path of
differentiation in tholeiitic magmas. It is generally accepted
that a tholeiitic magma crystallizing at constant bulk
composition (i.e. in a closed system) will generate an
extreme iron-enrichment trend on an AFM diagram (Fig. 3)
depicting the compositions of its derived liquids (Osborn
MAGMATIC DIFFERENTIATION
Fig. 3. A (Na20 + K20)-F (FeO + Fe203)-M(MgO ) diagram to

show the contrasting Bowen and Fenner trends of magmatic
differentiation, of alkali and of iron enrichment respectively.
1959, 1962; Yoder & Tilley 1962). Such a trend is known as
the Fenner trend and is characteristic of large, apparently
closed, intrusive systems such as Skaergaard. In contrast, if
the magmatic system is open to oxygen, in particular if f 02
is maintained at a constant value during crystallization
(Ghiorso & Carmichael 1985), such that the system becomes
progressively more oxidized with falling temperature,
fractional crystallization ot a tholeiitic liquid is presumed to
generate a residuum rich in silica and low in Fe (the Bowen
trend), due to the precipitation of large quantities of spinel.
The classic study of Osborn (1959) demonstrated that
the difference between the Bowen and Fenner trends
appears to be controlled by the timing of the onset of
magnetite fractionation, which is, in turn, controlled by the
oxidation state of the system. Simplistically we can think of
the oxidation state of a magma in terms of the
oxidation-reduction
equilibrium:
4FeO + 02 = 2Fe203.
From the thermodynamic equilibrium relation for this
reaction we can deduce that the fugacity of oxygen ( f O2),
which is a measure of the degree of oxidation of the system
at a given temperature, should be proportional to the
amount of Fe203.
During closed system crystallization the early extraction
of olivine and pyroxenes, which contain no appreciable
FeaO3, should increase the concentration of FeaO3 in the
residual liquid relative to FeO, leading to an increase in f 02
(Juster et al. 1989). However, once magnetite begins to
crystallize the Fe203/Fetotal ratio should decline in the more
evolved liquids. The magnitude of the effect will clearly
depend upon the composition of the magnetite as well as
that of the other iron-bearing phases in the crystallizing
mineral assemblage. If olivine is in a reaction relationship
with the magma to form pigeonite, FeO will be added to the
liquid as the olivine dissolves which will counterbalance the
tendency for f 02 to increase as olivine + cpx + plagioclase
crystallize (Juster et al. 1989).
209
In certain circumstances the oxygen fugacity of a magma

may be buffered by the surrounding country rocks (e.g.
Ghiorso & Carmichael 1985). This probably involves
hydrogen diffusion; the fugacity of hydrogen being linked to
that of oxygen through the breakdown of water. Oxygen
fugacity may also be internally buffered by magmatic
oxidation-reduction equilibria, for example $2-SO2 and
CO-CO2. Ghiorso (1985) calculates that for crystallization
along an oxygen buffer (e.g. quartz-fayalite-magnetite
(QFM) or nickel-nickel oxide (NNO)) the ratio of ferric to
total iron in the residual liquid should remain approximately
constant. Ghiorso & Carmichael (1985) suggest that, to
generate the typical Fenner differentiation trend, a tholeiitic
basalt must crystallize essentially along an oxygen buffer. In
contrast the Bowen trend is generated by continuous
oxidation of the melt (maintenance of constant f 02 as
temperature decreases) which results in early magnetite
saturation in the evolving liquid.
The Skaergaard intrusion, East Greenland, has, for the
past 50 years been cited as the classic example of in-situ
differentiation of basic magma. This was first described by
Wager & Deer in 1939 (after its discovery in 1930) and
subsequently by Wager & Brown in 1968 in their classic
book on Layered Igneous Rocks. Useful reviews of the
structure and average composition of the Skaergaard
Layered Series are given by McBirney & Noyes (1979) and
McBirney (1989).
Wager & Deer (1939) proposed that convection currents
of variable velocity played a significant role in the cooling
and differentiation of the intrusion, reintroducing the idea
(proposed by Darwin 1844 and by Bowen 1928) that
magmatic differentiation could be induced by crystal
settling. The nature of convection in high-level magma
chambers has occupied the minds of workers in this field
ever since and our ideas have been strongly influenced by
studies of the Skaergaard. However in more recent years
several authors (e.g. McBirney & Noyes 1979; Naslund
1984) have come to question the importance of crystal
settling, and have proposed new models to account for the
development of layering, so spectacularly developed in the
Skaergaard intrusion.
Wager (1960) proposed that the differentiation of the
tholeiitic Skaergaard parent magma was characterized by a
trend of iron enrichment throughout, with very little silica
enrichment until very late stages (Fig.4). This is in marked
contrast to the normal trend of differentiation observed in
tholeiitic volcanic suites. However, Hunter & Sparks (1987)
triggered a controversial series of short papers (McBirney &
Naslund 1990; Morse 1990; Brooks & Nielsen 1990; Brooks
et al. 1991) by proposing that earlier calculations of the
Skaergaard differentiation trend (e.g. Wager & Brown 1968)
were incorrect, and that the magmatic differentiation
sequence actually follows the more normal eruptive trend of
early iron-enrichment (Fig. 4), with magmas evolving from
tholeiitic basalt to ferrobasalt in the Lower Zone (LZ), from
a ferrobasalt to an iron-rich tholeiitic andesite (icelandite)
from the Middle Zone (MZ) to the Upper Zone (UZ) and
from icelandite to an iron-rich rhyolite at the Sandwich
Horizon. Hunter & Sparks argued against the Fenner-type
of differentiation for Skaergaard partly on the grounds that
iron-rich magmas are rare as eruptive compositions.
However Brooks et al. (1991) pointed out that iron-rich
silica-poor dykes and plateau lavas do in fact occur in the
area of the Skaergaard and cited additional examples from
210
M. WILSON
40.0
Skaergaard
30.0
cq
~D
O~"
'
~z. 2 ~ ~ - -
20.0
45O7
10.0
a
i
0.0
40.0
45.0
50.0
60.O
55.0
65.0
SiO 2
Liquids
Wager & Brown LLD
Cumulates
Hunter & Sparks LLD
25.0
20.0
ll,lk
PdP,~
~.~
0 i~ 0 0
~'~
O0
15.0
',1
10.0
~'l
~0
o o
QFM
o
5.0
o
0.0
40.0
50.0
60.0
0 o
I
70.0
i
80.0
SiO 2
Galapagos
Thingmuli
Iceland
Skaergaard LLD
Wager & Brown
Fig. 4. (a) : F e 2 0 3 (total Fe) v e r s u s SiO2 wt % variation diagram

for the Skaergaard intrusion, Greenland, showing the liquid lines of
descent for the chamber magma predicted by Wager & Brown
(1968) and Hunter & Sparks (1987). Also shown are the average
compositions of the cumulates from each of the major zones of the
Layered Series from McBirney (1989).
Abbreviations : HZ, Hidden Zone; LZ, Lower Zone; MZ, Middle
Zone; UZ, Upper Zone; SH, Sandwich Horizon.
(h) Fe20 3 (total Fe) versus SiO2 wt % variation diagram showing
the liquid line of descent (LLD) of the Thingmuli tholeiitic
volcanic series, Iceland ( Carmichael 1964) and an experimentally
determined LLD for a tholeiitic basalt from the Galapagos Ouster
et al. 1989). Both evolved in a relatively oxidizing environment,
close to the QFM oxygen buffer. Also shown for comparison is the
Skaergaard LLD from (a).
oceanic environments (e.g. Melson & O'Hearn 1986; Sinton
et al. 1983).
Brooks et al. (1991) proposed that the Skaergaard
iron-rich liquids evolved from a MORB-like tholeiitic parent
magma by simple crystal fractionation in a closed or nearly
closed system. They concluded that the iron-rich Fenner
differentiation trend may actually be the normal liquid line
of descent of tholeiitic magmas, and that the Bowen trend of
silica enrichment arises only when magmas come under the
influence of oxidizing conditions in near surface (probably

open) magma chambers. This has been confirmed by
experimental studies on material from the Galapagos area
by Juster et al. (1989). Thus the requirement of closed
system differentiation may be essential to develop the
Fenner trend. Indeed Morse (1990) suggests that plutonic
processes will tend to enhance the Fenner trend of iron
enrichment, and thus that we should expect to see
differences in the differentiation trend of tholeiitic magmas
between the volcanic and plutonic environment. Problems
arise of course because layered intrusions such as the
Skaergaard predominantly preserve the crystal extract,
whereas the volcanic successions preserve the liquids.
Indeed the more efficient the process of crystal-liquid
fractionation the more difficult it is to define the liquid line
of descent of the magmas from which a series of plutonic
rocks has formed. This is one of the major points of
contention between Hunter & Sparks (1987) and their
opponents. Brooks et al. (1991) raised the possibility that
liquid lines of descent constructed from volcanic sequences
may not actually represent the fractionation path of the
magmas in the underlying chambers, even though
least-squares modelling calculations can be performed which
give good residuals. Magma compositions may depart from
the theoretical liquid line of descent as a consequence of
open-system magmatic processes, including magma chamber
refluxing and in-situ differentiation. This is a view echoed in
the theoretical modelling of magmatic differentiation
processes by Nielsen (1990). If correct, this may challenge
many of our traditional perceptions of magmatic
differentiation based on Harker diagrams and studies of
volcanic rocks.
Hunter & Sparks (1987) suggested that the Skaergaard
magma chamber might not have been completely closed and
could have lost significant volumes of silicic magma to the
surface by eruption or lateral intrusion. Since most of the
roof rocks of the intrusion have been removed by erosion,
there is no way of knowing whether there was indeed any
connection to the surface. In addition Stewart & DePaolo
(1990) have measured the Nd-Sr isotopic composition of the
cumulates from the Layered Series , which reveals that the
Skaergaard magma was actually assimilating small amounts
(2-4%) of Precambrian gneissic wall rock, at least during
the early stages of crystallization. Thus even the type
example of closed system magmatic differentiation was
probably not completely closed to external influences.
Defant & Nielsen (1990) noted that for simple systems
undergoing fractional crystallization the instantaneous bulk
composition of the fractionating mineral assemblage begins
to approach the bulk composition of the magma from which
it is crystallizing when the magma becomes multiply
saturated i.e.when it reaches a eutectic. In simple terms this
means that at the mafic end, the extracted cumulates should
be most different in composition from the crystallizing
magma, and at the evolved (acidic) end most similar. Such
relationships may change, however, if the system becomes
open to recharge or assimilation. This could have important
implications with respect to the interpretation of the
composition of the Skaergaard cumulates (McBirney 1989;
Fig.4). The isotopic evidence for assimilation (Stewart &
DePaolo 1990) may mean that the early cumulates are not
what would normally fractionate from an evolving tholeiitic
magma. Addition of the assimilant would probably have
driven the magma composition off the cotectic along which
it was evolving, changing the fractionating mineral
proportions as well as the mineral assemblage (Nielsen
1989).
Marsh (1988) and Sparks (1990) have continued the
debate about whether the plutonic and the volcanic record
reveal fundamentally different styles of magmatic
differentiation. Marsh investigated the dynamic evolution of
a sheet-like basaltic magma chamber and concluded that
most of the crystallization should occur near the roof, but
that descending plume-like convection currents would
transport crystals down to the chamber floor. In this model
the more differentiated liquids are always trapped in the
downward crystallizing roof zone and therefore the residual
magma never differentiates to any considerable extent. In
many respects the physical aspects of this model have strong
similarities to that proposed originally by Wager & Deer
(1939) for the Skaergaard intrusion. However Sparks (1990)
argues that this model is not applicable to large magma
chambers in which crystallization occurs predominantly at
the floor, while cooling occurs predominantly through the
roof. It is clear that this remains an area for further study!
C o n v e c t i o n in m a g m a c h a m b e r s
Until the late 1970s our ideas about the physical processes
that allowed fractional crystallization to take place were
based on very simple concepts and differed little from those
of Bowen (1928). Crystals were considered to nucleate and
grow within a magma and then to settle out under the
influence of gravity to form cumulate rocks. Although many
other processes potentially responsible for magmatic
differentiation had been recognized by the turn of the
century (e.g. Harker 1909), including in-situ crystallization
on the margins of the magma chamber, magma mixing,
crustal contamination, immiscibility and liquid state
diffusion, by the late 1920s these were all regarded as
subordinate to crystal settling.
In the past decade, the dynamics of magma chamber
processes have become an important theme, with increasing
importance attached to the role of convection in fractional
crystallization. This represents a considerable shift of
emphasis from previous studies of magmatic differentiation,
based on experimental determinations of phase equilibria in
silicate systems (e.g. Hess 1989). It is interesting to note that
the idea of thermal convection in magma chambers was first
proposed by Becker (1897).
The convective system established in a particular magma
body is necessarily a transient condition, because convection
will enhance the rate of cooling. Thus the life span of a
convection system depends on the amount of heat that is
lost by conduction through the walls and roof and the
amount of new magma (if any) periodically injected into the
chamber. Flow rates calculated for magmas undergoing
convection are comparable to, if not higher than, the
settling velocities predicted by Stokes Law. Thus convection
will either cancel out or enhance the effects of crystal
settling. It is important to remember, however, that Stokes
Law relates to the movement of small spheres in Newtonian
fluids. Magmas that contain more than a few percent crystals
and those that are highly polymerized are more likely to
behave as non-Newtonian or Bingham fluids which have a
finite yield strength (McBirney & Noyes 1979).
From recent studies (for reviews see Sparks et al. 1984;
Turner & Campbell 1986) it is clear that heat and mass
211
transfer processes in multicomponent fluids such as silicate

melts are complex. Calculated thermal Rayleigh numbers
range between 10 9 for viscous rhyolite to 10 23 for basaltic
magmas. Thus given a value of 10 3 for the onset of
turbulent convection, we might conclude that all magmas,
regardless of their chemical composition, stored in
high-level magma chambers should be in a state of vigorous
thermal convection (Hess 1989). This should have
fundamental implications for models of crystal settling in
magma chambers for, as pointed out by Sparks et al. (1984),
the convective motions are usually sufficiently vigorous to
keep crystals in suspension. However crystal settling may
occur from within boundary layers at the margins (floor,
walls) of the magma chamber. In recent years most models
for crystallization in magma chambers have favoured in-situ
growth on the floor and walls of the chamber (McBirney &
Noyes 1979; Irvine 1980 a, b; Turner & Campbell 1986;
McBirney et al. 1985; Nilson et al. 1985). However, Sparks
et al. (1993) have recently returned to gravitational crystal
settling models to explain the modal and rhythmic igneous
layering which typifies many large layered mafic intrusions.
They propose that each mineral phase has its own critical
concentration which must be exceeded before sedimentation
can occur.
Sparks et al. (1984) proposed a mechanism for magmatic
differentiation, termed convective fractionation, in which in
a crystallizing boundary layer the less (or more) dense liquid
fraction convects away from the residual crystals (Fig. 5).
Langmuir (1989) and Tait & Jaupart (1990) propose that the
evolved melt from the boundary layer may then be mixed
back into the main body of the magma (Fig. 6). This means
that magma in the central part of the chamber may exhibit
the effects of differentiation without ever having crystallized
directly itself. Nielsen (1990) has incorportated this concept
into a complex mathematical model of in-situ crystallization.
His results show that the course of differentiation (liquid
line of descent) can be strongly influenced by the amount of
crystallization in the boundary layer and on the mineral
roof
:i:',:i:i:i:"
2
~q
-
~:~'.~:!:i'i':
iiiiiiiiil
. , % % , ,
,~,,q
residual melts
~:-:-::::::::: convective
~:'-::: ffactionation
I!:i'i'i:i:!':
k~
v.,,~
floor
Fig. 5. Schematic model for convective fractionation in a magma
chamber.
212
M. W I L S O N
12 [/
| plagioclasein
~_p
p,
both compositionally and thermally zoned (e.g. Hildreth

1979, 1981) and that in such systems multiple-diffusive
convection may be important.
in-situ
crystallization
11
CaO
agma
,0
mm
9
I solidification
zonemelt
8/
I
I
4
5
6
I
7
I
8
MgO
I
9
I
10
I
11
12
Fig. 6. Schematic weight % CaO versus MgO variation diagram to

show the effects of in-situ crystallization. For the case of perfect
fractional crystallization the initial chamber magma m evolves
along the LLD m-p-s. The marked inflection corresponds to the
point at which plagioclase becomes a major fractionating phase.
Highly fractionated melt evolving in-situ in the solidification zone
(Fig. 3) has the composition s. If a small amount of s mixes back
into the main body of magma (m) the new chamber magma will
have a composition m'. This will then evolve along a slightly
different LLD ( m ' - p ' - s ' ) . Mixing-in of the new solidification zone
melt s' with m' will yield a new chamber magma m". The chamber
magma thus evolves along a path m-m'-m" which contrasts
markedly with the LLD predicted for perfect fractional
crystallization.
assemblage crystallizing. A consequence of in-situ fractionation is that the system evolves by mixing in a small amount
of magma with an extreme composition (Fig. 6), particularly
with respect to its trace element characteristics. This simple
graphical representation demonstrates that the magma
chamber composition will evolve towards the composition of
the solidification zone liquids, not along any specific
cotectic. Rather surprisingly models of convective fractionation are not new. In 1918, Grout proposed a two phase
model of convection in which crystal laden melt from the
chamber roof sinks to the floor where crystals settle, and
residual liquid rises as it is less dense and is recycled into the
zone of crystallization. Integration of this effect could result
in the gravitational differentiation of considerable volumes
of magma.
An important property of multicomponent fluids such as
silicate melts is that individual components (including heat)
can have different diffusivities. As a consequence such fluids
may become vertically stratified with respect to density,
composition and temperature (Irvine 1980a; McBirney &
Noyes 1979; Rice 1981; Sparks et al. 1984; Turner &
Campbell 1986). If opposing gradients of two (or more)
components with different diffusivities are set up, the system
may separate into a series of independently convecting
layers, bounded by sharp diffusive interfaces, across which
heat and chemical components are transported by molecular
diffusion. This p h e n o m e n o n is known as double (multiple)diffusive convection, and Sparks et al. (1984) consider that
this will inevitably occur in silicate magmas. Indeed Irvine
(1980a) considered that multi-diffusive convection is
probably one of the principal mechanisms in the fractional
crystallization of magmas. This process may also be effective
in transmitting the effects of magma mixing and assimilation
through a cooling body of magma. There is substantial
evidence to suggest that many silicic magma chambers are
Thermogravitational diffusion
The diffusion of chemical species in silicate melts governs
the kinetics of most magmatic processes including partial
melting, fractional crystallization, magma mixing and crystal
growth. Hofmann (1980), Watson & Baker (1990) and
Lesher & Walker (1991) give excellent reviews of this
complex subject and the reader is referred to these articles
for a more detailed discussion of the principles and
governing equations.
In the late ninteenth century a particular type of
diffusion known as Soret diffusion was regarded as being one
of the main causes of magmatic differentiation. This refers
to the tendency of non-convecting homogeneous solutions to
develgp concentration gradients when subjected to a
temperature gradient. Hess (1989) presents an excellent
review of the p h e n o m e n o n .
The governing equation has the form:
( C c - C.)/Co= o A r
where Cc and CH are the temperatures at the cold and hot
ends of the system respectively and Co is the initial
concentration, a is the Soret coefficient and AT is the
temperature difference between the two ends of the system.
The compositional gradient which can develop in a system
will depend upon the magnitude of the Soret coefficient,
which can vary in both sign and magnitude from component
to component, and on the temperature gradient. Components with positive Soret coefficients accumulate at the
cold ends of temperature gradients whereas those with
negative coefficients concentrate at the hot ends.
Harker (1894), in his study of the Carrock Fell intrusion,
gave careful consideration to the possibility that Soret
diffusion could have been responsible for the chemical
variation he observed. He came to the conclusion that
diffusion controlled gradients in a liquid magma were not
the major control, favouring instead a model which
combined crystallization and diffusion. However it must be
noted that Harker had only one complete major element
chemical analysis and one partial analysis of the gabbro on
which to base his ideas. Additionally, since he was basing
his interpretations on Soret's original model of diffusion in
saline solutions, he did not consider the possibility that
different components of a silicate melt might diffuse in
different directions in the same temperature gradient.
In 1981, Walker et al. demonstrated experimentally that
a basalt magma held at several hundred degrees above its
liquidus and subjected to a steep temperature gradient
developed strong chemical gradients in about a week,
becoming broadly andesitic at the hot end and a low silica
basalt at the cold end (Fig. 7). It is interesting to note that
this is the converse of normal crystal-liquid differentiation
trends, in which the low temperature differentiation
products are silica rich. These experiments triggered
renewed interest in the potential for the development of
diffusion controlled chemical gradients in magma bodies.
Large temperature gradients are likely to exist at the
margins of magma chambers and these will control the
effective role of thermal diffusion in the fractionation of
chemical species within the boundary layer (Carrigan &
Cygan 1986; Cygan & Carrigan 1992). Numerous researchers (e.g. Hildreth 1979, 1981; Koyaguchi 1989) have
Soret effect
20.0
O - .'...
'
"
'
"
- - 4 1 " - -
'~
.,..~
15.0
J.
___.____~._~-----'~
~.
lO.O ~
~)
.E
"~
------0
e - - - - - - - - - - - -~- - ~ - ~
5.0
~ .
.
.....
m
0.0
1800
.
.
.
"A . . . . . . . . . . . . .
m
~
.
.
A
~
1700
1600
FeO
--~
M~o
-m-
CaO
"-O" -
SiO 2 / 3
v "7. . . . . ,". . . . ~ . . . . . ,. . . . . ",'-V
At203
~'-
N a 2 0 * 10
" "V" "
K 2 0 * 10
TiO 2 * 2
1500
Fig. 7. Weight % oxide variations as a function of temperature,

generated as a consequence of the Soret effect in an experimental
charge. Data from Walker et al. (1981). The mid-points of each
curve represent the initial starting composition of the system.
suggested that thermal diffusion (Soret fractionation) may
be a significant process contributing to chemical zonation in
magma bodies, particularly silicic ones. However other
workers (e.g. Michael 1983; Stix et al. 1988) have argued
that crystal fractionation processes and not Soret diffusion
can account for the observed chemical gradients in silicic
magmas. Indeed recent experimental determinations of the
Soret coefficients for a variety of silicate melt compositions
(e.g. Lesher 1986; Lesher & Walker 1988) have suggested
that the effect would be small and often of the opposite
sense to that observed in natural magmatic systems. In
addition, processes of crystallization, crystal settling and
convection will tend to destroy any large scale chemical
gradients developed by diffusion within the liquid magma.
However in stagnant boundary layers near the walls and
roof of a magma chamber, Soret diffusion may locally
modify the pattern of magmatic differentiation (Hess 1989).
Cygan & Carrigan (1992) have developed a numerical
model to examine the effect of non-linear and time
dependent temperature fields upon the mass flux associated
with thermal diffusion. Their results suggest that thermal
diffusion of magma in a time-dependent thermal field is
minimal and thus that this cannot be considered a significant
chemical fractionation process. It it interesting to note,
however, that their predicted changes in the silicate melt
induced by thermal diffusion in a boundary layer are orders
of magnitude lower than those observed in experimental
(e.g. Walker et al. 1981; Lesher 1986) and field (Hildreth
1979) studies.
Assimilation and fractional crystallisation

Since the classic work of Bowen (1928), it has generally
been accepted that crystallizing magmas may simultaneously
assimilate the surrounding wall rock. Even Harker (1909)
conceded that extensive melting may occur adjacent to
magma reservoirs in the deep crust, although he did not
envisage that the effect would be significant due to the
absence (as he thought) of sedimentary strata in the deep
crust. The heat required for assimilation must clearly be
derived from the heat contained within the magma itself and
from the heat of crystallization liberated by mineral
precipitation. Most authors now agree that assimilation,
combined with fractional crystallization, is an important
mechanism of magmatic differentiation in all continental
magmatic settings, particularly in zones of thickened
continental crust.
As noted by McBirney (1984) the major element
213
composition of a contaminated magma does not necessarily

reflect the effect of an added component in any simple way.
In many cases the evolving magma will continue to follow its
original liquid line of descent. However a magma
assimilating felsic crustal rocks will differentiate to produce
much larger volumes of more evolved products than if it had
not assimilated any crust.
Increasingly complex theoretical models to decribe the
trace element and isotopic evolution of systems undergoing
paired assimilation and fractional crystallization (AFC) have
been devised since the late 1970s (e.g. Allegre & Minster
1978; Taylor 1980; DePaolo 1981; Ghiorso & Kelemen
1987; Nielsen 1989, 1990). The older models (e.g. DePaolo
1981) involve several important simplifying assumptions ,
the most critical of which is that all partition coefficients (D)
are constant over the range of fractionation being modelled,
and that there is a constant ratio (r) between the rate of
assimilation and the rate of fractional crystallization. The
recent development of phase equilibria based differentiation
models (e.g. Ghiorso & Kelemen 1987; Nielsen 1988) has
allowed formulation of more complex, and more realistic,
models of AFC processes. The most recent (Nielsen 1989,
1990) permit calculation of liquid lines of descent for Sr and
Nd isotopes and evaluation of the effects of assimilation on
temperature, fractionating mineral proportions and melt
composition. Nielsen (1989) has demonstrated that in
systems undergoing AFC the bulk partition coefficients for
Sr and Nd are strongly dependent on the chemistry of the
assimilant and on the rate of mixing. Virtually all silicic
assimilants will increase the bulk partition coefficient for
network modifying cations. Additionally he has confirmed
that assimilation will generally cause a change in the
fractionating mineral proportions. For example, a peraluminous assimilant will increase the proportion of plagioclase
crystallizing from a mafic magma, while a peralkaline
assimilant will increase the proportion of augite.
Liquid immiscibility
Silicate liquid immiscibility occurs whenever a single melt
splits into two coexisting melts in response to changes in
pressure, temperature or composition. The idea of liquid
immiscibility as a differentiation mechanism was probably
first proposed by Scrope (1825) and given serious
consideration by Harker (1909), Daly (1914) and Bowen
(1928). In 1951 Roedder reported the results of experiments
which demonstrated the existence of a large field of silicate
liquid immiscibility in the system K20-FeO-A1203-SiO2.
Experimental evidence for the existence of a miscibility gap
between carbonatite and silicate magmas was presented by
Freestone & Hamilton (1980) and Kjarsgaard & Hamilton
(1988).
Roedder (1979) reviewed the evidence for liquid
immiscibility in a wide range of magmatic rocks including
low-K ultrabasic and basic komatiites, high-K feldspathoidbearing basalts, high-A1 olivine-bearing subalkali basalts,
normal and high Fe subalkalic basalts, nephelinites and high
Ti Lunar mare basalts. He suggested that immiscibility in
silicate systems usually yields a felsic alkali-aluminosilicate
melt and a mafic melt rich in Fe, Mg, Ca and Ti. Philpotts
(1982) considered that immiscible liquids are present in
sufficient amounts that this should be considered a viable
means of magmatic differentiation during the late stages of
crystallization of common magmas. Indeed McBirney &
Nakamura (1973) proposed that immiscibility in the later
214
M. WILSON
stages of differentiation of the Skaergaard intrusion was

responsible for the formation of granophyres.
Petrologists have from time to time postulated that the
common association of basalt and rhyolite, without
transitional rock types, is evidence for silicate liquid
immiscibility. However the simple juxtaposition of two
contrasting magma types is obviously insufficient to prove
them immiscible. As noted by Bowen (1928), coexisting
immiscible liquids should be in equilibrium with a common
mineral assemblage. Le Bas & Handley (1979) used this
logic to demonstrate an immiscible relationship between
ijolites and sovites from the East African Rift.
The experimental approach to understanding

magmatic differentiation
In a review of this brevity it is impossible to describe the
experimental
approach
to
studies
of
magmatic
differentiation in any detail. Bowen (1928) was clearly one
of the pioneers of modern experimental petrology, although
his work concentrated largely on phase equilibria in
synthetic binary and ternary systems. Such data have
provided a tremendous insight into phase equilibria in
silicate systems, although they have liitle quantitative
application to the understanding of magmatic differentiation
processes. Excellent reviews of the interpretation of phase
equilibria data may be found in Cox et al. (1979) , Yoder
(1979) and Hess (1989) and will not be reiterated here.
Over the past 30 years, experimental studies have
provided important constraints on the nature of the
crystallizing phases in basaltic systems as a function of
pressure and temperature (e.g. Yoder & Tilley 1962; Green
& Ringwood 1967; Holloway & Burnham 1972; Bender et
al. 1978; Elthon & Scarfe 1984; Gust & Perfit 1987; Baker
& Eggler 1987; Longhi & Pan 1988 ). Such data provide the
experimental basis for the most recent quantitative models
of magmatic differentiation (e.g. Ghiorso & Carmichael
1985; Nielsen 1988). Milestones in the intepretation of
experimental data are the classic papers of Yoder & Tilley
(1962) and O ' H a r a (1968).
Representing the data: variation diagrams

H a r k e r diagrams
Oxide-oxide weight percent variation diagrams illustrating
the compositional variation within magmatic suites have
been in use, essentially unmodified, for almost a century.
They were first introduced by Harker (1900, 1909) and for
this reason bear his name. It was Bowen (1928), however,
who realized their full potential for interpreting the
processes of magmatic differentiation and their physical
meaning in the context of experimental phase petrology.
Bowen showed how effective variation diagrams are in
illustrating the chemical relationships among the members
of a rock association. They enable us to explore in a simple
graphical way the compositions and quantities of phases that
have to be added or subtracted from an evolving magma to
produce the next magma in the liquid line of descent (LLD).
Cox et al. (1979) present an excellent review of the
interpretation of major and trace element variation
diagrams which should be compulsory reading for anyone
unfamiliar with the subject.
Pearce element ratio diagrams

In 1968 T.H. Pearce introduced a new method for the
representation of chemical data on variation diagrams, in
part to overcome the constant sum effect inherent in

oxide-oxide weight percent variation diagrams. At the time
the method received little attention in the literature.
However there has recently been a resurgence of interest in
their use (Pearce 1987; Ernst et al. 1988; Nicholls 1988;
Russell & Nicholls 1988; Russell & Stanley 1990; Pearce &
Stanley 1991), although admittedly restricted to a group of
Canadian geoscientists closely associated with their
originator.
Pearce element ratios provide an interesting way of using
major element data for cogenetic suites of volcanic rocks to
test hypotheses on liquid lines of descent in evolving magma
chambers. The method is based on the conversion of weight
per cent oxide data for a suite of rocks to element fractions :
ei = WiAi/MWi
where W~, Ai and MW~ are the weight percentages, the
number of cations in the oxide formula and the molecular
weight of oxide i. The Pearce element ratio (ri) of an
element i is then defined as:
ri = edez
where z is a conserved element whose amount does not
change during the differentiation process being investigated.
Typically P, Ti and K are chosen as conserved elements, at
least during the initial stages of differentiation of basaltic
magmas. Complex ratio diagrams using axes constrained to
be sensitive to the fractionation of a particular mineral (e.g.
0.5 ( M g + F e ) / K versus Si/K for olivine) are used to
evaluate the role of that mineral in the petrogenesis of a
suite of cogenetic rocks related by fractional crystallization.
The supporters of the method argue that Pearce element
diagrams can yield insights into igneous processes that are
not obvious or quantitatively expressed when portrayed on
other variation diagrams (e.g. Harker diagrams). All agree
that the method is sensitive to analytical error and to the
assumption that the chosen conserved elements are
effectively excluded throughout the entire crystallization
sequence. Defant & Nielsen (1990) have used a forward
modelling approach to generate synthetic data sets with
which to evaulate whether Pearce element ratio diagrams
can correctly predict the proportions of phases involved in
magmatic differentiation. Their results show that for cases of
homogeneous crystallization and in-situ crystallization, with
or without magma chamber recharge, Pearce element ratio
analysis gives quite consistent results. However the method
breaks down when any kind of assimilation has occurred.
Differentiation indices
Running through much of the older geological literature is
the idea that analyses of igneous rocks, if plotted on the
appropriate type of variation diagram, can be arranged in an
evolutionary sequence. To this end a variety of
differentiation indices have been devised. The Harker index
(SiO2 as abscissa) depends upon the commonly observed
increase in SiOz in successive liquids with progressive
fractional crystallization and has been widely used for much
of this century. Similarly, for basaltic compositions MgO is
commonly used as the abscissa in variation diagrams. In
addition indices based upon the magnesium-iron ratio have
been
widely
used
(e.g.
100MgO/MgO + FeO
or
Mg2+/Mg2+ + Fe2+). More complex differentiation indices,
including the Solidification Index of Kuno (1959) and the
Differentiation Index of Thornton & Tuttle (1960), have
been devised but are rarely used these days. For a more
MAGMATIC D I F F E R E N T I A T I O N
complete discussion of this subject the reader is referred to
Cox et al. (1979) and Ragland (1989).
Modelling magmatic differentiation

Over the past 20 years a number of attempts have been
made to model the process of differentiation mathematically. Quantitative models for the geochemical evolution of
magma chambers have become increasingly more complex
since the basic Rayleigh fractionation equation was first
applied to the problem of fractional crystallization
(Neumann et al. 1954). Models may be divided into two
groups : (a) those based upon graphical analysis of synthetic
systems or projections (e.g. Presnall et al. 1979; Walker et
al. 1979; Grove et al. 1982) and (b) those based on a
numerical approach (e.g. Allegre et al. 1977; Minster et al.
1977; Allegre & Minster 1978; Nathan & Van Kirk 1978;
Hostetler & Drake 1980; Langmuir & Hanson 1981; O'Hara
& Mathews 1981; DePaolo 1981; Nielsen & Dungan 1983;
Ghiorso 1985; Ghiorso & Carmichael 1985; Nielsen 1988,
1989, 1990; Defant & Nielsen 1990).
Early numerical models (pre-1985) were based on
statistical evaluation of experimental data to derive
empirical expressions to describe the phase equilibria. In
contrast the later models (e.g. Ghiorso 1985; Nielsen 1988,
1989, 1990) are all based on a thermodynamic approach.
Most of the pre-1985 models rely on assumptions which are
known to be invalid over extended periods of
differentiation. For example partition coefficients (D) were
generally asssumed to be independent of pressure,
temperature and system composition. The more recent
models of Nielsen (1988, 1989) use variable partition
coefficients, which are functions of temperature and
composition, to simulate liquid lines of descent in
differentiating magma systems.
The simplest models have their roots in Harker -type
major element variation diagrams, using a linear least
squares approach to deduce the proportions of minerals (of
specified composition) which might fractionate from a
particular magma composition to yield a more evolved
daughter (e.g. XLFRAC, Stormer & Nicholls 1978;
GENMIX, Le Maitre 1981; Wright & Doherty 1974). It is
however, important to note that such mass balance
calculations are able to produce a number of arithmetically
feasible solutions (all with low sums of squares of residuals,
or2). For meaningful results, it is essential that in the system
being modelled there are fewer mineral phases than
chemical components (oxides).
In general, while major element modelling can provide
some useful insights into the nature of magmatic
differentiation processes, the variation of major elements
can tell us little about more complex processes such as
refluxing of magma chambers with batches of more primitive
magma or crustal assimilation (Nielsen 1990). In such cases
isotopic and trace element behaviour may be much more
sensitive. Nielsen (1990) has developed one of the most
complex simulations of magmatic differentiation thus far.
No doubt even more complex models will emerge in due
course. At present, such models are limited by an
inadequate experimental data base, with which to constrain
the crystallization behaviour of the complete spectrum of
magma types under crustal and mantle conditions. They are
also limited by our lack of understanding of the
thermodynamics of silicate melts.
One of the most useful aspects of these numerical
215
calculations is the ability to forward model a particular

petrogenetic process or series of processes. Starting with a
chosen parental magma composition, different liquid lines of
descent can be modelled for combinations of homogeneous
(perfect) fractional crystallization, in-situ fractionation,
refluxing of the chamber, crustal assimilation and periodic
eruption. In addition the oxygen fugacity of the system can
be varied. These theoretical models can then be compared
to an actual data set, for example for a suite of cogenetic
volcanic rocks. This forward modelling approach may be
particularly useful for evaluating complex petrogenetic
models which cannot be evaluated by experimental
techniques. Nielsen (1990) also uses this forward modelling
approach to evaluate the effectiveness of other modelling
techniques (e.g. linear least squares calculations, trace
element ratio diagrams and Pearce element ratio diagrams)
with some rather interesting results. For example he shows
that linear least squares mass balance calculations and
Pearce element ratio diagrams, for systems which have
evolved by in-situ fractionation, reveal the phase assemblage
crystallizing in the solidification zone. This may explain
those cases where the phase assemblage predicted by least
squares modelling is inconsistent with observed phenocryst
assemblages. Nielsen (1990) also uses this approach to
demonstrate that log-log trace element diagrams (Allegre et
al. 1977) used in the analysis of fractional crystallization
processes are only valid if fractional crystallization is the
only process responsible for differentiation.
Summary
It is as clear today, as it was a century ago to Harker, that
magmatic differentiation must be the result of a complex
series of processes. Most petrologists now agree that some
form of crystal-liquid fractionation is the dominant driving
mechanism, although the manner in which this occurs
remains a subject for debate. Nevertheless, liquid-state
differentiation mechanisms, including themogravitational
diffusion, liquid immiscibility and magma mixing are clearly
capable of generating significant compositional variations
within magma bodies.
As noted by Harker (1894, 1909) it is important to
differentiate between the in-situ differentiation of a single
magma body and the processes of differentiation in deep
seated magma reservoirs responsible for the formation of
cogenetic suites of intrusives or extrusives. Layered
mafic-ultramafic intrusions provide unique natural laboratories in which to study the former. The latter, by
comparison, are in some respects almost as elusive now as
they were to Harker in the 1890s. However, unlike Harker,
we clearly have a much greater understanding of the
physico-chemical processes which must operate in high-level
magma bodies.
Accepting that some form of crystal-liquid separation
provides the dominant control for magmatic differentiation,
one of the major controversies remaining is the mechanism
by which this actually occurs. Is it primarily induced by
localized crystallization at the walls, roof and floor of a
magma reservoir (in-situ differentiation) or through the
relative movement of crystals and liquid (gravitational
crystal settling). In the past hundred years we have seen
gravitational crystal settling go in and out of favour several
times. It dominated most discussions of magmatic
differentiation during the 1960s and 70s. In contrast, in the
1980s models involving in-situ crystallization gained
216
M. WILSON
popularity, following McBirney & Noyes (1979) reevaluation of the evidence for crystal settling in the
Skaergaard intrusion. Currently (e.g. Sparks et al. 1993)
gravitational crystal settling seems to be back in vogue, but
one may wonder for how long?
Geochemical and S r - N d - P b isotopic studies of cogenetic
suites of magmatic rocks have provided powerful support for
models of magmatic evolution by the combined processes of
crustal assimilation and fractional crystallization (AFC).
This must be a common cause of magmatic differentiation in
most high-level magma chamber systems. However it is
most easily detected within the continental crust when the
chamber magma and the wall rocks have strongly
contrasting isotopic and trace element characteristics.
From the classic studies of Bowen in the 1920s up to the
1970s most discussions of magmatic differentiation relied
heavily upon interpretations of phase equilibria in natural
and synthetic systems (e.g. Bowen 1928; Philpotts 1990).
While this approach greatly enhanced our understanding of
the processes involved, it was limited in its ability to make
quantitative predictions about the course of evolution in
natural magmatic systems. In contrast, in the past decade
increasingly sophisticated thermodynamic modelling techniques have been applied, allowing predictions to be made
about the liquid line of descent for a given magma
composition, evolving under a specified set of conditions.
Unfortunately too few petrologists have adopted this
forward modelling approach in petrogenetic studies of
cogenetic suites of igneous rocks. This is clearly one of the
most powerful ways in which we can quantify the various
processes involved in magmatic differentiation and will
undoubtedly dominate discussions for the remainder of this
decade.
Looking back over the past century, we can identify
several distinct periods when rapid advances were made in
our understanding of the processes involved in magmatic
differentiation. In many instances these resulted from
detailed field based studies. The description of igneous
layering in the Skaergaard intrusion, Greenland, by Wager
et al. in the 1930s and its re-interpretation in the late 1970s
by McBirney & Noyes (1979) were clearly important
milestones. In addition the tremendous increase, during the
past thirty years, in the volume of high quality geochemical
and isotopic data available for cogenetic suites of magmatic
rocks has been of fundamental importance. During the past
decade quantitative modelling of these data has enabled us
to evaluate the viability of the various differentiation
mechanisms which have been proposed over the years,
although this is not an easy task given the number of
variables involved. In this respect it is interesting to note
how many of the 'new' models proposed during the past
decade to explain magmatic differentiation have actually
been around for more than seventy years, some for more
than a hundred.
I would like to thank H. Downes and M.J. Norry for their
thoughtful reviews.
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Received 15 January 1993; revised typescript accepted 4 March 1993.
From
QJGS,50, 311-31 2.
21. CA~ocx F p ~ : a S ~
in the VARrATION O/ Io~n~ovs RoeKMAssss.--PAa'r I. Tn~ GABSRO. By ALFma~ HA1~K~, Esq.,
M.A., F.G.S., Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. (Read
May 9th, 1894.)
[PLAT~ XVI. & XVII.]
CONTSNTS.
Page
1. Introduction ............................................................ 311
2. Mineralogical Characters of the Gabbro ........................... 316
3. Minor Textural and Mineralogical Variations .................. 319
4. Orderly Variation from Centre to Margin ........................ 320
5. Discussion of the Causes of such Variation ..................... 324
6. Some Deductions from the Phenomena ........................... 329
7. Reactions between Gabbro and Enclosed Masses of Lava ...... 33l
8. Conclusion ............................................................... "J34
Section across Carrock FeD ............................................. 314
1. INTRODUCTION.
DuR~6 the last two years I have devoted some attention to the
igneous rocks of Carrock Fell and the hills west of that well-known
summit. Occurring in a somewhat critical situation on the border
of the English Lake District, they were examined by Mr. J. E.
Marr and myself, partly with reference to their bearing on the
general geology of the district ; but, apart from this, they offer in
themselves some features which are of sufficient interest to be worthy
of record. [ have had the advant~tgc of my colleague's co-operation,
more especially ill the field-work, and take this opportunity of
acknowledging my iudebt,edness to him.
The carlit,s|, conziected ~ccoutJt of the Carrock Fell rocks was
given by the late Mr. Clit'ton Ward ~ in 1876. He recogni'~ed three
general types of igneous rocks in the district : - (a) Spherulitic felsite of Carrock Fell and Great Lingy;
(b) Diorite (?) of Miton Hill and Round K n o t t ;
(c) Hypersthenite of Mosedale Crags and Langdale.
He gave a brief account of their characters in the field and under
the microscope, with chemical analyses of the first and last, and put
forward a view of their mutual relations and mode of origin. In
his opinion the several types pass into one another in the field, and
he regarded them as produced by the metamorphism of part of the
volcanic series, on the strike of which they occur.
Dr. C. O. Trechmann, '~ in 1882, pointed out that the dominant
pyroxene in the so-called hypersthenite is not hypersthene, but
diallage, and the rock would therefore be more correctly described
a,q a gabbro.
Mr. J. J. H. Teall, 3 in 1885, briefly noticed the spherulitie felsite
of Carrock Fell as a typical example of a granophyre in the sense
of Rosenbusch. Later he described both this rock and the gabbro
(a quartz-bearing variety), stating that the one passes into the other
by insensible gradations, t
In 1889 Mr. T. T. Groom 2 pointed out, the occurrence on Carrock
Fell of another type of rock, a tachylyte, in thin veins, cutting the
gabbro, but considered to be connected with it. The same writer
reasserted the existence of all transitional stages between the acid
granophyre and the basic gabbro, and this passage seems to have
been generally accepted. ~
Granite magmatism
MICHAEL
P.
ATHERTON
Department o f Earth Sciences, University o f Liverpool, Brownlow Street, Liverpool L 6 9 3BX, UK
Abstract: Read's two presidential addresses to the Geological Society (1948, 1949) heralded the end
of the coherent rearguard action by the 'granitizers' against the 'magmatists'. They were the
distillation of his thoughts on the genesis of granite and culminated in his concept of the 'Granite
Series'. In this, he identified a continuity from metamorphic through migmatitic rocks to granite.
Although he was wrong on granitization, the general idea remains intact and granites are produced by
high-temperature metamorphism leading to partial melting. However the role of migmatites is still
contentious. Not all granites belong to the granite series as he presented it; this particularly applies to
Cordilleran (Andean) type granites. The genesis of this type will be discussed in the context of the
earlier, classic work of Nockolds (1940) on the Garabal Hill complex where he demonstrated
fractional crystallization was a major process in producing the diversity present and was similar to that
seen in volcanic rocks, which had clearly been liquids. He also proposed that the source was basaltic
with the implication, strongly supported by modern isotopic studies, that granites of this type are
essentially mantle derived. Nockolds contribution was a geochemical confirmation of Bowen's belief
in the importance of closed-system fractional crystallization in the differentiation of plutonic rocks.
Most authorities today would accept this but would not necessarily follow Bowen in the belief that
major granitic batholiths formed by differentiation of basalt or that the system was closed. Recent
models of the generation of the two main types of granite are presented, incorporating many of the
ideas of Nockolds and Read. The discussion focuses on high-level differentiation, partial melting and
intrusion in an extensional regime, high-T/low-P metamorphism associated with the magmatism, and
the relation of granite to the plate tectonic setting.
The papers by Read (1948, 1949) and by Nockolds (1940)
marked the end of one round and the beginning of a new
one in the long but exhilarating debate on granite. In a
Popperian sense the limitations of the old w e r e revealed
with stark logic by the 'Chief Pontiff' Bowen, summarized in
'The granite problem and the method of multiple prejudices'
(Bowen 1948). Here the 'soaks' or 'granitizers', including
Read, were confronted with questions they could not
answer. However, as is common in geological science, much
of the old was modified during the dialectic and
incorporated in the new synthesis, as shown below. So much
so that even Eskola (1955) who had started as a convinced
magmatist was later able to accept that 'metasomatic
granitization' could be important in the formation of some
granites. To most geologists today it would appear that the
magmatists won, although even with geochemical arguments
such as those of Nockolds lending crucial support, it is still
not unanimous (see Mehnert 1987; Kresten 1988).
modern authorities (McBirney 1984, p. 278) find difficulty

with the 'room problem', but cite assimilation, stoping or
plastic deformation as able to account for the displacement
necessary. In batholiths, assimilation and stoping does not
create space and in any case are commonly confined to roof
zones, while plastic deformation is often absent or confined
to the margins of plutons (Pitcher et al. 1985). To some
extent the problem of room is based on the inherent
assumption that most orogenic granites are intruded under
compression. Thus Clarke (1992, p.19) states 'within
Phanerozoic continental crust, granitoids occur preferentially but not exclusively in compressional tectonic regimes
(dynamic orogenic belts) as opposed to extensional or stable
cratonic belts'. Although this is in part true, two examples
of important granite types in mountain belts will be
described in which extension, and hence a space-producing
tectonic regime is the important ingredient in granite
formation, intrusion and ascent.
One of the most important aspects of the room problem
is the more recent understanding of the shape of large
batholiths and plutons (Brun et al. 1990). Most are thin
bodies which do not have massive roots. Such geometries
can be the result of intrusion into upwardly arching or
'sag'-type structures.
Related is the significance and origin of 'ghost
stratigraphy' where crustal rocks have apparently been
granitized, according to some authorities, with imperceptible gradation between the two rock types. Thus, in
Donegal, wedges of the Main Granite granitized the country
rock to produce the superb 'ghost stratigraphy' (McBirney
1984 after Pitcher & Berger 1972). More likely, it seems that
The Granite problem

The 'granite problem' started with Hutton and W e r n e r (see
Pitcher 1993) and only the emphasis has changed with time.
Four aspects of the problem, in part solved, will be
considered here.
The first is the 'room problem'. This was a major prop in
the argument of the transformists who found accommodation of very large bodies of magma in the crust unacceptable
without complementary, concomitant deformation in the
country rocks, a feature which is certainly not evident in
large Cordilleran batholiths (Pitcher et al. 1985). Even
221
222
M.P.
ATHERTON
the essential form of that granite is sheeted, and is the result

of multiple injection in an extensional shear zone (see
Hutton 1982), an explanation compatible with extension
producing space.
A second problem, which remains undecided in detail,
was that between the experimentalists who maintained
granite was produced from basalt by fractional crystallization (Bowen 1948) and those who considered granite to
be a primary magma formed by melting metasedimentary
material (Winkler 1965). Certainly some granites are the
product of differentiation from basalt, i.e. some plagiogranites of ophiolitic suites (Pederson & Malpas 1984) and
perhaps even some Cordilleran granites (Le Bel et al. 1985).
However the disproportionately large volume of relatively
acid rocks and lack of consanguineous intermediate and
basic rocks in granitic provinces makes it more likely that
partial melting of common crustal rocks is the main process
in granite production. This includes both sedimentary and
igneous, and even more particularly y o u n g basaltic material,
or some composite.
The third problem relates to source. Until recently it was
a commonplace view that granites, being restricted almost
entirely to the continents, were the product of partial
melting of continental crust, specifically crust which was
chemically evolved (Leake in Leake et al. 1980). McBirney
(1984) even goes so far as to point out that sedimentary
processes were so efficient at concentrating lithophile
elements that it was logical to conclude 'many if not most
granites were from crustal rocks already enriched in Si and
AI and alkalis by surficial means' (McBirney p.378).
Certainly some granites are, such as the 'S' types of
Chappell & White whose characteristics are those of
material which has passed through a sedimentary cycle
(Chappell & White 1974). But most granites originate
indirectly from the mantle or are melts showing a mixture of
continental crust and mantle components. To complicate
things, in some cases there may also be components from
the slab and the sediment it may carry down with it. This
may be considered a composite of mantle and crust, and as a
result is difficult to decipher (see De Paolo 1981; Clarke
1992).
The fourth problem relates to the diversification of
compositions in granitic batholiths and, specifically, zoning
in plutons. This has commonly been related to closed system
in-situ fractional crystallization (Atherton 1981). Although
this may be the case for certain plutons, isotopic evidence
suggests many plutons are not simple closed systems (see
Clarke 1992).
In the course of this article, aspects of these problems
which were considered by Read and Nockolds will be
addressed and expanded on, taking onboard present day
thinking. Discussion of their work in a modern context
inevitably leads me to specific aspects of the subject I have
found interesting. This is, therefore, not a comprehensive
review, rather a working of the strands of thinking which I
consider important and which were first voiced or
articulated by Read and Nockolds. Much is left out, so I
include in the references two general texts which put
granites in a modern context (Clarke 1992; Pitcher 1993).
Read and 'Place in Plutonism'

The two presidential addresses which Read produced for the
anniversary meetings of the Geological Society of London in
March 1948 and April 1949 on Place and Time in Plutonism,

were the last in a series of addresses where he meditated at
length on current beliefs both 'mine and everyone else's
about fundamental aspects of metamorphism' (Read 1948,
p.156).
These two addresses completed his meditations, so much
so, that in the last one he could conclude that such
'meditations, commentaries, contemplations and such-like
exercises begin to lose their savour' (Read 1949, p.151) and
it was time to be refreshed 'at these bounteous springs of
field w o r k . . , and by the discipline of laboratory study'
(Read 1949, p.151). In this he thought he had the good
wishes of those at least who had been at the end of 'these
interminable and often pedagogic harangues' (Read 1949,
p.151). The quotations indicate a major aspect of Read's
writing. He was a superb communicator, often tongue in
cheek. As Eskola said, 'I cannot remember having ever
heard this man utter a sentence without witticism' (Eskola
1955). This is clear in all his writings, which have been
widely read and enjoyed, stimulating students with their
erudition and clarity. Although as Eskola said, in spite of
being 'wrong in his chief argument' we 'have learned much
of great value from these papers' (Eskola 1955, p.120).
I intend to concentrate on his contributions of 1948 and
1949 in the light of present-day thinking and to point out
some of the frailties of his arguments. However, it is
important to emphasize at the beginning the use of the term
plutonism. Read, following Lyell, considered this as 'all
these operations that give rise to the plutonic rocks, these as
I define them comprising the vast transitional assemblage of
the metamorphic, migmatitic and granitic rocks' (Rea,
1948, p.156). He saw, quite rightly, the distinction made
between regional and contact metamorphism as an academic
convenience obscuring the integrating processes of granite
production and emplacement at whatever level with the rock
transformations appropriate to that setting. The connecting
link, migmatite, being a mixture of 'granite however formed
and metamorphic rock' (Read 1948, p.157). Had he used
'granite-like material' rather than 'granite', I think there
would have been no dissension. He appreciated that the
general validity of the plutonic series may not be acceptable
to those 'who regard the igneous rocks as an inviolate self
evident and self-consistent class' (Read 1948, p.157).
Whatever the unity of the plutonic series as he saw it
determined the content of the two addresses and was the
major theme.
Although he divided the addresses into two, one
concerned with time, the other with place in plutonism, he
considered these two aspects were inseparable and that
rocks were not instant snapshots but 'would be cinema films
if we had the right projector', each rock holding the history
of that rock through time, the totality of the rocks of an area
integrating the 'plutonic' history. Modern P - T - t studies are
our attempts to do just that, and his much-used analogy with
the movies suggests a clear appreciation of what modern
metamorphic studies aims to do (see M. Brown, this
volume).
In the first few sections of 'place' in plutonism, he dealt
with zones, facies, pressure and depth noting the early
insistence on depth marking major zones, i.e. an upper
fracture zone and a lower flowage zone through a
transitional zone showing both types of behaviour (Van Hise
1904). This relates in modern thinking to an upper/lower
division of the crust where rock behaviour can be simply and
GRANITE MAGMATISM
perhaps incorrectly, described as brittle and ductile
respectively, a point returned to later. Read was perhaps
overly impressed by the French school with their 'ectinites'
(isochemical metamorphic rocks) and migmatites (rocks
which suffered an influx of 'alkaline feldspathic substances'),
although he thought this classification was arbitrary, but did
take on board the idea of 'a depth variation in the nature of
granitization and granite contacts; contact metamorphism in
the higher levels passed into regional metamorphism in the
deeper' (Read 1948, p.159). In general, he followed Barrow
(1893) favouring temperature as the important factor in
metamorphism and granite formation, either causing
zonations (Barrow 1893) or enhancing the metamorphism at
depth or even at high level (Goldschmidt 1912; Eskola 1915;
Turner 1933; Cloos & Hietanen 1941). Modern thinking is
in line with this, emphasizing that orogeny, metamorphism
and plutonism are all linked (see Brown, this volume). In
discussing facies and equilibrium, Read was more impressed
by the lack of equilibrium in rocks supplying a history, but
was not too clear on the relation between facies, zones and
equilibrium. Nonetheless these ideas foreshadowed the
study of high-T, low-P metamorphism and of P - T - t paths
which form an important part of modern studies of
metamorphism and partial melting.
Later sections in 'place' on original composition and
equilibrium as well as open/closed systems tended to review
these aspects, and where Read voiced an opinion, it was
determined to some extent by his overall view of the unity
of the plutonic series. Thus following Balk & Barth (1936),
he thought there was a gradual and continuous change in
composition through the series sediment --~ slate ~ schist----~
gneiss--~ augen gneiss--* intrusive granite. This is of course
granitization, and as a major process, together with other
related aspects such as 'fronts', lit-par-lit injection and large
scale diffusion, could be considered perhaps dead ends and
mainly products of general conjecture.
In Read's conclusion to his 1948 address, he emphasized
the unity of 'plutonic' activity as did many contemporary
workers (see above), identifying a continuity from
metamorphic through migmatitic rocks to granite.
Read on 'Time in Plutonism'
In the second address, Read again uses the idea of maps and
rocks being films rather than stills but now emphasizing time
which he attempts to integrate with deformation: 'la
kinrmatique n'est que de la geomrtrie dans le temps'
(Goguel 1943). Right at the beginning he asserts 'all granites
belong to o n e series' (Read 1949, p.103). This is boldly
stated, as is his second assertion, that the use of the term
'progressive' in metamorphic description is misleading and
unwarranted. He emphasized an important feature of
metamorphic rocks: that sequence may be one of place, n o t
time. This is as important to emphasize now as it was then,
as it conflicts with the orthodox thermodynamic interpretation of metamorphism (Turner 1981). In fact, Read
visualized plutonic rocks showing evidence 'for their sojourn
in a succession of thermodynamic envelopes constituting
unified history of changing conditions throughout their life'
(Read 1949, p.104). In this, his thinking was in tune with
modern concepts of metamorphism and magmatism (for a
collection of examples of P - T - t paths in classic areas see
Daly et al. 1989). After a discussion of aspects not germane
to this paper, he moved on to discuss time and
223
migma-magma (migma being a mixture of melt plus

extraneous crystalline solid).
Although Read appreciated that the idea of the
production of migma-magma invoked the operation of a
'nebulous host' (Read 1949, p.132) of ichors, juices and
emanations, which were viewed by many rather critically
(Bailey 1958; Eskola 1955), he maintained that there were
migmas and magmas, and that the latter could come from
the former (cf. White & Chappell 1990). He further felt that
the whole of plutonism should be discussed within the
context of 'the time-relations of crystallization, deformation,
granitization, migmatization, metamorphism, intrusion and
orogeny' (Read 1949, p.132). Such ideas were not that new;
Barrow (1912) had erected a complex sequence of
deformations, magma intrusion and crystallization and
metamorphism in the Dalradian. However, Read was
concerned to emphasize the relation of magmatic phases and
orogeny, particularly the relation of granites to the history
of orogenesis, i.e. whether syntectonic or early or late,
stressing that many granites are passive bodies which have
been deformed (Read 1949, p.140).
In the 1949 paper, Read presented the 'Granite Series',
the culmination of half a dozen presidential addresses, in
which he 'attempts to relate plutonic phenomena at the
various levels of exposure and to give a unity to the
processes of granitization, migmatization and metamorphism at depth and successively at higher positions and at later
times' (Read 1949, p.143). Read had lyrically embraced the
French concepts but had added time. Following the French,
deep granites are mostly syntectonic, often impregnated and
associated with migmatites while intrusive granites, at a
higher level, were mostly post-tectonic, with narrow
contacts forming intrusive sheets which could be displacive.
However, he felt this essentially dual classification fades
away when time is added to give a unified sequence of
plutonic events linked with place. Here he says 'granitization needs no longer to be argued, our end terms are secure'
(Read 1949, p.146). He did not feel it incumbent on him to
specify any mechanism whether wet or dry, migmatitic or
magmatic, suffice it to say that he envisaged 'a state of
extreme chemical mobility, during which arises the plutonic
series' (Read 1949, p. 147). In a sense, his caution over exact
mechanisms was correct because it is only now with more
recent quantitative work that we can begin to understand
how 'granite' came into being in terms of critical melt
fraction, melting conditions and transport (see review by
Wickham 1987).
Read initially envisaged that the 'series' began with
coherent movement of the whole 'plutonic segment' (Read
1949, p.147), maybe with some differential movement,
which was followed by the granitized core parting company
with its envelope of 'metamorphite'. At this stage, intrusion
can occur and it 'may vary from the nebulous migma to the
equally nebulous magma' (Read 1949, p.147). He envisaged
that this material moved to lower pressure (extensional
zones) or was pressed into (and through) compressional
zones. Some straining off of the fluids, as well as solution of
more readily melted material, could change composition on
ascent. Finally, the migma-magma would free itself of its
plutonic associates and form 'cross-cutting diapir granites'
(Read 1949, p.147). Here emplacement would be in
extensional systems involving faulting and doming, as well
as 'pushing and shoving' along weak belts.
The Granite Series could be diagrammatically viewed on
224
M.P.
ATHERTON
TRANSTENSIVE~
BASINS?
J
'
,
"q. ~ F
Homogeneous granite
C
10 kin? "~
km
25
vq
\
Metatexites
......
PIutons
<
I/
//
r+~+.&
.~"" "'
/~-qf
Diatexites/anatectic granites
Bale de
St-Brieuc
n / /
SC
Int,rusive
ua
/ StMalo
~
Migmatite Belt
~,.,n
rE
~z
Granites
Paraulocht.honous
~ Granites
/
Au~chthonous
,.~ Granites,Nigmatites,
~Met~rnorphiDes
/6).
'~
",'k';/" }
TIME
"~
0l , km 25
I
Fig. 1. Composite diagram showing the 'granite series' (after Read 1949, p. 149) bottom right; generalized geological maps of the northeastern
part of the Armorican Massif in Britanny, France, with schematic box diagram showing generation, ascent and emplacement of granite magma
at middle and upper crustal levels of transpressional orogen (modified after D'Lemos et al. 1992). SZ, shear zone; F, fault; B, Bonnemain;
VC, Vires Carolles; SC, St Cast; PB, Port Briac; RV, Rance Valley; last three belong to the migmatite belt. Horizontal slices on box diagram
relate to position in the crust of the St Malo (bottom) and Mancellian (top) regions.
a place-time graph (Fig. 1), and a classic example was the

Hercynian Belt of western Europe where the Cornubian
Batholith represented the high level, divorced (dead)
magmas, while the Massif Central with its dominant
migmatites and anatectites represented the source. This
large scale recognition of granites connected in time and
space (over 600 miles) was Read at his boldest and most
imaginative.
The validity of the 'Granite Series'

Without begging the question of classification, we now see
Read was correct in that the Granite Series approximates to
the evolution of one volumetrically minor but important
type of granite, the 'S' types of Chappell & White (1974), in
which the initial mush or mash is a melt phase plus restite
phases (residual source material). However, we have no
need now to invoke ichors and such like. For granitization
we now say partial melting with or without vapour.
Nonetheless, descriptions of such granites paraphrase
Read's description briefly described earlier (and see Fig. 1),
although he did not dwell on restite phases. The idea 'per
migma ad magma' was essentially field based, and now we
can use other means to argue through the problem of how
granites of this type formed. Much discussion on this subject
has revolved round granites such as Cooma in the Lachlan

Fold Belt in SE Australia (White & Chappell 1990). Here
there is a rapid change from migmatite with coherent
structures to a mobile mixture of melt plus unconnected
inclusions (---restite?). This occurs at about 30-40% melt
fraction. This important idea of critical melt fraction relates
to a series of melting experiments such as those by Van der
Molen & Paterson (1979) who found a sudden change in
differential stress during deformation of partly molten
granites between 26-36% melt. In granitic systems, melt
percentages within the range 30-50 may allow mobilization
of zones hundreds of metres in extent, convection ultimately
producing homogeneous compositions (Wickham 1987).
Somewhat similar to the Cooma granite is the Trois
Seigneurs massif in the Pyrenees (Wickham 1987).
Simplified cross-sections are shown for comparison in Fig. 2.
Here metamorphic rocks pass into migmatitic biotite
sillimanite gneisses then, always gradationally, into a biotite
granite-quartz diorite body ('deep biotite granite'). Compositions and textures of the latter are heterogeneous, and
local meta-sedimentary enclaves are extremely common.
The pluton is an 'S'-type with 25-40% biotite and some
cordierite.
Within t h e metamorphic sequence there are pods of
muscovite granite l m - l k m across. They are SiO2-rich
GRANITE MAGMATISM
225
COOMA
CHLORITE,
BIOTITE
AI,~DALUSITE /
i '
~
~
'
COMPLEX
E
,,,,-.u^-,-,-,-~
SILLIMANITE
. ~-,v..~.~..-~.,.r
i
......
.,.-.,
~-. .
`7 "e re ` 7 ~ r e ' ~ ? ' , " . : ' g 1 " , " : . ; : : - ~
GRANITE
/
..
~...~r'~~.'.'.'.'.'.~..,,~.'~7
v re re '7 "7 re v ~ _ , . ' . . ~ - : - ; . t , : , - : . : t - i ~ . ; , : ~ " +
+ + + + + + +
~ : : ' : - ' ~ : - ' . ' " ' S ~ "
+ + + + + + + + +
~
'
.
.
;
?
,
,
~
'
+
+ + + + + + + + *
,I
km
Fig. 2. Simplified cross-sections through

the Cooma Complex SE Australia and
Trois Seigneurs Massif, Pyrenees (modified after Wickham 1987). Both show a
gradational transition from
chlorite/biotite phyllites, through andalusite and sillimanite-bearing micaschists to migmatites and granite considered to have been derived by partial
melting of the surrounding pelitic and
semi-pelitic rocks. Note the telescoped
nature of the metamorphism even at
Cooma where the granite presumably
dips shallowly below the pelites, to the
west.
TROIS
NE
BIOTITE
/
o
"d
E
//
/
/
z . - _
, , , . d-,""'~:':
r * * : . " . ' . ' . ' . ' .":"
' . ' .-~">~.
.-""r - , . ~
~
:
~ : : :
~ : ' : '
MASSIF
ANDALUSITE
/ IN"
IN /
2000 l
SEIGNEURS
i
:
SILLIMANITE
. i IN""
~
'
:
: '
"
'
~
~ 7
OUT
~
_
- _ .o
/ +
+
~r~+~++++
ANDALUSlTE
,""
"
-""~'+ +" +' +"
~'-'-'
,i~+:+~-:+
,_,.:-:,,_,',-,,.:,':7,\-t,--~--
+
+
:+
+
1000
Carbonate
. . . . . . . . .. . .. . . . . . . . . . v . v . v re- .5.<: .,-.

".'.'.'."
1
km
(leucogranite) and do not contain cordierite, although they

are peraluminous. Muscovite is a retrogressive phase while
tourmaline can reach 10% by volume. Compositionally they
are homogeneous and are considered to be mobilized
teucosome, as among other things (according to Wickham)
they have identical compositions and, in contrast to Cooma,
are unmodified melt compositions. Melting at 670-700 C,
3.0-4.0 kbar under water-rich conditions was followed by
segregation, compaction or movement of melt into
fractures. When large enough, these bodies intruded the
overlying metasediments, but were quickly halted as they
were water-saturated. The 'deep biotite granite', was,
according to Wickham, generated by partial melting and
homogenization of the same source material and both these
bodies were considered to form in-situ. However, the
'biotite granite' has a compositional variation that clearly
indicates a more primitive magmatic component is also
present (see ~80 data, Wickham & Taylor 1985). Together
with the presence of quartz diorite, it seems there is no
simple correlation of the leucogranite and the deep 'granite'
as implied in the petrogenetic model (Wickham, p.163).
Commonly, there are significant differences between
leucosome chemistry and mineralogy and that of an
apparently associated granitic body. For example, Ca-rich
cores in plagioclase in the granite are frequently not present
in the restite, and compositions of the leucosomes are not
those of predicted melts, although they could have been
modified by back-reactions involving H20 (White &
ChappeU 1990). It appears that the hiatus between
leucosome and 'granite' bodies remains, and that leucosome
arguments are a cul-de-sac (see Leake 1983). We still need
to find the true route between melting and massive granite
bodies; it emphasizes our lack of thorough understanding of
segregation and plumbing systems. We can be more specific
than Read, however, and divide the latter into three: (a)
zone of partial melting, segregation and collection, (b)
'
.<,:, :,'~-
-;z,,.'-'"q-",,,:<-~,7",S/+
,../~,%,v,~v,_,vv,_,v_,v~.':,.~.~.-,~,_'.:.:'-,-.t--',,,2+
.............
T . . . .
+
MUSCOVITE OUT
transport zone and (c) an emplacement zone, where freezing

occurs (Fig. 3).
With regard to (a), we can be certain that most if not all
'granites' are crustally derived as partial melts either of
basaltic material or of sedimentary material, or of some
mixture (see Leake 1990; De Paolo 1981). To date the
segregation mechanism of granitic-like material in the crust
has focused on migmatites (see Atherton & Gribble 1983
and Ashworth 1985) using field, geochemical and experimental studies. As important is an understanding of the
mechanical properties of rock melt which, with increasing
melt proportion, changes from linearly-elastic to elastic
plastic to viscous, which will be reflected in the flow
behaviour (Shaw 1965; Murase & McBirney 1973; Shaw
1980 and see Wickham 1987 for a review of physical and
related properties). Flow behaviour will therefore vary with
melt fraction.
For low melt fractions as seen in migmatites, a variety of
possible segregation mechanisms can be considered based
on melt fraction. Compaction may be important as is
extensional fracturing, filter pressing capillary and small
volume buoyant ascent (see Wickham 1987) up to the metre
scale, but these cannot explain larger bodies. Furthermore,
hydrous low melt fractions would crystallize rapidly on
decompression.
The generation of high melt-fraction material (>30%) is
poorly understood but must involve pervasive melting
followed by melt separation and collection which may be
complete or partial. As viscosity approaches the liquid state
(Shaw 1965), convection may produce homogeneous
distributions within large bodies.
This lack of behavioural continuity between high melt
fraction and low melt fraction material is general, and most
granitic rocks cannot be linked to a source at the intrusion
level (Clemens 1984) nor can migmatites be related to
particular plutons. Thus only 0.1% of 'S' type granites in the
226
M.P.
ATHERTON
GRANITIC PLUMBING SYSTEM

in
Cordilleran Setting
Extensional system: continental rifting, back arc, ridge opening/spreading,
locally involving intrusion along:
1) strike slip with pull apart,
2) mega shear zone,
3) continental splitting - mega faulting (lineament), or
4) combination of some of these.
- assimilation
crystalllzallon
meteoric
water
lnleractlon-fluid
, ~ . ~
environment
dlfferentJallon
mlgratton
a d i a b a t i c ascenl
guess
interactlon - wall rock
crystallization
densll filler ponctlng
.....
at o n e or m o r e a e m h s
~+
+ +
a s s l m l lallorl
+-+.S
storage
homogenelsatlon
~ t ~+f ~ +: ' + . -.
SOURCE:
deplh, nature
"T
p a r l l a l m e l t zone
(small/large volume)
Lachlan Fold Belt are associated with regional metamorphism and migmatitic aureoles (White et al. 1986). Most
Lachlan Fold B e l t ' S ' types are typically surrounded by
hornfelsed contact aureoles (White et al. 1986) and are
presumably the end phase 'dead' plutons of Read's series.
Typically, as in the examples quoted here condensed
metamorphic sequences indicating high thermal gradients
(80-100C km-1, see Fig. 2) are associated with anatectic
granite. Two aspects of this are important. Firstly,
temperature distribution may not have been steady state,
and secondly, it was a local phenomenon. Such thermal
highs could be due to high level mantle-derived
magma/fluids or an increase in temperature at the base of
the crust which transferred heat advectively via granitoid
plutonism (for example Querigut quoted in Wickham &
Oxburgh 1986). In the Pyrenees, sedimentological (Reading
1975) and other evidence (Arthaud & Matte 1977) indicate
that the thermal high is associated with contemporaneous
rifting, pull apart and probably strike-slip movement,
associated with nearly horizontal regional ductile extension.
A schematic cross-section showing the relation of highT / l o w - P metamorphism and crustal anatexis in the Pyrenees
is shown in Fig. 4a. It implies a very hot middle and lower
crust where there is melting. A rifting-spreading model
similar to this has also been put forward to explain the
Coastal Batholith of Peru (Atherton 1990) and is discussed
below.
A modern Readean analogy

In a very recent example published in the Journal o f the
Geological Society, D'Lemos et al. (1992) discuss granite
magma generation, ascent and emplacement within a
Fig. 3. Granitic plumbing system in

Cordilleran settings, showing the three
important zones: source and MASH
zone; transport and MAGIC zone;
intrusion and ACID zone. Note the
narrow conduit (dyke-like) through
which magmas arrive at the intrusion
level and the thin form of the batholith,
here exaggerated. Source and other
zones may move closer or overlap in
different settings.
transpressional orogen. With the exception of a few

technical terms not in use in 1948/49, the paper could and
might well have been written by Read. Furthermore it is
concerned with the Armorican rocks of northwest France
which were used by Read in his type example. It indicates
the powerful albeit unconscious influence of his thinking,
even today, strongly emphasizing aspects of time and place.
The Late Precambrian (Cadomian) belt of northwest
France in the region of St Male is made up of mylonitized
and folded migmatites and deformed, anatectic granites
interleaved within medium-grade Brioverian rocks (Fig. 1).
To the east, the Mancellian region is made up of greenschist
Brioverian facies intruded by undeformed (late), long,
linear ( E - W ) granitic plutons (Fig. 1), with mariolitic
cavities and well defined contact aureoles. Regional
metamorphic grade decreases eastward. The whole suggests
a deep source region for the St Male area and a shallower
regime to the east, the present juxtaposition of contrasting
crustal levels being the result of regional transpression.
Similar chemical and isotopic data convinced D'Lemos et al.
that the two regions were different crustal levels but
belonged to the same tectonic unit. The familiar story (as
Read might have told it) is of melting, partial melt
separation and convection, followed by transport through
ductile diatexite and metatexite, to form the veins and
diapiric kilometre-sized bodies of the St Male region (Fig.
1). P - T estimates indicate a depth of 3.8km and
temperatures between 650 and 750C. Anatexis was the
result of structural inversion of the basin, followed by high
temperature metamorphism consequent on crustal thickening. The Mancellian granites to the east are biotite
granodiorites with minor cordierite and muscovite, and are
'larger volumes of homogenized magma represented by the
GRANITE MAGMATISM
Sea level
_
~=~
10
< ~
- - _..:~HIGH T~ LOW P
//~/~/
oo,o. .V
/
::
ANATECTIC GRANITES
4 0 ~
XLiTHospHERI
ASTHENOSPHERE
a
w
Sea level ' ~
S
v v v v v v v v v v
. . . . . .
+
4.
, .~
+
~'
~ " .,,3/ /~/~+v++++v,~ + +'.".~.~+~.~V~+l

\"_~
......
:
v v v v v v v
~/~F~ll~vvl
v v v v +
V V V v
~,zv
vv
v v v v ,
v /
v
v
v
vv
+ -
I
,
Read in retrospect
+ /~v~Vl~,'l~,~v.~"~--... v
+
....
VV
VV
,,,
+J~,~vV,~~v~v
]~
~L/~x~LITHOSp
v
v
v
~ +,
strike-slip was initiated along zones, which were thermally

softened by anatexis.
Thus regional tectonics and granite formation may be
'inextricably linked processes' (D'Lemos et al. 1992, p.490),
and the associations of shear zones and granites is no
surprise; even more so with the demise of diapirism as a
major method of magma ascent through the crust. Indeed,
many workers have considered long lineaments and major
fault structures may dissect the whole crust, cause melting,
as well as being magma conduits (Pitcher 1978; Leake 1983).
The generalized model for the Cadomian belt shown in
Fig. 1 follows all major aspects of Read's ideas on the
granite series, particularly those on space and time. Perhaps
like all good ideas there are problems to this neat Readean
picture. Thus Power (1993) commented that there are in fact
statistical differences between the two granite sets and the
case for geochemical similarity should be rejected. However
it does not preclude a similar petrogenesis, although Power's
analysis demands more careful consideration of the
petrogenetic significance of these differences. Seemingly, the
lack of continuity in the 'Granite Series' still tantalizingly
exists.
/,~/
~v~,VV~VVV~ + + ~ v v v v v v , ~
PZ(P6) .
\~
APZ(P61/"
/L,~ " / , J t v v v v f f v v v , 4 + ~*f~..~vv,)~v~/Aw~'" 1 /
\:'/\~"
/':[M,'vXXALBIANI +-IBA~IN v,l~'vvvvv'{/""..,.~ -/
L
227
HERE
.....
ASTHENOSPHERE
b
Fig. 4. Cartoons showing the tectonic setting for: (a) The
Hercynian high-T/low-P metamorphism in the Pyrenees near the
Trois Seigneurs Massif. Deep seawater circulation occurs to the
bottom of Palaeozoic (PZ) basin, with anatexis at 700 C and
10-12 km depth. Hot, upwelling asthenosphere heats the lower
crust sufficiently to produce large granodiorite magma bodies
(modified after Wickham & Oxburgh 1985). (b) The
Cretaceous-Tertiary marginal basin and Coastal Batholith, Peru.
Splitting of the crust, and form of the basin and Batholith are taken
from geophysical evidence (Jones 1981) and evidence for
lithosphere stretching and basin content are given in Atherton &
Webb (1989) and Atherton (1990). v, volcanogenic rocks.
antectic granites of the St Malo region' (D'Lemos et al.

1992, p.488).
The upward transport in the St Malo belt was considered
by D'Lemos et al. to be from transpressional to
transtensional zones, giving rise to apparent flower
structures. Magma entering ductile 'extensional jogs' within
shear zones (compare Read 1949, who had envisaged
magma moving into extensional zones from compressional
zones). In contrast, the Mancellian granites were emplaced
into brittle-deforming upper crust within structurally
controlled extensional features. The two zones were linked
by a sigmoidal anastomosing strike-slip shear zone/fault
system from St Malo to the elongate B o n n e m a i n /
Vires-Carolles granites (Fig. 1). This system controlled
migration, ascent and emplacement of the granitic magmas.
Furthermore, the close temporal relation between peak
anatexis and regional strike-slip displacements indicates
There were two areas which today we think are important

and in which Read was mistaken. Firstly, he thought
'granites to be for the most part genetically unconnected to
basic magma' (Read 1949, p.149) so 'plutonic granitic rocks
are not near blood-relations of the volcanic, basaltic rocks
and this opinion is by now commonly accepted by all
reasonable men' (Read 1949, p.104). Secondly, that 'though
there may be granites and granites, most of them are of one
kind and all of them may likely be of one connected origin'
(Read 1944, p.90). This quote is reiterated at the end of his
1949 paper where he presented the Granite Series of the
Hercynian belt of western Europe as the archetypal
example. Thus he envisaged his Granite Series was sufficient
to explain all granites, and such granites apparently had
their sources in metamorphosed/migmatized zones of sialic
material. It is now clear that the most voluminous granites
e.g. Cordilleran granites, do not belong to his Granite Series
and furthermore these are related to basalt. They are
commonly the product of partial melting of dominantly
basaltic material or less commonly the differentiation of
basalt.
The application of geochemistry

In essence Read was against the experimentalists who
supported the proposition that basalt was primary and
'granite' was produced by fractional crystallization, i.e. it
was the residual liquid. In contrast to the beliefs of the Read
school, and indeed many continental schools (see Read
1944, 1948, 1949), this interpretation was supported by
physico-chemical principles and data. Powerful support was
given to the Bowen model by Nockolds and co-workers in
studies of element distributions in granitic rocks. However,
Bowen's thesis that differentiation from basalt produced
granite may well work for small bodies, but it is apparent
that it does not explain large batholiths. Nockolds' paper on
Garabal Hill published by the Geological Society in 1940 has
served for many as a model explanation of the variation in
basic-acid complexes and represented a confirmation of the
228
M.P.
ATHERTON
Bowen model. This has particular significance here in that

although Garabal Hill and the Highland granites as a whole
were thought by Read to belong to his Granite Series, we
now see that Garabal Hill represents the other much more
abundant class of granites, that is, those whose source is
basaltic or igneous crust (i.e. the Cordilleran or T types of
White & Chappell 1983). It is in these rocks that
differentiation is common and extensive, as well as mixing
and assimilation.
Interestingly, the earliest account of the Garabal Hill
complex by Dakyns & Teall (1892) suggested that the rocks
formed by differentiation at depth! Two other scenarios had
been put forward, one that the ultrabasic and acid magmas
were separate, and the other, which Nockolds had originally
espoused, was that the acid magma was contaminated by
basic material and the former derived from an original basic
magma by 'contrasted' differentiation. All very modernsounding models.
The rocks of the complex vary from ultrabasic
(peridotite, pyroxenite, hornblendite) through gabbro to
pyroxene-mica diorite and various appinitic, fine-grained
diorite to medium-grained granodiorites ending with a
porphyritic granodiorite which forms the bulk of the
complex. The granodiorite contains dark fine-grained basic
xenoliths with apparent K-feldspar phenocrysts and small
rounded quartz crystals rimmed by dark minerals. In
modern parlance these are almost certainly incorporated
phenocrysts (Vernon 1986), the quartz forming 'ocelli'
structures, a clear indication of magma mingling
accompanied by some reaction.
Nockolds presented a table showing appearance and
disappearance of minerals---which conforms to and indeed
was used to confirm Bowen's reaction series. Major element
variation diagrams were an important and critical lynchpin
in his argument and, in order to avoid conclusions on the
basis of a single complex, he cannily also plotted Caledonian
and Lower ORS calc-alkali rocks of W Scotland including
volcanic rocks. He noted a 'perfectly continuous and regular
variation to the more acid compositions' (1940, p.494) and a
scatter in the more basic rocks. Notably the continuous
trends are almost linear and follow those of the lavas. He
considered 'gradational differentiation' at depth, with the
pyroxene-mica diorite, because of its position, as the most
basic rock of the continuous series, to be the parent. The
pyroxene-mica diorite compared well to andesite and mica
diorites from elsewhere in W Scotland and this satisfied
Nockolds it was a definite magma type. It is certainly a
common type and early in any complex. This being so, he
considered the continuous variation shown by the rock
compositions represented stages in the liquid line of descent
while compositions more basic than the pyroxene mica
diorite represent accumulative types. He anticipated the
recent work on granite mineral assemblages, and considered
many rocks to be mixtures of crystallized parent liquid plus
accumulated crystals (compare McCarthy & Hasty 1976).
Furthermore he considered that the early stages of
differentiation might involve gravity separation of crystals,
e.g. olivine, but later at more acid compositions magma can
move relative to crystals in what he describes as filtration
differentiation. The latter is compatible with today's
thinking where most workers would invoke some sort of
boundary layer differentiation (Bateman & Chappell 1979;
Atherton 1981; Sawka et al. 1990) or convective
fractionation (Sparks et al. 1985) to explain the evolution in
composition of the magma which gives rise to zoned

intrusions. However, even with the advent and application
of fluid dynamic theory, there is a some debate about how
liquids evolve and separate. Thus Mahood & Carnejo (1992)
describe leucogranite layers and dykes which are considered
to be trapped ascending differentiated liquids. Crystallization across the deep levels of the magma chamber, produced
residual melt which segregated by flowage upwards into
tensional features of various kinds including fractures, which
may be favourable for separation of small melt fractions.
Crystallization on the floor of the magma chamber is likely
to be an important process, as the adiabat in a convecting
magma chamber is steeper than the liquidi (McBirney &
Noyes 1979; Mahood & Carnejo 1992), and marginal wall
crystallization has not been convincingly demonstrated in
the field. Furthermore, present research by the author
shows that most batholithic intrusions are thin, flat bodies
with aspect ratios (thickness to width) up to 1:15. In such a
scenario, sidewall differentiation is likely to be of minor
consequence. Although crystal settling was considered a
possibility by Nockolds, he clearly appreciated other
processes were possible. Nowadays settling is considered
unlikely (see for example Sparks et al. 1985) and we see no
evidence of it in the field. Layering in granite is rare and
when present e.g. Hinchinbrook (Stephenson 1990) the
subhorizontal layering is clearly produced by unidirectional
crystallization downwards. Thus buoyant and residual liquid
removal from the crystallizing phases (Rice 1981) in a
variety of scenarios seems probable.
Another important argument which Nockolds elucidated, related to the hybrids of the basic and acid
components of the differentiation series that may also lie on
the liquid line of descent.
To some extent, Nockolds anticipated the recent revival
of interest in enclaves and the relation to hybridization, e.g.
Vernon (1983); Didier & Barberin (1991). However, the
role of synplutonic dykes, which I think account for most of
the fine-grained mafic enclaves in Cordilleran high level
granites (see also Pitcher & Bussell 1985), was not
appreciated at that time, neither was their role in the initial
injection and mixing and later convective mixing. This
appreciation of the interaction of contemporaneous basic
and acid magmas is also seen in the role of basic magma as a
heat source (Huppert & Sparks 1988) and volatile supply
(Whitney 1988). The basic magmas are clearly of mantle
origin and may interact with crustally derived anatectic
silicic melts to form hybrid calc-alkali rocks, ultimately,
according to some petrologists, producing very large bodies
of tonalite (Castro et al. 1990).
Nockolds' detailed and well written paper was read in
1940, some eight years before Read's penultimate address.
It reflects the powerful influence of Bowen (1928) and the
application of experimental phase diagrams, which was in
stark contrast to the Read school who adhered to the less
rigid, albeit more imaginative concept of granitization and
an upper crust enveloped in ichors and such like nebulous
notions, based largely on field and petrographic work.
Today it is clear that most igneous petrologists accept
fractional crystallization as an important, perhaps dominant
process, albeit modified by magma mixing and contamination.
In Fig. 5, Nockolds' data for Garabal Hill are plotted on
an AFM diagram and compared to that for the Coastal
Batholith, Peru. The gabbros in Peru are chemically
GRANITE MAGMATISM
229
6arabal
Hill / ~
/
oGranitorocks
id
// ~
Coastal
Batholith,
Peru
O ~1~:~~ OUltramafircks
c / r~r~c~q~-~
"0o.:..
IVl
Fig. 5. AFM diagrams for Garabal Hill and the Coastal Batholith showing a calc-alkaline trend for both. Note the ultramafic rocks from
Garabal Hill have no equivalents in the Coastal Batholith (data from Nockolds 1940 and Atherton et al. 1979).
unrelated to the Batholith (Atherton et al. 1979) and
anyway are earlier. They are not cumulates related to any
exposed acid rocks. The Garabal Hill sequence is very
similar except it lies lower in the diagram (greater arc
maturity?) with the peridotites and pyroxenites lying in a
separate field along the F - M join. The latter have no
equivalents in Peru. The trend from diorite/tonalite to
granite in the Peru rocks has been interpreted to be the
result of high level fractionation (Atherton & Sanderson
1985), following Nockolds' model for the acid rocks of
Garabal Hill. Plots of extract polygons using Nockolds
mineral data, analyses and modes (Fig. 6) are revealing. On
all plots the liquid lineage defined by Nockolds remains
intact while the basic rocks, apart from one or two grossly
25 - - -
15
CaO
10
10
20
30
40
Fig. 6. CaO v. MgO diagram with extract polygon for the rocks of
Garabal Hill. Plagioclase-olivine-clinopyroxene extract polygon
shown shaded. In the more gabbroic rocks, orthopyroxene is
common so an extract polygon for plagioclase-clinopyroxeneorthopyroxene is shown dashed, hb is the hornblendite which is
close to the hornblende composition; hyg is the hypersthene gabbro
mentioned in the text.
contaminated types, lie in the mineral field indicating they

could be cumulitic, as envisaged by Nockolds. However,
most lie below the 'liquid line' and its extension, indicating
they are variably olivine and/or orthopyroxene enriched.
This particularly applies to the gabbros, apart from one
hypersthene gabbro which could be a cumulate (Fig. 6) with
41% plagioclase, 30% augite (+little hornblende), 23%
orthopyroxene, 2.8% olivine and 2% ore (modal data from
Nockolds). Thus in the Garabal Hill complex, the
connection between the basic and acid rocks is more
complicated than Nockolds perceived, and associated basic
rocks are not cumulates. They may be contemporaneous or
slightly earlier than the acid rocks as in the Coastal
Batholith O f Peru, emphasizing the acid/basic association
common to Cordilleran plutonism (Atherton 1990).
Recent work on the chemistry of late Caledonian
granitoid plutons show they have mantle and crustal
components. Garabal Hill, for example, has no inherited
zircons, and the end data indicate a largely mantle-derived
origin, the Cr-and Ni-rich pyroxene-mica diorites being the
most primitive (Stephens & Halliday 1984) with little crustal
component. Summerhayes' (1966) earlier work indicates the
isotopic coherence of all rock types in the complex, and he
concluded that the source of the acid rocks was probably
basaltic in composition, cf. Nockolds (1940).
In short, the Garabal Hill work emphasizes four
important aspects of diorite-tonalite-granodiorite-granite
sequences, much of which Nockolds (1940) anticipated.
(1) The primitive liquids are commonly quite basic, i.e.
55% SiO2, the source almost certainly was basaltic (cf.
Nockolds 1940).
(2) Crystal fractionation accounts for rocks with
compositions >55% SiO/, while some of the more basic
rocks may be viewed as partly cumulate (gabbros) but
many, including the ultra-basic rocks (i.e. peridotites,
diorites, pyroxenites) are unrelated directly to the acid rocks
and are olivine- and/or orthopyroxene-enriched.
(3) The association of peridotite with basalt and the lack
of a recognizable sialic component (e.g. Dalradian, Moine
230
M.P. ATHERTON
or Lewisian) suggests the source was located at the base of

the crust, probably within the crust/mantle boundary zone,
and was essentially of mantle material (Stephens & Halliday
1984).
(4) Intrusion of the late orogenic Garabal Hill Complex
took place along a major E-W lineament considered to
extend to mantle depths. The association of granite
magmatism with deep faults, reflected the change from a
ductile compressional to a brittle extensional regime in
which melting and intrusion took place (Watson 1984;
Atherton & Plant 1985).
Senal Blanca i
Linga/
]
t Santa Rosa
.uaora
Rb/Sr 1.o
Granites and linear structures

Of the points listed above, one is of particular significance.
Granites are frequently intruded into various vertical and
horizontal extensional features. Thus Leake (1990) stresses
the importance of faulting and strike-slip in the British
Tertiary Province and Irish Caledonides, suggesting that
major crustal fracturing assists in triggering magma melting,
forming conduits and freezing sites, and that 'major
batholiths probably occupy holes created by pulling apart
the crust' (1990, p.579). Such arguments have of course
been put forward by Pitcher (1978) for the Coastal Batholith
of Peru, by Hutton (1982) for the Main Donegal granite, by
Petford & Atherton (1992) for the Peruvian Cordillera
Batholith and by many others including Watson (1984),
Atherton & Plant (1985), Harrison et al. (1990) and Schmidt
et al. (1990). Lameyre (1988) went so far as to suggest that
structure was probably more important than plate tectonic
setting.
The Coastal Batholith, Peru: an example of

Cordilleran plutonism
The Coastal Batholith of Peru, which is similar in some
respects to Garabal Hill is a good example of a Cordilleran
plutonism. Here a recent model for its genesis is compared
to the crustal melting model of Wickham & Oxburgh (1985)
for the Trois Seigneurs massif in the Pyrenees. Both models
have aspects in common combining some of the important
features and seminal ideas of Read and Nockolds:
specifically the relation of metamorphism, extension via
major plate movements and orogeny, as well as the
importance of source and differentiation, to granite genesis
and intrusion.
The formation of the Coastal Batholith of Peru
(Atherton 1990) relates to a major cycle of crustal growth
which started with (1) extension at right angles to the coast
(Andean), then (2) subsidence and formation of the Albian
marginal basin as the continental lip split or rifted, (3) dyke
intrusion with spreading, producing high-T metamorphism
and a thermal high under the spreading centre, (4) basin
filling, (5) gabbro intrusion, (6) mild compression with
inversion followed by cratonization.
Metamorphic facies analyses of the basinal volcanic fill
indicate local thermal gradients of up to 300 C km-' as well
as a downward increase in grade (Aguirre et al. 1978; Offler
et al. 1980). The metamorphism is similar to that seen in
rifting environments e.g. in Iceland, or hydrothermal
ocean-floor metamorphism at a spreading centre, and is due
to basaltic magma at high levels in the crust.
Spreading/subsidence with rifting (crustal accretion) was
modelled quantitatively by Palmason (1986). The thermal,
~0
55
60
65
70
75
SiO 2
Fig. 7. Rb/Sr v. SiO2 for some superunits of the Coastal Batholith,

Peru showing the characteristic form due to fractional crystallization
with plagioclase as the major precipitating felsic phase.
spreading/subsidence parameters for the marginal basin

(Fig. 4b) are similar to those used by Palmason indicating
that melting of hydrous basalt occurs at very shallow depths
(5-7km) and that the products are tonalite, granodiorite,
granite depending on the temperature. Modelling the
melting of the lowest enriched basinal basalts reproduced
the chemistry of the batholith rocks (Atherton 1990). In this
model, tonalite-granodiorite-granite are produced immediately after basin inversion and cratonization from newly
accreted hydrous basaltic crust. Plumbing was controlled by
a mega-lineament within the marginal basin that formed on
extension related to dextral strike-slip parallel to the present
coast (Atherton & Plant 1985).
A similar but larger rifting/spreading structure is seen in
central Chile (Levi & Aguirre 1981) where Jurassic to
Palaeogene rocks are symmetrically exposed along an
Andean trend and plutons intruded axially within this
mega-structure, suggesting the model for Peru may be
extended to other parts of the Andes.
In the Coastal Batholith of Peru, the dominant rock-type
is tonalite (c. 60% SiO2), and the more evolved rocks,
culminating in granite (sensustricto) (<10%), formed by
high-level differentiation (Atherton et al. 1979; Atherton &
Sanderson 1985; Fig. 7). The most basic rocks are diorites
with 57% SiOz similar to, but slightly more siliceous than
the primitive pyroxene-mica diorite of Garabal Hill
(Nockolds 1940; Fig. 8). Fractionation in all the super-units
is dominated by plagioclase, hornblende and clinopyroxene,
with accessory minerals becoming important at high-SiO2
levels (general ranges from trace element modelling
(Atherton & Sanderson 1985) are: 45-60% plagioclase,
10-45% clinopyroxene, 20-45% hornblende, 10-20%
biotite with minor zircon, allanite and apatite). The values
are similar to those of the hypersthene gabbro 'cumulate'
from Garabal Hill mentioned earlier, but the assemblage is
more hydrous. With these phases crystallizing, near linear
trends will be produced on differentiation (cf. Nockolds) as
one would expect from the AFM plot i.e. M/FM does not
change radically throughout the differentiation (Fig. 8). The
rocks are juvenile with positive end values and Sri near
0.704. Generally the crustal component is small or
GRANITE MAGMATISM
these differences relate to local conditions of extension, and

therefore subsidence, as well as the presence of adjacent
continent above sea level. The basin in Peru is at the edge of
the continent which was below sea level, while the basins in
the Pyrenees were intercontinental, but both are the product
of rifting/spreading systems and strike-slip, presumably
related to major plate movements. Both have been
compared to a modern analogue e.g. Gulf of California and
the Salton Sea (Wickham & Oxburgh 1986; Atherton &
Webb 1989), where extensional strike-slip is associated with
a spreading system. In such situations thermal anomalies
may well be extreme and give rise to high temperature/low
pressure metamorphism with very hot middle and lower
crust.
ml
Lima s e g m e n t
mmm
I ,,,,,,
MgO
s I
m
~mO o
Nmln o
55
60
70
65
75
80
Si02
Experimental work and granite source
Lima s e g m e n t
m ~
mm
CaO
o,~k
0
55
60
65
231
70
75
80
Fig. 8. CaO and MgO v . S i O 2 with percent variation diagrams for

granitic rocks from the Lima Segment of the Coastal Batholith,
Peru. Filled circles are for rocks of the major superunit of that
segment (Santa Rosa; Atherton et al. 1979). Note the coherent
linear trends typical of fractional crystallization unmodified by
marked crustal contamination. These are very similar to the plots
of Nockolds (1940).
negligible, and when present is associated with high level

fluid interactions (Beckinsale et al. 1985; Mukasa & Tilton
1984).
In Peru, the crustal structure based on geophysical
sections is well defined (Jones 1981; Couch et al. 1981) with
major crustal rifting and 3.0 gm cm -3 density material in a
high-level arch within the continental lip (Fig. 4). The
association of rifting in continental settings with exceptionally high thermal gradients and granitic rocks was noted
earlier in the Trois Seigneurs massif (Wickham & Oxburgh
1985). In that case it involved migmatite, S-type granite and
regional ductile subhorizontal extension; Read (1948) also
related large scale flat schistosities to regional extension.
Although the rifting, metamorphic gradients and flat lying
isograds are similar in both examples, basaltic magma was
responsible for the thermal structure in Peru while
granodioritic magmas are thought to be responsible in the
Pyrenees (Wickham & Oxburgh 1985). Further differences
are in the rift-basin fill, which was entirely volcanogenic in
Peru and mainly sedimentary in the Pyrenees. However,
One aspect which neither Nockolds nor Read could

consider, and which is of critical importance in defining
source, is the experimental information relating to likely
sources and conditions of melting (e.g. Wyllie 1983). On the
whole, most modern workers agree that crustal melting
takes place in fluid-absent conditions involving the
breakdown of hydrous silicates (Burnham 1979; Clemens &
Vielzeuf 1987). However in the Pyrenean example discussed
here, because of the large bulk of leucogranite and the
isotopic evidence, large scale influx of groundwater during
metamorphism was invoked (Wickham 1987). Near
saturated acidic melts unfortunately do not travel far as they
quickly cross their solidus on ascent, so it seems unlikely
that large bodies of leucogranite divorced from source
formed in this way. Fluid-absent melting is fairly well
understood for pelitic compositions (Thompson 1982;
Powell 1983; Vielzeuf & Holloway 1988) and has been
applied to high grade terrains. However, the conditions for
fluid-absent melting in marie compositions has not been so
well studied, but apparently occurs over a wide temperature
range: 850-1000C, and melts vary from granitic in
composition at lower temperatures to tonalitic at higher
temperatures (Rushmer 1991). The high temperatures
present at s h a l l o w depths during rifting are sufficient to melt
hydrated basalt producing tonalitic melts e.g. Coastal
Batholith, Peru while trondhjemitic melts characterize the
strike-slip transtensional environment over hot, inboard,
thickened crust e.g. Cordillera Blanca, Peru (Atherton &
Petford 1993). Experimental work is consistent with melting
producing 'granite' in extensional environments, either
major rifts, strike-slip or shear zones in thin or thick crust
and with the associated high-temperature low-pressure
metamorphism marking hot zones in the continental crust
below which lithospheric thinning may be extensive.
This conjunction of high temperature metamorphism,
rifting (with horizontal extension), volcanism and granite
formation (and high level differentiation) often related to
major plate realignment and uplift has a distinctly Readian
look to it. We have yet to understand fully processes in the
melt zone and the fate of the accompanying restite; these
are topics for future research.
Where are we going?

In spite of the fact that the contest--tranformist v.
magmatist--is more or less settled, major problems
highlighted in it are still with us. Before briefly discussing
232
M.P.
ATHERTON
these mention should be made of the new techniques, not

available in the 1940s, which are and will be important in
solving these problems. The ion-probe and similar
grain-scale techniques now allow spatial isotopic and trace
analysis e.g. microscale isotopic analysis of zircon crystals
using SHRIMP (sensitive high resolution ion microprobe)
on several generations each with discordance, record
provenance, age and metamorphic history of a single
population (Williams 1992). Here is the tool to deconvolute
mixed isotopic systems relating to the complex history of
granite and the crust. These will allow proper consideration
of episodicity in plutonic magmatism, exact timing of
acid/basic magmatism and perhaps a complete timebase to
relate to major plate movements. It should also help us to
understand the nature and age of the deep crust and the role
of the igneous underplate e.g. Bega Batholith (Williams
1992), which is one of the major problems defying an
understanding of the granite genesis.
There are three related problems. (1) Is MASH (melting,
assimilation, storage, homogenization, Hildreth & Moorbath 1988) an important process in plutonic magmatism or
merely an artifice hiding our incomprehension of the actual
processes going on in the lower crust? (2) Do trondhjemities
over deep crust really indicate delamination (Kay & Kay
1991), and what is the significance on the continent scale?
(3) Where and what are the P - T conditions of those magma
chambers at depth where significant early differentiation
apparently occurs e.g. Pitcher (1993)? Answers to these
questions will need to be integrated more fully with
structural studies and deep geophysics.
In chemical modelling of high-level processes, it is
important to determine 3D shapes of plutons and to relate
this to plumbing systems (Vigneresse 1990). In batholiths,
present research by the author shows that magma chambers
with aspect ratios (width to thickness) up to 15 will have
different convection and crystallization regimes than deep
carrot or cylindrical-shaped chambers which may lie beneath
calderas. Recently we have been made aware that
emplacement structures provide little information on magma
ascent mechanisms. It is also apparent that in a simple way
the 'space problem' so beloved of the transformists, may be
a chimera and Read, paradoxically, was right in that magma
fills 'holes' i.e. tectonically created cavities abetted by
internal magma buoyancy (Hutton 1988). However he was,
along with many others, wrong in considering crustal level
and time as the main factors in emplacement behaviour i.e.
'permitted' and 'forceful' intrusion occurring at different
levels (equivalent to a brittle/ductile transition with depth).
Ironically, in Donegal where Read ended his field career,
granites showing both types of behaviour were intruded at
the same depth (Naggar & Atherton 1970) and at the same
time. Modern studies of granites must include metamorphic
and structural analysis. All granites have structure often
related to the plumbing system, which integrates source,
ascent and high level processes.
Turning to chemistry, it is obvious that micro-probe
analysis of accessory and major phases for trace elements
with particular attention to heterogeneities and zoning will
be important (together with textural studies) in elucidating
the chemistry of evolving liquids and defining possible
cumulates. With analysis of lower crustal minerals from
xenoliths and zircons from all these components, it should
be possible to be more precise about source and evolution of
the granite system e.g. Miller et al. (1992). Chemical
modelling is already at a new stage using trace element data

across crystals and in fluid inclusions, and will include new
KD data specifically determined for granitic systems. Values
for rare earth (REE) and large ion lithophile (LIL)
elements, are at present poorly defined and have commonly
been determined from volcanic systems of doubtful
comparability. Future modelling with these new data will be
process-orientated, although it is apparent from earlier
comments that the physical processes producing chemical
diversity in rocks is as yet not fully understood. Neither has
this been linked to texture development, although recent 3D
work on the generation and evolution of a crystal
framework texture and its subsequent infilling has been
started (Bryon et al. pets. comm.). This approach must be
integrated with the phase petrology and chemical evolution
and deformation on a microscale. Study of 3D textures in
granitic rocks should also produce a proper classification of
granitic textures similar to that devised for basic rocks. This
should generate textural criteria for the recognition of
'cumulate' and possible restite (sensu lato).
Hand in hand with the textural and detailed modelling is
the need for more experimental work on kinetics e.g.
Johannes & Holtz (1992) and on possible sources and
melting conditions, e.g. Rapp et al. (1991) and Rushmer
(1991). Such work will give residue, melt and mineral
compositions in detail as well as the relevant phase
relations. It should be possible to explain why tonalites
which require outside heat to form within continental crust
dominate in the crust while granite (ss), which may be the
normal metamorphic product of melting of lower crust, is
volumetrically insignificant.
The discussion on possible sources brings us to
classification. Modal and chemical classifications without
genetic implications have been the mainstay in granite
description. They will remain so and perhaps increase in use
while those relating to source or tectonic environment are
on less firm ground. Thus the classification of Chappell &
White (1974) which relates granites to their source has had a
shifting base with time which looks unlikely to stabilize. 'S'
type granites recently redefined are almost continent specific
(White et al. 1986), while the proliferation into M (mantle),
l-Cordilleran (igneous, infracrustal), A (anorogenic) and
now even C-type (crustal) seem to me to negate the whole
reason for setting up the system in the first place.
Furthermore, there is no provision for transitional types
which contradict the gradational variation seen in granite
suites across the world (Lameyre & Bowden 1982).
Although the T , 'S' typology can be very useful at the
beginning of granite studies and has inspired a vast reaction
(a good thing), as petrogenetic shorthand it tends to a
rigidity in attitude and sterility in use. Better would be the
idea of 'series' or 'lineages' which may be loosely grouped as
propounded by Lameyre & Bowden (1982) with the
emphasis on the integration of modal and chemical data
with the phase petrology and textures (Atherton 1988).
Granites (ss) in such a system with very similar compositions
can clearly be seen to be the product of a variety of lineages,
which themselves mirror the different sources but also
emphasize the continuity of the granite system.
With regard to granite typologies related to tectonic
setting, I cannot follow Pitcher in concluding that 'the
different tectonic regimes will provide different source rock
assemblages' (Pitcher 1987). Certainly some granites appear
to relate to a specific structural environment, but the
GRANITE
chemistry of the source is often the result of a long history

of mantle and crust enrichments/depletions which may have
no relation to the geotectonic setting prevailing on magma
genesis.
Finally, there is the association of basins, granites and
thermal highs. Many granites are associated with basins
which have high thermal gradients (Wickham & Oxburgh
1986; Atherton 1990; D'Lemos et al. 1992). Metamorphism
is characteristically high-T/low-P type. The association is
not exactly as Read might have thought, and is certainly not
a freak of nature (De Yoreo et al. 1991), but a full
understanding of the relationship is important in studies of
granite and the crust, and could be realized in the near
future, although there are a variety of options and perhaps
processes (see Brown this volume).
Although regional scale contact metamorphism may be a
cause of high-T/low-P metamorphism (cf. Barrow 1893; see
De Yoreo et al. 1991), it is now clear that the association
with extension is also important in a variety of tectonic
situations, often where earlier tectonic thickening is only
moderate or absent. As outlined here, the heat source is
mantle upwelling, consequent on rifting. In this model,
granite is the end product of mantle advection and/or basalt
insertion via dykes high in the crust, and subduction or
thrust loading are not responsible (see the modelling of the
thermal state of the source of the Boulder Batholith, Zen
1992). Perhaps Read was partly right and there is a
separation of plutonism and volcanism, particularly of the
eRic-alkaline variety, in that many batholithic granites are
not directly related to subduction while many volcanic rocks
are!
I acknowledge the help and support given to me by D. Bryon, N.
Petford, K. Lancaster, K. McNally, A. M. Fioretti and my thanks
to W. S. Pitcher for introducing me to granites.
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1955. About the granite problem and some mastcrs of the study of
-
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From QJGS,96, 451.
THE
BY
GARABAL
HILL-GLEN
COMPLEX
FYNE
STEPHEN ROBERT NOCKOLDS~ PH.D.
IGNEOUS
B.SC.
F.G.S.
Read 1 May 1940

[PLATE X X I V ]
CONTENTS
I. I n t r o d u c t i o n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I I . P e t r o g r a p h y of t h e c o m p l e x : - (a) T h e u l t r a b a s i c r o c k s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(b) T h e g a b b r o s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(c) T h e p y r o x e n e - m i c a - d i o r i t e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(d) T h e c o a r s e a p p i n i t i c d i o r i t e a n d a p p i n i t e ...
(e) T h e m e d i u m a p p i n i t i c d i o r i t e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(f) T h e x e n o l i t h i c d i o r i t e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(g) T h e f i n e - g r a i n e d q u a r t z - d i o r i t e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(h) T h e m e d i u m g r a n o d i o r i t e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(j) T h e p o r p h y r i t i c g r a n o d i o r i t e a n d a s s o c i g t e d
xenoliths ..........................................
(k) T h e a p l i t e s a n d p e g m a t i t e s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I I I . Letter s h e e t s a n d d y k e s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
IV. T h e r m a l m e t a m o r p h i s m of t h e s u r r o u n d i n g schists
V. C o n t a m i n a t i o n of t h e igneous r o c k s w i t h s e d i m e n t s
V I . T h e f o r m of t h e c o m p l e x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
V I I . P e t r o g e n e s i s of t h e c o m p l e x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
V I I I . S u m m a r y and conclusions ..............................
I X . L i s t of w o r k s r e f e r r e d to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
From QJGS, ] 04, 155.
Page
451
452
457
462
465
467
468
470
471
477
480
481
482
486
487
488
507
508
A COMMENTARY ON PLACE IN PLUTONISM

THE ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF T H E P R E S I D E N T , PROFESSOR H E R B E R T
HAROLD READ, D.SC. A . R . C . S . F . R . S . F . R . S . E . ,
D E L I V E R E D AT T H E
ANNUAL G E N E R A L M E E T I N G OF THE SOCIETY ON 17 MARCH, 1948
CONTENTS
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
Introduction ..................
Zones ...........................
M e t a m o r p h i c facies . . . . . . . . .
Depth ...........................
Pressure and depth .........
Stress a n d a n t i s t r e s s
......
P l a c e on t h e m a p . . . . . . . . . . . .
T h e original c o m p o s i t i o n
effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
IX. Equilibrium ..................
Page
156
158
164
166
169
170
172
173
175
X.
XI.
XII."
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
XIX.
Closed or o p e n s y s t e m s ...
C o m p o s i t i o n series . . . . . . . . .
Diffusion in m e t a m o r p h i s m
Privileged paths ............
Lit-par-lit .....................
S c h i s t o s i t y o n b e d d i n g ...
Metamorphic differentiation
Fronts
........................
T h e u n i t y o f p l u t o n i s m ...
List of references ............
Page
176
177
181
185
186
187
191
193
196
201
SUMMARY
A g e n e r a l e x a m i n a t i o n is c o n d u c t e d i n t o t h e p r o p o s a l s c o n c e r n i n g p l a c e a n d t i m e
in the m a k i n g of t h e p l u t o n i c r o c k s - - t h e s e c o n s t i t u t i n g t h e m e t a m o r p h i c , m i g m a t i t i c
a n d g r a n i t i c classes. Such n o t i o n s as zones, levels, fronts, facies a n d a s s e m b l a g e s ,
a n d t h e whole m o d e r n a p p a r a t u s of m e t a m o r p h i s m , are d e a l t w i t h m a i n l y f r o m t h e
space aspect.
From QJGS, "105, 101.
A CONTEMPLATION
TIlE
OF TIME IN PLUTONISM
ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF T H E P R E S I D E N T , PROFESSOR H E R B E R T

HAROLD READ, D.SC. A . R . C . S . F . R . S . F . R . S . E . , D E L I V E R E D AT THE A N N U A L
GENERAL MEETING OF THE SOCIETY ON 27 APRIL, 1949.
CONTENTS
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
Time and time again ...................................................

Time and crystallization ................................................
Time, crystallization and deformation ..............................
Inversion ..................................................................
The interpretation of metamorphic history ........................
P o l y m e t a m o r p h i s m or m o n o m e t a m o r p h i s m
.....................
Time and migma-magma
.............................................
T h e G r a n i t e Series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
List of references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Page
102
105
110
118
123
130
13"2
143
152
SUM MARY
A general s u r v e y is first m a d e o f c e r t a i n a s p e c t s o f t i m e in p l u t o n i s m . T h e s e
include t h e d u r a t i o n o f p l u t o n i c t i m e s , t h e i r l i m i t s a n d s u b d i v i s i o n s , t h e different
d a t e s c o n c e r n e d in t h e m , a n d t h e u n i t y or o t h e r w i s e o f p l u t o n i c processes.
More specific inquiries b e g i n w i t h t h e c o n s i d e r a t i o n o f t i m e a n d c r y s t a l l i z a t i o n .
T h e c r i t e r i a for t h e d e t e r m i n a t i o n o f t i m e - s e q u e n c e s in t h e c r y s t a l l i z a t i o n o f t h e
p l u t o n i c rocks are r e v i e w e d a n d e x a m p l e s of t h e i r a p p l i c a t i o n g i v e n . T h e m o r e
c o m p l e x q~mstion o f t h e t i m e - r e l a t i o n s o f c r y s t a l l i z a t i o n a n d d e f o r m a t i o n is n e x t
t a k e n up, c h i e f a t t e n t i o n being g i v e n to the e v i d e n c e for t h e r o t a t i o n of p o r p h y r o .
bhLqts. T h e diagnosti(, r e q u i r e m e n t s fl)r p r o - c r y s t a l l i n e , p a r s - c r y s t a l l i n e a n d p o s t c r y s t a l l i n e d e f o r m a t i o n s ~Lrc c x a m i l m d .
Hydrothermai orefields and ore fluids

A.
H.
RANKIN
School o f Geological Sciences, Kingston University, Penrhyn Road, Kingston upon Thames KT1 2EE, UK
Abstract: The development of Hydrothermal Theories of Ore Genesis during the past 150 years owes
much to the pioneering work of two eminent British geologists, H. C. Sorby and K. C. Dunham, who
published benchmark papers in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society on the classic mining
districts of Cornwall and the English Pennines. Sorby's paper of 1858 laid the foundation for fluid
inclusion studies. Despite considerable scepticism or indifference that has lasted well into the
twentieth century, fluid inclusions are now widely regarded as the best way of establishing the nature
and composition of ancient mineral-forming fluids. Dunham's paper of 1934 provides a classic account
of mineral zonation away from a focus of mineralization in the North Pennine orefield. By analogy
with the Cornish deposits this focus was considered to be the result of ascending mineralizing fluids
from a hidden granite at depth. Although subsequent drilling confirmed the existence of granite (the
Weardale granite) directly beneath the North Pennine Orefield it was older than the Carboniferous
Limestone which hosts the mineralization and therefore cannot be its direct source.
With the 'coming of age' of fluid inclusion techniques in the 1960s, widespread and systematic
studies were carried out on samples from the Cornubian and Pennine orefields and other classic
mining districts of the world over the succeeding three decades. These, together with stable isotope
studies, established that hydrothermal, ore-forming fluids cover a wide temperature range (50 to
>500C) and compositional range (0 to >60 wt % dissolved salts), and are of diverse origin. The
composite and protracted nature of hydrothermal events in Cornwall, and indeed in areas of the world
where mineralization is spatially associated with granites, is now evident. Most authors agree that,
whilst components of the early mineralization may be due to metalliferous fluids directly evolved from
cooling granite bodies, much of the later base-metal mineralization is due to thermal convection and
pulsation of meteoric fluids and basinal brines within the intrusion and surrounding country rocks.
The basinal brine expulsion theory is generally favoured for carbonate-hosted, epigenetic, base
metal deposits of the Mississippi valley type. The nature, geological setting and fluid inclusion
characteristics place the Pennine ores clearly in this broad class. However, most recent work suggests
that the mineral zonation patterns in the northern part and temperature differences between the
northern and southern part are still best explained by the hydrogeological and geochemical influence
of granite at depth.
Prior to the d e v e l o p m e n t of m o d e r n techniques for the bulk
mining and processing of large tonnage, low grade ores in
the 1950s and 1960s, most of the world's base metal
production came from small mineral veins typically clustered
in well-defined geographical areas known as 'orefields'. The
British Isles has b e e n particularly well e n d o w e d with a rich
variety of mineral veins exploited since p r e - R o m a n times
from small surface and underground workings. Three main
phases of mining and development during the R o m a n
occupation, the Elizabethan era and the Industrial
Revolution, resulted in the delineation of two major ore
districts in England; one centred around the Hercynian
granites of D e v o n and Cornwall (the Cornubian orefield),
and one centred on the Carboniferous limestones of the
English Pennines (the Pennine orefields) (Fig. 1). At various
times during their development, these districts have
provided the bulk of the old world's lead and silver in the
case of the Pennine orefields, and most of it's copper and tin
in the case of the Cornubian orefield (Table 1).
Much has been written about the mining history of these
areas, and of their socio-economic importance as training
grounds and repositories of knowledge for successive
generations of miners who took their technical skills and
'know how' to develop newly discovered mining districts
elsewhere in the world. Inevitably, there has been a rapid
decline in the U K metalliferous mining industry since its
peak in the nineteenth century (Fig. 2). At the time of
writing the South Crofty tin mine in the C a m b o r n e - R e d r u t h

area of Cornwall is the only surviving non-ferrous metal
mine in England.
Much less has b e e n written about the considerable
contributions made by British scientists over the years to
general theories of ore genesis based on geological,
mineralogical and fluid inclusion studies on these two
orefields. This contribution aims to redress this imbalance
through a review of the d e v e l o p m e n t of current states of
knowledge of the nature, origin and composition of
mineralizing fluids with special reference to these orefields
and the role of granites in their genesis. The quintessential
theme and framework for this review is e m b o d i e d in two
seminal papers which appeared in the Quarterly Journal of
the Geological Society of London. The first is H. C. Sorby's
classic paper of 1858 in which he described the use of fluid
inclusions as indicators of the nature and composition of
ancient ore-forming fluids. The second is K. C. D u n h a m ' s
b e n c h m a r k paper of 1934 on mineral zonation and
hydrothermal ore genesis in the north Pennine orefield.
Mineralization of the Cornubian and Pennine

orefieids
There is an immense volume of literature on the geology
and mineralization of both the Pennine and Cornubian
orefields, with recent reviews provided by Colman et al.
237
238
A.H.
RANKIN
Hercynian orogeny These five masses are believed to be
connected at depth to a larger subterranean granite
batholith whose axial trace approximately delineates the
extent of the ore field (Jackson et al. 1982). Pervasive and
fracture-controlled alteration of the host granites and, to a
lesser extent the surrounding country rocks, has given rise to
a variety of hydrothermal alteration styles: notably
tourmalinization, greisenization and kaolinization. Extensive
kaolinization of the granites has led to the development of
economic china clay deposits in the orefield, notably within
the western lobe of the St Austell pluton and the
southwestern part of the Dartmoor granite. Because of the
close spatial association between granite intrusions and
mineral veins, the area is frequently cited as a classic
example of mineralization associated with acid magmatism
(e.g. Guilbert & Park 1986).
~ 4oN
OREFIELD
Alston Pb F Ba (Ag) (Zn)
The P e n n i n e orefields
Pennine
Orefield
Pb (F) (Ba)
South
Pennine
Orefield
~J
"~
I
t)
Cu Sn (Pb) (Zn) (W)
Fig. 1. Location of the Pennine and Cornubian ore fields of the UK

showing major and minor (in parentheses) production of minerals.
Modified, in part, from Plant & Jones (1989).
(1989), Jackson et al. (1989), Willis-Richard et al. (1989),

Alderton (1993) and Ixer & Vaughan (1993) to whom the
reader is referred for detailed descriptions. In essence, both
orefields are dominated by structurally-controlled mineral
veins seldom more than a few metres wide and a few
kilometres along strike.
T h e C o r n u b i a n orefield
The polymetallic mineral veins of Devon and Cornwall have

contained a variety of metals dominated by tin, copper,
arsenic and tungsten, but also containing iron, uranium,
copper-nickel-arsenic
and lead-zinc paragenetic assemblages. The orefield occupies an area of at least
3800 km 2 (Jackson et al. 1982) and is dominated by five
major granite masses, post-tectonically intruded into a
sequence of deformed metasediments and volcanic rocks of
Devonian and Carboniferous age, towards the end of the
The Pennine orefields of England comprise three distinct

mineralized areas. From north to south these are the Alston
block and the Askrigg block of the north Pennine orefield,
located mainly in the counties of Durham and Yorkshire,
and the south Pennine orefield centred on the Derbyshire
dome. The mineral deposits and geology of these ore fields
are broadly similar, but subtle differences in chemistry and
mineralogy are evident from north to south (as summarized
by Colman et al. 1989a). Mineralization mostly occurs as a
series of steeply-dipping veins composed mainly of fuorite,
galena, barite and calcite with local enrichments of copper
and zinc. Although the ore fields are centred on outcrops of
the Visean carbonates, ore shoots within the veins are
restricted to a small number of competent limestone and
sandstone horizons. Most authors, as will be shown later,
believe that these deposits belong to the class of mineral
deposits broadly referred to as Mississippi Valley Type
(MVT). However, the anomalously high quantities of
fluorite present has led Dunham et al. (1983) and Russell &
Skauli (1991) to classify the Pennine ores as a 'fluoritic' or
'high enthalpy' subtype of Mississippi Valley Type deposits,
respectively.
Early development of ore-genetic theory, 1500-1900

The historical development of ore-genetic theories really
started with the seminal work of George Bauer, De Re
Metallica (1556), published under his latinized name of
Georgius Agricola. Agricola's lavishly illustrated work was a
philosophical, as well as a practical account of the genesis,
exploration and exploitation of ore deposits based on his
experience in the Erzgebirge region of Germany. His
principal contribution to the scientific study of ore deposits
was the recognition that ores are not random phenomena
but can be classified into many different types according to
their form and origin; a remarkable insight, bearing in mind
that even to this day students of ore geology still use
classification schemes based on this concept. The ore
deposits in Agricola's native Saxony were mostly fissure
veins which he believed to have formed by deposition from
solutions circulating through open joints and fractures.
According to the historical review of 'theories of ore
deposition' by Guilbert & Park (1986), many scientists over
the last 200 years acknowledged the importance of hot
HYDROTHERMAL
OREFIELDS AND ORE FLUIDS
239
Table 1. Comparative estimates of total mineral production from the Cornubian and Pennine
orefields and its economic value at December 1993 prices (major metals and minerals, excluding
china clay)
Production
(millions
of tonnes)
Value
( millions)
Cornub~n orefield (Devon and CornwaH)*

(Jackson 1979)
Sn
>2.0
6366
Cu
1.3
1544
Pb
0.35
109
Total value (millions)
8019
Pennine orefield (AIston, Askrigg, Derbyshire)t
(Dunham 1983)
Pb
>6.0
1404
Zn
0.34
165
CaF 2
6.5
618
BaSO 4
1.5
75
Total value (millions)
2261
Production
(millions
of tonnes)
Value
( millions
(Alderton 1993)
2.5
2.0
0.25
7958
2314
78
10350
(Ixer & Vaughan 1993)

7.5
1755
0.36
174
6.8
646
1.6
80
2655
* Values based on London Metal Exchange Prices December 1993.

t Values based on 75% of London Metal Exchange prices for December 1993 for Pb and Zn
and on prices quoted for metallurgical grade fluorite and drilling-mud grade barite in
November 1993 issue of Industrial Minerals.
li,.,
1850
1900
1950
2000
15COPPER
10o3
5-
O~
ILl
Z
Z
0
I.-
llllHIIlllllllllll
0
1850
aqueous solutions (hydrothermal fluids) in the formation of

mineral veins in the Erzgebirge. But it was the French
scholar, Ellie de Beaumont who really promulgated the
hydrothermal theory of ore genesis in a series of papers in
the mid-nineteenth century, citing in his paper of 1847 the
presence of large fluid inclusions in support of this theory.
The presence of relatively large, but very rare fluid-filled
cavities, clearly visible to the naked eye had been described
and scientifically investigated earlier by several eminent
British scientists of the time, including Sir H u m p h r e y Davey
(1822) and Sir David Brewster (1823), but their geological
significance was not appreciated at the time.
S o r b y ' s contribution o f 1858

[
1900
~. . . . . . . .
~IEIIII]]
1950
2000
1950
2000
LEAD
50
40
30
20
10
0
1850
1900
YEARS
Fig. 2. United Kingdom mine production of base metals: ten-year

averages, 1850-1990. Modified from Highley et al. (1991). Note
the rise in tin production from 1970 to 1990 following the opening of
the Wheal Jane mine in Cornwall. Since its closure in 1991, South
Crofty is the last remaining underground tin mine in Cornwall and
the only significant producer of base metals in England.
The impetus for Sorby's seminal work on fluid inclusions

published in 1858 was the acquisition of a new scientific
instrument for studying very thin sections of rocks and tiny
crystals grown in the laboratory: the optical microscope. The
preconceived notion that fluid inclusions were rare, scientific
curios was soon dispelled when Sorby discovered that under
the microscope ' . . . it is easier to see that the proportion of
many millions to the cubic inch is very common in some
minerals.'
Through a series of careful experiments on laboratorygrown, water-soluble crystals, including potassium chloride,
sodium chloride and potassium bichromate, Sorby beautifully demonstrated the following features.
(1) Tiny droplets of mother liquor may be trapped and
preserved as fluid inclusions during the growth of crystals. In
natural samples they provide a unique record of the nature
and composition of ancient mineral-forming fluids.
(2) When crystals are formed from aqueous solutions at
elevated temperatures differential contraction of the
contained fluid takes place in a manner similar to the
development of the head-space in a mercury-in-glass
240
A. H. R A N K I N
thermometer. This results in the development of a 'vacuity'

or contraction vapour bubble in the inclusion fluid on
cooling.
(3) The relative size of the vacuity varies depending on
the temperature at which the crystal grew. The important
conclusion was that, by determining the temperature at
which the liquid and vapour components become homogeneous again (the homogenization temperature, T,), natural
fluid inclusions could also be used as geothermometers for a
variety of rocks and minerals.
Sorby then carried out a further series of simple
experiments on the thermal expansion of various salt-water
solutions contained within glass tubes and established the
following empirical relationship between vapour-liquid
ratios in fluid inclusions and the temperatures and pressures
at the time of trapping:
v = (Bt + Ct2)(1 - 0.00000271p) - 0.00000271p.
where:
v -- relative size of the vacuity
t = temperature in degrees centigrade
p -= pressure in atmospheres
B and C = constants whose values depend on the nature
and strength of the salt solution in the cavity.
Sorby took care to warn his readers that these equations
were accurate only for moderate values of temperature and
pressure, and they were advised to adopt them provisionally.
He also recognized some of the potential pitfalls of his new
geothermometric method which could lead to erroneously
high estimates of temperatures. These included:
(i) heterogeneous trapping of discrete vapour bubbles (air
in his experiments);
(ii) leakage if the crystals are subsequently subjected to
higher temperatures through, for example, the use of
Canada balsam as the mounting medium.
Sorby's observations (Fig. 3) were not restricted to
crystals grown from aqueous solution. He recognized and
described glass inclusions in crystals of iron silicates, and of
Humboldtilite in slags formed from copper-nickel and iron
smelting, and good examples of ~stone cavities' in pyroxene
from blast furnaces at Masborough in his native Sheffield.

He inferred that both were products of trapped silicate
melts.
Thus, by simple microscopic examination of natural
crystals, Sorby had devised a method of determining
whether rocks and minerals had been formed from igneous
fusion or the action of water, an issue that was still being
hotly debated at the time. Sorby applied this new-found
method to rocks and minerals from a number of geological
environments including the granites, elvans (quartzporphyry dykes) and mineral veins of Cornwall. He
recognized the existence of stone cavities in both the elvans
and granites of St Austell and Land's End, but noted their
absence in quartz from associated mineral veins where
aqueous inclusions predominated. He estimated a temperature of around 200C for the mineral veins from St
Michael's Mount and the Camborne area. These were only
slightly lower than his estimate for the granites themselves
( m e a n = 216C). Whilst the inclusion evidence suggested
hydrothermal processes were important in the formation of
the mineral veins, the apparent co-existence of aqueous and
stone inclusions in the granite led Sorby to postulate the
development of a separate aqueous phase during cooling of
the granite melt. In this respect Sorby appeared to be
amongst the first committed magmatic hydrothermalist as
far as mineral deposits were concerned, and a strong
supporter of Ellie de Beaumont's views (1847) on the
matter.
S o r b y ' s o w n w o r k ' u n d e r the m i c r o s c o p e '
When Sorby delivered his classic paper to a meeting of the

Geological Society in London on December 16 1857 it
received considerable attention, not least from its chairman
at that time, Leonard Horner. According to Sorby (reported
in Judd 1908), Horner commented that he ' . . . had been a
member of the Geological Society ever since its foundation,
and during the whole of that time he did not remember any
paper having been read which drew so largely on their
credulity'. There was considerable scepticism and criticism
of Sorby's work, as Sorby himself explained (see Judd 1908):
'In those early days people laughed at me. They quoted
2O
16
21
18
20,
STP~UCTUI'~.~E
ow
GR~fSTALS.
/'~
Fig. 3. Original sketches by Sorby
(1858) of fluid inclusions in laboratorygrown crystals.
H Y D R O T H E R M A L O R E F I E L D S AND ORE FLUIDS

Saussaure that it was not a proper thing to study mountains
through a microscope'.
The fate of further development of the subject, at least in
the UK, was really determined through publication of
another paper in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological
Society by an equally eminent geologist of his time, J. A.
Phillips, who by a quirk of fate happened to be one of
Sorby's few supporters! Phillips carried out extremely
detailed studies on Cornish veins and granites and obtained
very wide temperatures using Sorby's fluid inclusion
calculation method. Phillips even constructed a crude
microscope heating stage but failed to homogenize many
inclusions. He, therefore, concluded that because, gas-liquid
inclusions showed such considerable variations in the
relative size of their vacuities, Sorby's thermometric method
was fallacious (Phillips 1875). What both authors failed to
realize, and what left the subject in limbo for more than 100
years, was that fluid inclusions may be secondary, reflecting
post-depositional recrystallization, as well as primary in
origin.
241
outer barite zone (Fig. 4), provides a landmark in British ore

geology. It initiated debate, speculation and scientific
enquiry on the nature and origin of mineralizing fluids and
the role of granites in ore genesis, which has extended over
50 years.
Strongly influenced by previous work on zonation of the
mineral lodes of Cornwall, and their association with granite
(Davison 1927), Dunham postulated that:
(i) falling temperature away from a focal point for
mineralization was 'the prime cause of the zone of
distribution' for the Pennine ores;
(ii) mineralization was the result of juvenile fluids related to
concealed granite at depth coincident with the fluorite
zone outcropping at surface.
Remarkably, gravity surveys (Bott & Masson-Smith
1957) and drilling (Dunham et al. 1965) confirmed the
existence of a granite cupola directly under the orefield (Fig.
5), although it was soon apparent that the granite far
from being co-eval with the overlying mineral deposits
(post-Carboniferous) was very much older (Devonian) and
could not possibly be the direct source of the mineralization
Development of ore genetic theory 1900-1965

The first half of the present century saw rapid advances in
the application of fundamental principles of physics and
chemistry to the study of ore deposition, and the growth in
field observations arising out of an increasingly scientific, as
opposed to serendipic, approach to mineral exploration. The
most influential work in the first part of this period was that
of W. Lindgren in the U S A who formulated a
comprehensive and eloquent classification scheme (Lindgren
1933) based on field observations and the inferred
physico-chemical conditions of formation. Lindgren recognized that hydrothermal deposits were the most important
class of base and precious metal deposits, so much so that he
further sub-divided them into hypothermal, mesothermal
and epithermal classes (Table 2). Many modifications have
subsequently been made to Lindgren's original proposal but
many of the concepts and terms originally introduced still
remain (Guilbert & Park 1986). Occasional attempts by the
magmatists to challenge the hydrothermalist's view of ore
deposition (e.g. Spurr 1923) were soon dispelled, although
Spurr is credited by Guilbert and Park (1986) as being the
first to provide a generalized statement of the theory of
mineral zones, so well illustrated in Cornwall and the north
Pennines. The first detailed accounts of primary zonation in
these areas were provided by Davison (1927) and Dunham
(1934) respectively.
Contribution o f Dunham's 1934 paper

The recognition and delineation by Dunham (1934) of a
distinctive pattern of mineral zonation in the north Pennine
orefields in which a central fluorite zone is surrounded by an
Table 2. Lindgren's (1933) classification of hydrothermal
ore deposits according to temperature and depth (pressure)

or formation
Sub-division
Temperature range
Hypothermal
Mesothermal
Epithermal
500-300
300-200 C
200-50 C
Developments in fluid inclusion techniques and

methodology
Little interest was shown in the use of fluid inclusions as
geological indicators during the early part of the twentieth
century. However, during the period 1940-1965 a steady
stream of pioneering papers in North America (notably by
Roedder and Smith), the USSR (notably by Kalyuzhnyi,
Lemmlein and Yermakov) and France (notably by Deicha),
culminated in the reconciliation of many of the problems
which had given cause for such doubt following Sorby's
early work (for reviews see Deicha 1955; Smith 1953;
Lemmlein 1956; Kalyuzhnyi 1960; Yermakov 1965; Roedder
1972). These included:
(1) the recognition that several generations of inclusions,
representing both primary and secondary crystallization
processes, may be preserved in a single crystal;
(2) the realization that both necking-down and leakage can
alter the liquid-vapour ratios of fluid inclusions, and
the recognition that such effects can give rise to
erroneous temperature estimates;
(3) the development of suitable microscope heating stages
for accurately recording homogenization temperatures
of fluid inclusions, and the realization (at least in North
America and Europe) that the alternative decrepitation
method of fluid inclusion geothermometry was
unreliable.
After some 100 years of inactivity and apparent
disinterest in fluid inclusions within the UK following
Sorby's 1858 paper, studies on British ore deposits suddenly
erupted. The catalyst for this was K. C. Dunhan who invited
a young researcher from the USA, F. J. Sawkins, to his
department in Durham in the 1960s to apply the new-found
methods of fluid inclusion studies to the Pennine and south
west England mining districts (Sawkins 1966a, b).
Depth
Great
Intermediate
Shallow
Characterization o f the Pennine orefluids: fluid

inclusion and related studies
Sawkin's pioneering fluid inclusion study of mineralization
from the Alston block showed that, as Dunham (1934) had
242
A.H.
RANKIN
J
/
x
//
.EXHA~
J
\
\
\\
k
",,
,.1/
-/
/I \'~,x~
.~, " ' ' ~ /
c.*oeL
.,4
WOL$1 N G m A i,~
J,
\
I
iN
t.*NC~ON
~k
*PPLtB,
MILES
\-
DISTRIBUTION OF GANGUE MINER.&LS IN DEPOSITS OF THE PEN.'INE TYPE.

O.P.F. = O u t e r P e n n i n e f a u l t . s y s t e m .
S.F.
= Stubliek fault-system,
B.F.D. = Burtreeford monocline.
Yennine t y p e veins, t h i n b l a c k lines.

G r e a t S u l p h u r Vein t~,'pe veins, d o t t e d lines.
Z o n a l b o u n d a r i e s , h e a v y b l a c k lines.
Zone F = F l u o r s p a r .
,, A = F l u o r s p a r a n d b a r y t e s , or n e i t h e r m i n e r a l .
,, B = B a r i u m m i n e r a l s .
Fig. 4. Map reproduced fom Dunham's paper of 1934 showing the inner fluorite zone and outer barite zone of the North Pennine orefield
(Aiston block)
postulated, formation temperatures for the outer barite zone

(less than 130C) were significantly lower than those
recorded for the central fluorite zone (up to about 177 C for
fluorite and from 181-216 C in early quartz). Sawkins thus
proposed a two-fluid model for ore genesis involving the
mixing of granite-derived fluids and cooler barium-rich fluids
derived from surrounding sediments. A two-fluid model was
also proposed by Solomon et al. (1971) on the basis of
isotopic evidence, although these authors postulated that
mineralization in the fluorite zone was due to circulation of
connate brines rather than juvenile fluids. Sawkins'
preliminary results were soon substantiated by more
detailed fluid inclusion studies on the Alston Block (Smith
1974; Smith & Phillips 1974) and extended over the next 15
years to include the mineralization of the Askrigg Block and
Derbyshire Dome (Roedder 1967; Rogers 1977, 1978; Smith
1973, 1974; Greenwood & Smith 1977; Small 1978; Atkinson
et al. 1982; Christoula 1992). Salinities from all three
orefields typically cluster around 20-25 eq. wt% NaCI, but a
decrease has been noted from north to south in the

homogenization temperatures of fluid inclusions in fluorite
from these three areas (Rogers 1977; Atkinson et al. 1982;
see also Table 3). Recent unpublished results based on more
refined methods have essentially confirmed these trends
(Christoula 1992) as shown in Fig. 6. However, a high
temperature ( T h = l l 0 - 1 6 0 C ) , low salinity fluid (05 eq. wt% NaCI) is also discernable in apparently primary
inclusions in fluorite from Derbyshire. This is in agreement
with the preliminary results presented by Roedder (1967)
and by Moser et al. (1992). Liquid-hydrocarbon-bearing
fluid inclusions are also reported from the Derbyshire
orefield. Detailed studies by these authors have revealed
that the hydrocarbon inclusions have all the hallmarks of
natural petroleum seepages in the area, but coexist only with
the anomalously high temperature, low salinity fluids that
have a restricted occurrence in the northeastern part of the
orefield (Fig. 6).
First melting temperatures between - 6 5 and - 5 0 C ,
HYDROTHERMAL
I
I
Northumberland basin
'
....e',-......-.-'--~--
i - - _, ./ . - - / .
/
~
~. ~" /
"~
NEWCASTLE
~ . A L S .T O N
~"
~
~.
~
~
\
,.~
AN
,ill
~
~
~"
" I i iiii"
I
I
North
Sea
Stainmore trough
" - - -- ~
:)
J
.,~
Fault zones
.-""
-'"
"'" Outer limit of

Fluorite Zone
" :+:::::::::~ Outline of

,::+:+:+:+::-~'
::+: :.7.:.:.:.:.:-:.,,
~:~:~:;"
Buried Granite
Table 3. Summary of published homogenization temperatures

of fluid inclusions in fluorite from the Pennine orefield
Alston
110-177 C
Askrigg
92-143 C
92-164 C
Derbyshire
70-140 C
74-127 C
92-127 C
74-158 C
Sawkins (1966a)
Smith & Phillips (1974)
Smith (1973)
Rogers (1978)
Small (1978)
Roedder (1967)
Smith (1973, 1974)
Rogers (1977)
Atkinson et al. (1982)
indicative of calcium (with or without magnesium)-bearing

brines (Roedder 1984), are commonly reported from
'normal' high salinity, aqueous inclusions from the Pennine
orefields. Recent estimates of the ratio of sodium to calcium
based on careful micro-thermometric studies of these
inclusions have revealed a remarkable uniformity throughout the ore field in terms of their calcium contents
(Christoula 1992).
The above fluid characteristics are typical of those
reported from a number of Mississippi Valley Type deposits
worldwide (see Table 4). This was one of the main reasons
why consensus opinion gradually changed from an ore
genetic model involving a juvenile, granite-derived source,
to one in which basinal brines, analogous to modern day
oil-field brines (Carpenter et al. 1974) was favoured; but see
Russell & Skauli 1991). The other was that the underlying
Weardale granite clearly postdated mineralizing events by at
least 100 million years and could not possibly have been the
direct source of the mineralizing fluids. D u n h a m was
amongst the first to advance the basinal brine theory, as
opposed to his original 'juvenile' source theory, for the
Pennine mineralization. He also proposed that the ore field
represents a fluoritic sub-type of the Mississippi Valley Type
class of deposit (Dunham et al. 1983).
km
I
I
DURHAM
',,"iiiiiiiiiiii
...--.___...--i
~" ~,
243
~
~
Fluoritezone
~.
"\
OREFIELDS AND ORE FLUIDS
' e l
Cusp within Granite
Fig. 5. Location of the fluorite zone of

the Alston block, North Pennine orefield, in relation to Carboniferous basins,
basement structures and the underlying
Weardale granite. Modified from Greenwood & Smith (1977) after Bott (1967)
and Dunham (1934).
Apart from variations in homogenization temperatures

from north to south, and also in the potassium content of
the inclusion fluids, other mineralogical and geochemical
differences are apparent between different areas of the
orefields (Dunham 1983; D u n h a m & Wilson 1985; Brown et
al. 1987; Colman et al. 1989a). The most significant of these
are a granitic association of trace elements and minerals,
observed within the Alston Block mineralization, but absent
within that of the Derbyshire dome. The favoured
explanation for such a difference is the variable influence of
granites beneath different areas of the orefield (Brown et al.
1987; Rankin & G r a h a m 1988; Colman et al. 1989a).
Current theories of ore genesis for the north Pennine
orefield thus link directly back to Du n h a m ' s classic study in
which he suggested that the epigenetic vein mineralization is
associated with buried granites. The major difference
between Dunham's original hypothesis and the one
generally accepted today is based on the fact that the
underlying Weardale granite is substantially older than the
overlying mineralization. Rather than acting as direct
sources of mineralizing fluids, it is now generally considered
that the granites have simply acted in variable ways as heat
engines and loci for channelling mineralizing fluids from a
sedimentary source (e.g. Brown et al. 1987).
Ore fluids o f Cornubia: f l u i d inclusion a n d related
studies
Although Dunham's (1934) recognition of mineral zonation
in the North Pennine orefield post-dated its recognition in
south west England (Davison 1927), the first major
publication on fluid inclusions in minerals from the
Cornubian orefield for almost a century also came from
Sawkins (1966b) working at D u r h a m University, Dunham's
stamping ground. Sawkins (1966b) published only a
preliminary account of his findings based on a few samples
but they clearly showed a temperature decrease from the
early tin-tungsten mineralization (Th = 300-450 C), to the
244
A. H. R A N K I N
240
'
'
'
Table 4. Typical fluid inclusion characteristics of Mississippi Valley
type deposits compared with those of the Pennine fluorite deposits

Alston
200
CL
Block
160
tO
t~
120
.N
tO
O~
0
80
E
0
e-
40
240
1'0
20
a.
'
160
120
80
E
0
t-
40
o
240
lO
'
2'0
30
40
South Pennines
m
a.
E
O
200
160
cO
120
N
T:
8'
E
Pennine
Fluorites?
100-150 C
70-180C
>l.O
>1.0
15 to >20
15-27
Na, Ca, K
C1
Liquid and
gaseous
hydrocarbons
Na, Ca, K
C1
Oil present in
inclusions from
Derbyshire and light
hydrocarbons from
Askrigg and Alston$
* Based on summary by Roedder (1984).

t Temperature, salinity, density and solute data from sources
quoted in Table 2 and also in Christoula (1992).
$ From Ferguson (1991) and Moser et al. (1992).
.N_
O~
0
'
4O
Askrigg Block
200
0
,,,,.,
co
'.~
t~
3'0
Temperature
(Th)
Fluid density
(g cm 3)
Salinity
(eq. wt% NaCI)
Major cations
Major anions
Organic matter
Typical MVT
Deposit*
8o
40
0
10
20
30
40
Salinity (Equiv. wt. % NaCI)
Fig. 6. Homogenization temperature versus salinity plots showing

the 'fields' for fluid inclusion data from each of the three Pennine
orefields. The main fields show constant salinities but decreasing
temperatures of homogenization southward. Compiled from recent
data from Christoula (1992). Note the presence of a separate,
atypical grouping of low salinity inclusions restricted to the
Castleton area of Derbyshire. Their origin and significance is not
yet fully understood (see Moser et al. 1992).
later
copper-iron-arsenic-zinc-sulphide
mineralization
(Th--200-350), to the final lead-zinc-fluorite mineralization (Th = 100-180C). Further evidence that temperatures
decreased away from centres of intense hydrothermal
activity and mineralization within the granites, the so called
'emanative centres' of Dines (1956), was provided by a
novel use of fluid inclusions as exploration guides for blind
ore bodies in the region by Bradshaw & Stoyel (1968).
Major contributions to our understanding of metaUogeny

and fluid processes associated with the Cornubian granites
were made in the 1970s in three doctoral theses by Alderton
(Kings College, London), Charoy (CRPG, Nancy, France)
and Jackson (Kings College, London) in 1976, 1979 and
1977 respectively. A steady stream of papers on the fluid
inclusion characteristics of specific mineralization and
alteration styles followed (Halls et al. 1985 give the
bibliographic details). By now, the necessity of distinguishing between primary and secondary inclusions, which had so
hampered Sorby's early advances in the area, had been
realized (e.g. Jackson et al. 1977). Sawkins' preliminary
findings were substantiated. Based on studies at St Michael
Mount (Jackson & Rankin 1976) and at Cligga Head
(Jackson et al. 1977; Charoy 1979) in Cornwall, the fluid
inclusion evidence for main stage tin-tungsten-sulphide
mineralization pointed to high temperature, moderately
saline fluids (Th = 200-450C,
salinity-- 5-20eq. wt.%
NaC1). The fluids responsible for late-stage, cross-course
veins, either barren of mineralization or carrying minor iron,
lead and zinc minerals, were confirmed to be of much lower
temperature and salinity, sometimes approaching that of
pure water. In contrast, studies of fluorite from a number of
cross-course lead-zinc deposits showed that the fluids
responsible for this stage of low temperature mineralization
(Th=100-150C) were substantially more saline (2025eq. wt% NaC1) with low eutectics indicative of high
calcium contents (Alderton 1978). This led Alderton to
propose a separate basinal brine source (cf. Mississippi
Valley Type-fluids in Table 3) for fluids responsible for this
style of mineralization compared to the magmatic and/or
meteoric source generally envisaged for the earlier
mineralization.
More comprehensive and systematic fluid inclusion
studies, coupled with stable isotope studies of hydrogen and
oxygen, were carried out in the 1980s on mineralization and
alteration assemblages from other parts of the Cornubian
orefield (notably by Alderton & Rankin 1983; Jackson et al.
1982; Shepherd et al. 1985). These results, recently
H Y D R O T H E R M A L O R E F I E L D S AND ORE FLUIDS
245
Conclusions and wider implications

400
.,,.. ~ . . ~? .
,.,.~
oc 3 0 0
7..
oE
200
loo
-?--9
~
Kao
0
1I0
'
;0
'
3'0
'
4'0
Salinity (Equiv. wt. % NaCl)
Fig. 7. Homogenization temperature versus salinity plot showing

'fields' for fluid inclusions from the Cornubian orefield, based on
compilations of data from various sources as summarized by
Jackson et al. (1989) and Wilkinson (1990b). Note the large spread
of data for 'main-stage' Sn-W-Cu mineralization and the similarity
between data from the 'cross-course' lead-fluorite mineralization
and the Pennine fluorites (see Fig. 6). The separate low salinity, low
temperature field marked 'kao' is characteristic of late stage quartz
in intensely kaolinized granite (Alderton & Rankin 1983). The field
for main-stage mineralization may be extended to higher salinities
when the examples from the Dartmoor area are considered.
supplemented and reviewed by Jackson et al. (1989) and

Wilkinson (1990a), have not substantially altered earlier
views of the temperature and salinity ranges of the fluids,
except that the temperature range has now been extended
down to less than 100C for late-stage fluid processes
associated with the formation economic china clay deposits
(Fig. 7). The range of fluids previously envisaged as
responsible for mineralization has also been extended to
include a component from metamorphic sources (as
confirmed by Wilkinson 1990b).
In essence, the fluid inclusion, isotopic and geochronological evidence points to a multi-stage process
involving fluids from a variety of sources and a protracted
period of mineralization from the time of the emplacement
of the granite (270-300 million years ago) extending to
Mesozoic and even up until the present day.
What about the granites themselves? After all, Sorby's
original 1858 contribution to the development of fluid
inclusion studies in the UK was directed mainly towards the
granites from Aberdeenshire and Cornwall. His original
observation that fluid inclusion abundances vary markedly
from one area to the next provided the main impetus for
systematic studies of fluid inclusion populations in granite
quartz from Devon and Cornwall (Alderton & Rankin 1983;
Rankin & Alderton 1983). These studies have revealed an
assemblage of mainly secondary aqueous inclusions whose
abundance and distribution reflects the extent to which
different parts of the batholith have been affected by early
and late-stage fluids of diverse origin; a feature which
explains why Phillips' (1875) comments on Sorby's methods
were so valid in the early days.
Historically, the role of granites was thought to be of

paramount importance in providing a source of both fluids
and metals for both the north Pennine (Dunham 1934;
Sawkins 1966a) and Cornubian orefields (Dines 1956).
Magmatic differentiation processes and the exsolution of
metal-bearing, hydrothermal fluids from the cooling granites
of Cornubia are still believed to play an important role in
early tin-tungsten-copper mineralization in this area
(Jackson et al. 1989). Geochemical evidence of such fluids
may be found trapped and preserved in inclusions in
tourmaline veins (Bottrell & Yardley 1988; Wilkinson et al.
1994), in breccia pipes (Halls et al. 1985) and in the granites
themselves (Rankin & Alderton 1983; Alderton et al. 1992).
However, convective fluid flow models involving the
episodic circulation of fluids from different sources over long
periods of time, are now generally accepted for at least some
of the main-stage mineralization and most of the late-stage
mineralization and alteration including kaolinization (Sams
& Thomas-Betts 1988; Jackson et al. 1989). It appears that
the high heat production capacity of the radioelement-rich
granites provided the driving force for convection of
late-stage meteorite waters and basinal brines in the region
(Tammemagi & Smith 1975). In the north Pennine orefields
the underlying Weardale granite is no longer considered to
be the direct source of mineralizing fluids. High
homogenization temperatures of the fluid inclusions and the
presence of 'granitic' minor minerals in surface veins
(Brown et al. 1987) has led to the suggestion that the
underlying granite has acted beyond its previously conceived
role as a broad structural control on the mineralization; it is
now believed to have supplied at least some of the trace
elements (Rankin & Graham 1988: Christoula 1992) and
radio-thermal heat to the mineralizing fluids.
Hydrothermal theories for ore genesis have come a long
way since the early pioneering work of Sorby and Dunham.
In the past 20 years fluid inclusion studies have become
firmly established as the most important source of
information on the physical and chemical properties of
ancient mineral-forming fluids. A range of modern
instrumental methods are now available for the geochemical
analysis of the tiny droplets of fluids contained within the
inclusions (Roedder 1990; Rankin et al. 1993), even to the
extent that variations in fluid inclusion geochemistry may be
used in mineral exploration (Alderton et al. 1992).
Systematic and integrated geological, mineralogical, geochemical and fluid inclusion studies have now been carried out
on a range of mineral deposit types worldwide. Based on
these studies and consideration of experimental and
thermodynamic data for mineral transport and deposition in
high temperature fluids, it is now widely accepted that
hydrothermal processes are the most important of all
primary ore-forming processes in the Earth's crust (Roedder
1984; Guilbert & Park 1986).
Our definition of a hydrothermal ore-forming fluid has
changed substantially since they were first envisaged by the
early ore geneticists as 'emanations form cooling granites'.
Based on fluid inclusion and stable isotopic evidence we now
recognize that such fluids are of diverse origins encompassing the whole temperature range between those responsible
for diagenetic and igneous processes (Fig. 8). Most
hydrothermal ore-fluids are demonstrably alkali-chloriderich brines, of variable salinities, and with ore metal
246
A.H.
NATURE
AND
FLUIDS
ORIGIN
IN THE
OF HYDROTHERMAL
EARTH'S
CRUST
"Any hot aqueous fluid that exists in the Earth's crust"
TC = ~50 to >500C
RANKIN
M. W e s t e r m a n , who are continuing the traditions set out by Sorby

in investigating, in yet m o r e detail, the further mysteries and
scientific importance of fluid inclusions in the granites of south west
England. The helpful c o m m e n t s of an a n o n y m o u s referee and the
Editor, M. J. Le Bas, are also gratefully acknowledged. I am also
i n d e b t e d to M. J. Le Bas for first introducing me to fluid inclusions,
as a p o s t g r a d u a t e student u n d e r his supervision at the University of
Leicester, thus opening up my lifelong interest in the subject and
h y d r o t h e r m a l processes in general.
Composition = Na - K - Ca - CI - S O 4
References
Salinity = 0 to >50 weight % salts

Ore metals = generally at ppm levels
Origin = various (see below)
/,/'#/f///,~#,
SURFACE
';"';";;';';
METAMORPHIC
IGNEOUS
INTRUSION
Fig. 8. S u m m a r y diagram illustrating the impact of recent fluid

inclusion studies (see summaries by R o e d d e r 1984) on our
u n d e r s t a n d i n g of the nature and origin of h y d r o t h e r m a l ore-forming
fluids in the Earth's crust. T e m p e r a t u r e s span the whole range
predicted by Lindgren (Table 2). H o w e v e r , the original concept
that all h y d r o t h e r m a l ore deposits were linked to magmatic
processes has been substantially modified in recent years mainly in
the light of stable isotopic studies. It is n o w recognized that
h y d r o t h e r m a l fluids, and the metals t h e y contain, m a y be derived
from a variety of sources.
contents measured in parts per million (ppm) rather than

percentages.
The importance of basinal brines (connate waters in Fig.
8) and magmatic and meteoric waters in the genesis of the
Mississippi Valley Type and granite-associated ores, as
exemplified by the Pennine and Cornubian orefields, is now
universally recognized. It is equally apparent, from
comparable studies on other deposit types elswhere in the
world, that seawater plays a dominant role in the formation
of volcanic-hosted massive sulphide (VMS) deposits and
that carbon-dioxide-rich metamorphic fluids developed
during dehydration and decarbonation processes accompanying metamorphism are, at least in part (but see Boyle
1991 for discussion) responsible for the formation and
modification of gold-quartz veins in Archaean greenstone
belts.
I am grateful to all the former staff and students at Imperial
College, L o n d o n for much stimulating discussion on the role of fluid
inclusion studies in relation to metallogeny. I also thank my
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SORBY, H.C. 1858. On the microscopical structure of crystals, indicating the
origin of minerals and rocks. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society
of London, 14, 453-500.
SPURR, J.E. 1923. The Ore Magmas. McGraw-Hill, New York.
TAMMEMAGI, H.Y. & SMITH, N.L. 1975. A radiogeological study of the
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- - 1 9 9 0 b . The role of metamorphic fluids in the development of the
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--,
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-
From QJGS, | 4, 453.
On the MICROSCOPICAL STRUCTURE 0 f CRYSTALS, indicating the

ORIGtN of MINERALS and ROCKS.
B y H . C. SORSY, E s q . ,
F.R.S., F.G.S., Corresponding Member of the Lyceum of Natural
H i s t o r y o f N e w Y o r k , a n d o f t h e A c a d e m y o f N a t u r a l Sciences o f
P h i l a d e l p h i a , &c.
[Read December 2, 1857.]
[PLAT~-S XVI.-XIX.]
CONTENTS.
2. Water contained in Crystals.
3. Minerals contained in Secondary Rocks.
a. Rock-salt,Calcite,&c.
b. Quartz-~'eins.
4. Metamorphic Rocks.
5. Minerals and Rocks formed
by cooling from a stateof
igneous fusion.
6. Minerals and Rocks formed
by the combined operation
of Water and Igneous Fusion.
a. Minerals in the blocks ejected
from Vesuvius.
b. Granitic Rocks.
c. Temperature and Pressure
under which GraniticRocks
have been formed.
Description of the Plates.
History of the Subject.

I. Structure of Artificial Crystals.
l. Crystals formed from Solution in Water.
a, Mode of Preparation and Examination ; general and
special characters.
b. Number, size, form, and arrangement of Cavities.
e. Expansion of Fluids by Heat.
d. Effects of Pressure.
e. The Elastic Force of the Vapour of Water.
2. Crystals formed by Sublimation.
3. Crystals formed by Fusion.
4. General Conclusions.
lI. Structure of Natural Crystals.

1. Methods employed in examining Minerals and Rocks.
IN this p a p e r I shall a t t e m p t to p r o v e t h a t artificial a n d n a t u r a l

crystalline s u b s t a n c e s possess sufficiently c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s t r u c t u r e s to
p o i n t o u t w h e t h e r t h e y were d e p o s i t e d f r o m solution in w a t e r or
crystallized f r o m a m a s s in t h e state o f igneous fusion ; a n d also t h a t
in some cases an a p p r o x i m a t i o n m a y h e m a d e to t h e r a t e at, a n d t h e
t e m p e r a t u r e a n d p r e s s u r e u n d e r w h i c h t h e y were f o r m e d .
From QJGS,?0, 689.
THE
GENESIS
OF THE
NORTH
ORE
DEPOSITS
I
PENNINE
BY KINGSLEY CHARLES DUNHAM, P H . D . B . S C .

Read
February
[PLATES X X I V
7th,
F.G.S.
1934
& XXV.]
CONTENTS
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
Introduction ................................................
H i s t o r y of i n v e s t i g a t i o n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Scope of t h e present s t u d y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Deposits o f t h e P e n n i n e t y p e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(a) F o r m o f t h e deposits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(b) L a t e r a l d i s t r i b u t i o n o f minerals ...
(i) F l u o r s p a r a n d b a r i u m minerals .........
(ii) Chalcopyrite, sphalerite, galena .........
(iii) P y r i t e a n d m a r c a s i t e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(iv) R a r e cobalt a n d nickel minerals ......
(v) Q u a r t z a n d c h a l c e d o n y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(vi) A r a g o n i t e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(vii) Dolomite, siderite, calcite ...............
(c) Vertical distributior~ o f minerals ...............
(i) Sulphides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(ii) B a r y t e s a n d fluorspar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(d) H y p o t h e s i s o f zonal d i s t r i b u t i o n
............
(o) T e x t u r a l relations o f t h e minerals ............
(i) B a n d e d veins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(ii) G r a n u l a r veins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(iii) U n i t y o f t h e mineralization ...............
(iv) Paragenesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Deposits of t h e Great S u l p h u r Vein t y p e ............
(a) F o r m a n d m i n e r a l o g y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(b) Age-relations w i t h t h e P e n n i n e t y p e .........
Ago of t h e mineralization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Ore genesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(a) L a t e r a l secretion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(b) F r o m t h e W h i n Sill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(c) F r o m a s u b - P e n n i n e m a g m a ..................
List of Works to w h i c h reference is m a d e ............
Page
689
690
692
693
693
694
694
695
699
699
699
699
700
700
700
702
703
706
706
708
708
708
710
710
711
712
713
714
714
715
716
Carbonate magmas
D.K.
BAILEY
Department o f Geology, University of Bristol, Wills Memorial Building, Queens Road, Bristol, BS8 1RJ, UK
Abstract: For 40 years, the case for the existence of carbonate magmas rested on field observations of
carbonatite intrusions, in which the lack of thermal effects raised an apparent conflict with the high
melting temperatures of pure carbonates. Since 1960, the position has changed, with the growth of
experimental studies and increasing observations of effusive carbonate rocks. A nephelinite/phonolite
volcano in Tanzania is currently erupting Na-Ca-K carbonate magma (around 600 C). This is unlike
all other intrusive and effusive carbonatites (350 examples worldwide) which are dominantly composed of Ca, Mg, Fe carbonates, and have negligible alkali contents. Although a number of effusive
calcio-carbonatites are considered to be degraded alkali carbonatites, there are several examples
(including one magnesi0-carbonatite) which are close to their erupted composition, and substantiate
the existence of high T carbonate magmas lacking essential alkalis at the time of eruption. In these
associations silicate magmas are absent (or minor), and in most the effusive carbonatites have been
erupted directly from the mantle (with entrained peridotite debris and minerals). They provide a link
with the ultramafic association (peridotite and pyroxenite), seen in some carbonatite intrusions, with
the commonly associated ultramafic lamprophyres (which may also carry mantle xenoliths), and with
carbonate-rich kimberlites. Many carbonatite intrusions also have little or no associated silicate
magmas, putting in question a popular view that carbonatites normally form only minor parts of
alkaline igneous complexes of nephelinite/phonolite type. The corollary, that the carbonatites are
normally differentiates is even less sound, because in alkaline complexes the carbonatite is always last
in the eruption sequence. Here the carbonatite may represent the final residua expelled from the
source region. Most large carbonatite intrusions seem to have been emplaced at lower T than
effusives, probably as a near-solidus mush, with the interstitial fluid metasomatizing the country rocks.
A wider perspective of carbonate magma genesis is called for, to encompass various kinds of
differentiation from alkaline silicate magmas, and primary carbonate magmas from various depths in
the mantle (with or without silicate melts). The strongly bimodal composition distribution of calcic
and dolomitic carbonatites is a further factor awaiting explanation. Half of the known carbonatites
are in Africa, and their timing and distribution indicate that the activity is a response to lateral forces
acting across the plate. Carbonate magmatism is waiting to be unleashed. This activity demands
attention because it is now clear that carbonate magmatism is a crucial surface expression of deep
mantle processes.
able to list 32; by 1966, when two books were published

(Tuttle & Gittins 1966; Heinrich 1966), the total had risen to
nearly 200, and at the last published count (Woolley 1989)
there were around 330 (about half of which are in Africa).
In choosing 11 examples from the 23 known in Africa at that
time Campbell Smith (1956) could essay an all-embracing
compass, summing up the salient facts, introducing the rival
hypotheses, and presenting a fascinating snapshot of the
state of the 'art'. A similar review now, of the same length,
could do scant justice to the subject, because quite apart
from the sheer increase in research, and fundamental new
discoveries, the whole context has changed. Of the seven
special features perceived by Campbell Smith as 'subsidiary
problems' (pp. 212-213), five (magmatic associations,
multiphase activity, multiple intrusion, explosive activity,
and range of vent diameters) are now widely recognized as
general, although not necessarily invariable, features of
carbonatites. Minerals peculiar to carbonatites have
received much attention since 1956 (e.g. Hogarth 1989).
The concommitant high levels of mobile and silicate
incompatible elements, and the extensive metasomatism
A turning point in carbonatite studies was marked in

November 1956, with the simultaneous publication of
reviews by two major geological societies (Campbell Smith
1956; Pecora 1956). From the time of the original use of the
term 'Karbonatite' (to describe the carbonate rocks of Fen,
S. Norway) a controversy had smouldered over Br6gger's
(1921) proposal that these were products of carbonate
magmas. By 1956 the n e e d for a review in the wider
geological forum, of these hitherto rare rocks, had become
evident in the rapidly increasing discoveries of carbonatites
in the stable parts of the continents. Campbell Smith's
Presidential Address to the Geological Society of L o n d o n
was both apt and timely, and appropriately titled ' A review
of some problems of African carbonatites'. Most of the new
discoveries following the second world war were in Africa,
and Campbell Smith had played a crucial part in the first
positive recognition of carbonatites in that continent (Dixey
et al. 1937). Both reviews, of course, have many parallels,
and a number of interesting differences. Each highlighted
the growing pace of new carbonatite discoveries, and
predicted that this would not slacken. In 1956, Pecora was
249
250
D.K.
(fenitization) are intrinsic features, which must always have

a bearing in any consideration of carbonatite magmatism.
Fenitization has continued as an important strand in
carbonatite studies, but within the larger context of
carbonate magmatism can only be considered in terms of
alkali mobility. A summary of fenitization, with leading
references is given by McKie (1989).
One of the 'two main problems' for Campbell Smith was
carbonatite 'mode of emplacement', and the 'ultimate
problem' (p.216) was the source of the CO2. These
constituted the main questions for Pecora (1956) also, and in
one shape or form they have always been, and are still the
nub of the argument concerning igneous carbonates. But,
as mentioned above, the context of the argument has
changed radically since 1956. Not only can we now draw on
extensive evidence of effusive carbonatite activity, and
experiments on carbonate melting and crystallization, but
entirely new concepts of melt generation colour petrological
thought. When Campbell Smith (and Pecora 1956) allude to
source regions for carbonatite, they refer to the deep crust,
or the deeper parts of the Earth--neither uses the word
'mantle'. The dawn of our present intellectual milieu was
still to break, with the recognition that the primary
characteristics of most magmas are determined by partial
melting in the Earth's mantle (Yoder & Tilley 1962).
Regardless of whether a carbonatite is primary, or a
differentiate of an associated silicate melt, considerations of
carbonatite magmatism are now constrained by knowledge
of mantle compositions and physical states, together with
experimental evidence on mantle melting conditions. The
'two main problems' of Campbell Smith must, of course, be
re-examined with this perspective, and the intention in the
present paper is to do this firstly, through present
knowledge of magmatic rocks and experimental melts, and
secondly, through what may be termed the ultramafic
connections.
In his review, Campbell Smith selected his examples of
African carbonatites in a series of increasing age, to
illustrate different erosion levels. As a result he was able to
point out (p.216) that t h e r e is a general pattern in
carbonatite activity, produced repeatedly. He goes on to
cite Dixey that 'carbonatites are a normal part of the
magmatic history . . . of Africa over a long period of
geological time'. This aspect of carbonatite activity has
potentially profound implications in petrogenesis, and will
be explored after the main discussion of carbonate magmas.
Carbonate magmas
Underlying Campbell Smith's examination of the 'Problem
of mode of emplacement' was the question of whether or
not carbonatite was truly igneous or magmatic, i.e. what was
the physico-chemical regime at the time of carbonatite
formation. Large, central carbonatite masses have given
rise to the largest range of proposals, and his perceptive
discussion looks at all the then suggested mechanisms, from
replacement, hydrothermal deposition, plastic flow (akin to
salt domes), crystal mush, to purely magmatic intrusion.
For Campbell Smith the crucial evidence lay in the dykes
and cone sheets, which seemed to require a 'carbonatitic
magmatic liquid' as envisaged by von Eckermann (1948).
BAILEY
Magmatic evidence from intrusive carbonatite

petrography
Many of the features touched on by Campbell Smith have
been substantiated in later studies, especially the importance
of fluidization for fragmental intrusions. Evidence of
replacement is widespread, but no longer seen as necessarily
an obstacle to a magmatic origin, because it mostly applies
to replacement of carbonate, e.g. dolomitization, or
sub-solidus recrystallization of a carbonatite protolith.
Replacement has been specifically addressed by Barker
(1989, 1993) who points out that many (if not most)
plutonic silicate rocks have undergone sub-solidus reequilibration such that any original igneous texture may be
largely a palimsest: he argues that such a process is even
more likely to affect easily recrystallized carbonate rocks.
Equally, the formation of some carbonatite bodies by
hydrothermal/carbothermal deposition (e.g. Mountain Pass,
California) does not vitiate magmatic evidence in other
complexes: a continuum from magma to fluids may be
expected in the natural environment. Field relations are all
important, and have been fully reviewed by Barker (1989).
But there must be a distinction between convincing
magmatic field relations (which are likely to survive
sub-solidus changes) and finding critical evidence of the
nature of the original magma. The igneous characteristics of
the regime may still be discernible, but the composition and
original phase relations may be lost, or at best obscured.
Flow structures, for instance, may be interpreted as the
fabric from an intrusive magma, but replacement may have
destroyed the original composition and texture. The same
caveat may apply even to porphyritic texture, although here
the original phenocrysts may survive to provide valuable
information. More serious, however, is the fact that most
intrusive carbonatites also show signs of chemical exchange
with their wall rocks, as seen most dramatically in alkali
metasomatism (fenitization). Even if this exchange could be
accurately quantified, the facts of exchange and replacement, reveal a great residual uncertainty about how much of
the material that was emplaced still remains. Still more
perplexing is the unknown quantity of material that passed
through, and out of, the conduit prior to and after it was
filled. Any intrusion and its wall rocks are but remnants of
volatile-rich systems and the cautionary reminder that
igneous rocks are dead magmas must surely be imperative
for intrusive carbonatite. Hence, the closest approach to
original magma must be sought among the rapidly quenched
effusives. These can provide better understanding of
magmas and processes, and guide the interpretation of
existing laboratory studies and the design of new
experiments.
In his gentle advocacy of carbonatite magmas, Campbell
Smith differed from Pecora (1956) who leaned more towards
a spectrum of dense fluids, a difference surely attributable to
Campbell Smith's extensive personal contact with studies of
the sub-volcanic complexes in East and Central Africa. His
selected African examples are listed in order of increasing
depth of erosion, and at the head is Kerimasi volcano,
Tanzania, where James (1956) had just reported carbonatite
on the flanks and in the crater.
Effusive carbonatites could resolve many of the
questions about the nature of carbonatite intrusions but
neither Campbell Smith, nor Pecora (who also highlighted
CARBONATE MAGMAS
the volcanic connections) felt able to speculate on what form
the activity might take. In this they were undoubtedly
restrained by the limited evidence on experimental
carbonate-melt relations, which was then irreconcilable with
geological observations (and where Pecora rightly perceived
new experiments would be pivotal). By one of the ironies of
science, the twin volcano of Kerimasi, Oldoinyo Lengai, had
been recorded as erupting carbonate ashes several times
earlier this century (Hobley 1918; Richard 1942; Guest,
1956) with the added irony that the 1917 eruption receives
special mention by that great advocate of limestone syntexis,
S.J. Shand in his text book, Eruptive Rocks (1927, p. 36).
In 1956 the significance was missed, or had been lost from
sight, and some of the essentials needed to carry forward the
discussion of effusive activity (and experimental melting)
would have to wait until 1960. That year saw the eruption
of alkali carbonatite lavas in the crater of Oldoinyo Lengai,
(Dawson 1962), the laboratory production of Ca carbonate
melts at low T and P (Wyllie & Tuttle 1960), and the
description of effusive dolomitic carbonatites of Cretaceous
age in Zambia (Bailey 1960).
There can be little question that widespread doubts
about the existence (or even possibility) of carbonate melts
were largely dispelled by the experimental results, closely
followed by reports of the Lengai lavas, although new
questions were raised by both. The experimental melts
were compositionally close to calcio-carbonatite, but
strongly hydrous, while the Lengai lavas were anhydrous,
but quite unlike other carbonatites in bulk composition.
New lines of research were opening, to be supported by
growing developments in analytical methods, especially for
trace elements and isotopes.
251
A l k a l i carbonate m a g m a s
Oldoinyo Lengai, in northern Tanzania, is the only volcano
at which flowing carbonate magma has been observed
(Dawson 1962). By weight the rock is nearly 60% sodium
carbonate, 30% calcium carbonate, and 10% potassium
carbonate, a representative analysis being given in Table 1.
Any losses, to wall rocks prior to eruption, and in gas and
sublimates during eruption, are at present unknown but,
regardless of what these may have been, the composition is
unique. All other carbonatites are essentially Ca, Mg, Fe
carbonates, with very low alkali contents (Table 1). Wall
rock contamination at Lengai must be minimal because the
silica content of the natrocarbonatite is extremely low. The
marked difference between natrocarbonatite and all others
gave rise to new concepts, including the proposal that loss of
alkalis to wall rocks at depth would yield the non-alkali
types (Dawson 1964), and carbonate-silicate liquid immiscibility, arising from experiments in alkali carbonate-silicate
systems (Koster van Groos & Wyllie 1966). New
controversies were born, most of which have at their root
the question of whether natrocarbonatite is parental to
virtually all other types. The question is natural and needs
examination, but the debates have tended to polarize,
choosing to ignore the alternative that natrocarbonatite may
be simply one type among many. Fortunately, a new
multi-author volume with Lengai as its central theme, is in
press (Bell & Keller 1994), so that here it is appropriate to
focus on the characteristics of the magma and its possible
phase relations, so that it may be considered within the
framework of other magmatic evidence.
Petrographically, the lava is porphyritic with phenocrysts
Table 1. Compositions of effusive carbonatites, as examples of carbonate magmas

SiO 2 TiO 2 AI20 3 Fe20 3 FeO MnO MgO CaO Na20 K20 PzOs H20
1. Natrocarb.
(Lengai)
2. Calcio-c
(Kerimasi)
3. Calcio-c
(Ft. Portal)
4. Calcio-c
(Polino)
5. Calcio-c
(Kaiserstuhl)
6. Calcio-c
(Emirates)
7. Magnesio-c
(Rufunsa)
0.11
0.09
0.28
0.04
0.53
13.9
32.2
8.27
0.90
0.39
tr.
0.07
0.34
0.22
0.21
54.0
0.10
0.05
1.82
41.8
13.0
1.74
3.03
7.93
0.40
8.55
36.0
0.73
0.20
3.32
3.45 14.8
16.2
0.52
3 . 9 1 3.69
1 . 3 1 0.07
7.31
38.7
0.05
0.50
0.60
3.12 24.1
0.45
0.03
0.15
0.41
0.36
52.6
0.04
0.50
1.56
1.16 39.8
7.45
1 . 0 1 1 . 7 5 8.30
3.12
0.46
3.27
40.5
0.23
0.14
7.00
1.2
0.49
1.56
19.0
28.8
4.44
0.98
tr.
CO 2
34.7
CI
SO 3
SrO
2.93
4.21
2.18
1.53 1.04
0.40
0.2
0.08
0.63
0.15
0.54
0.67
0.15
24.58
References
1. Dawson 1989, table 11.3, p. 269 (Anal. 1).
2. Mariano & Roeder 1983, table 1, p. 451 (Anal. 3).
3. Barker & Nixon 1989, table 5, p. 172 (Anal. 1) F value calculated from mode and mineral analyses.
4. Lupini & Stoppa in press.
5. Keller 1989, table 4.1, p. 79 (Anal. KB2).
6. WooUey et al. 1991, table 3, p. 1160 (Anal. Type 1, Mean).
7.'Bailey 1989, table 1, p. 416 (Anal. 3: dolomite melt droplet).
c, carbonatite.
BaO
1.10
252
D. K. B A I L E Y
of nyerereite (NaCa carbonate) and gregoryite (Na, K, Ca

carbonate) in a matrix of the same minerals. Details of the
compositions are given in Gittins & McKie (1980). Their
diagram showing the natural phase compositions in the
synthetic system, Na2CO3-K2CO3-CaCO3 at lkbar, is a
helpful presentation, followed here in Fig. 1. Estimates of
eruption temperatures suggest a small range, with the 1960
flows being reported as not incandescent at night, while
incandescence was observed in 1988, and Dawson (1989)
records that temperatures were consistently between 560
and 580C, which must be close to the lower limit of
incandescence. These temperatures are similar to a value
around 600 C for the gregoryite-nyerereite cotectic at 1
atmosphere pressure, estimated by Cooper et al. (1975) on
the basis of experiments on the natural lava. This
temperature is over 100 C lower than those in the synthetic
system (Fig. 1), presumably due to the high levels of fluxing
components (especially halogens) in the natural lava. Flow
morphology has varied from highly mobile, vesicular flows
that reached the crater walls (200-250 m), to very viscous,
short, and slow moving extrusions (Dawson 1989).
All these observations are consistent with a melt near a
cotectic. Reference to Fig. 1 shows that the lava
compositions plot close to, and sub-parallel with, the 1
atmosphere cotectic of Niggli (1919). Especially significant
is the position of the lava groundmass in the midst of the
bulk compositions and close to the tie line between its
phenocryst compositions. These features are precisely those
to be expected from a cotectic melt, and suggest that the
natural cotectic is recording a low pressure of equilibration,
around 150-200 bar, for the natrocarbonatite, i.e. within
500m of the surface. It is noteworthy that Cooper et al.
(1975), when reporting their experiments on a natural
sample, concluded that the bulk composition is 'probably
close to the cotectic'.
When considering the status of the natrocarbonatite, it is
useful to recall that the lava eruptions (within the crater) are
a tiny fraction of the 2000 m volcano composed largely of
fragmental nephelinite and phonolite (c. 60 km3: Dawson,
1989). The unusual composition has given rise to the widest
diversity of hypotheses about its origin.
(1) Immiscible separation of carbonate melt from a
parental silicate melt in the range nephelinitephonolite. Le Bas (1989) has reviewed the petrological
case, and Kjarsgaard & Hamilton (1989) the relevant
experimental evidence. A corollary is that if the initial
carbonate melt is more calcic, fractionation of calcite
can yield more sodic residual melts.
(2) Prolonged fractionation of an original primary calciocarbonatite under anhydrous conditions (Gittins 1989).
(3) Melting of troniferous sediments (akin to those around
the neighbouring Lake Natron) in the volcanic
substructure (Milton 1968, 1989; Peterson & Marsh
1986).
With the exception of 3, all hypotheses place
natrocarbonatite as the product of extended differentiation:
fractionation in the silicate line culminating in phonolite,
and
then
natrocarbonatite
separation;
nephelinite/
carbonatite immiscibility, followed by carbonatite fractionation; or extended fractionation in primary calciocarbonatite. The fact that the erupted melt at Oldoinyo
Lengai corresponds to a low pressure cotectic is not taken
into account, perhaps largely because Niggli's (1919) results
have been ignored. The simplest interpretation of the phase
relations would be that the lavas are minimum melts from
bulk compositions close to the gregoryite-nyerereite join.
All other propositions require qualifying assumptions about
the P T X history of any supposed earlier melt. Fractional
crystallization of calcio-carbonatite would require some yet
to be defined step to effect the transposition into the
natrocarbonatite system (see Fig. 2), and even then eruption
of the minimum melt composition alone would still need
explanation. Equally unexplained at present is how, or
why, a melt with cotectic characteristics should form by
immiscible separation from a high T silicate melt. Of course
our present view of the natural magmatism may be
blinkered; on a geological timescale we have only a single
instantaneous 'freeze frame' of the activity, but this stricture
applies equally to all hypotheses advocating natrocarbonatite as a general model for carbonatite petrogenesis.
Purely on the basis of the phase relations, the melting
hypothesis is more plausible but as many have pointed out,
e.g. Cooper et al. (1975), the overall chemistry, and
especially the stable isotope chemistry, is not compatible
with sediment melting. A powerful consensus in favour of
this view may be presumed from the absence of any mention
of the hypothesis in the latest multi-author book on
carbonatites (Bell 1989). There is, however, another
possibility that is free from the difficulties raised by the
melting of sediment, namely that the source might be older
carbonates in the volcanic pile. These may form initially as
high T sublimates from continued CO2-rich exhalation from
silicate magmas. Subsequent ascent of magma within the
volcano could mobilize these, driving the resultant low
viscosity melts ahead through the axial zone. These alkali
carbonate melts would not invariably be erupted as flows: in
K2CO3
;9
.'/
,.
Na2CO3
C NY
CC
CaCO3
Fig. 1. Adapted from Gittins & McKie

(1980), showing the positions of analyses
for natrocarbonatite (open circles);
nyerereite and gregoryite phenocrysts
(triangles); and groundmass (solid
square); projected onto the phase
diagram for N a 2 C O 3 - K 2 C O 3 - C a C O 3 at
I kbar. The broken curve C-C is the
cotectic at 1 atms. calculated from Niggli
(1919).
CARBONATE MAGMAS
1400
1400
P= 1 K b a r
/
/
1200
1200
oo
/
/
<
rr
1000
NCss+L
u.l
b.-
4
NY+L
1000
CC+L
C
800
//
600
/
1
60
I
NY
800
--
600
CC+NY
NC+NY
I
80
--
I
40
Na2CO 3
I
20
CaCO 3
WT, PERCENT
Fig. 2. Schematic binary diagram to illustrate the constraints of

temperatures, phase relations, and compositions on the natrocarbonatite erupted from Oldoinyo Lengai (corresponding to a melt
with cotectic characteristics) adapted from Cooper et al. 1975. In
the binary the natural cotectic is represented by the eutectic O. A
melt near O cannot produce calcite nor a calcitic residuum, even by
a hypothetical loss of alkalis, which could proceed only in the
direction of NY (nyerereite) and no further. Any carbonatite with
calcite phenocrysts could not have evolved from natrocarbonatite as
currently erupted. The most alkaline liquid possible with calcite
phenocrysts would be E, and the bulk compositions of calcite-phyric
'magmas' must lie between E and C, i.e. much less alkaline and
higher in T than natrocarbonatite O. A specimen containing calcite
(Dawson et al. 1987) may fall in this category, but the mantling of
calcite by nyerereite suggests that it may be xenocrystic.
The diagram shows that where calcite phenocrysts are abundant,
e.g. bulk composition X (50% phenocrysts) the liquidus T must be
very high, and the alkali content correspondingly small. Such melts
would indicate markedly different conditions from those necessary
to produce the natrocarbonatite magma currently being erupted
from Lengai.
Preliminary reports on the effects of F (Gittins 1989; Jago &
Gittins 1991; Gittins & Jago 1991) show general lowering of the
calcite liquidus by as much as 200 C (at 8%F). In one of these
(Jago& Gittins 1991) it is stated that CaF2 or F 'break the thermal
barrier caused by nyerereite'. Critical phase relations are given only
in outline, in which there are disparities (between diagrams and in
the data) and informed discussion must therefore await publication
of the defining experimental data (e.g. run compositions, stable
equilibrium phase assemblages). In any case, whether or not the
barrier is breached by equilibrium crystallization, calcite would have
to be perfectly fractionated (even approaching the solidus) by which
point the liquid compositions are already much richer in F than
their postulated derivatives, natrocarbonatite lavas. See text and
Tables 1 and 3, for F levels and temperature effects in carbonatites.
a complex series of activity cycles they may accumulate in
and choke the upper part of the conduit, to be intermittently
erupted as ashes, which during declining activity fall back
and fill the crater. The modern lava activity may represent
only a quiet stage when melts are able to ooze out onto the
crater floor. This mode of generation would be in keeping
with the phase relations, the highly constricted and very
small volume activity, the totally anhydrous composition,
the U-Th disequilibrium results (Williams et al. 1986), and
the unique trace element characteristics (Keller 1992).
253
Because the natrocarbonatite lavas at Lengai are the

only flowing carbonate magmas observed, this composition
has naturally featured strongly in attempts to account for the
formation of non-alkaline carbonatites, most of which are
calcitic. Links with natrocarbonatite have been sought for
calcitic carbonatites in two contrasting modes: (a) for calcitic
lavas and pyroclasts, by calcification of alkali carbonatites
through the action of surface waters, and (b) for calcitic
intrusions by loss of alkalis from alkali carbonatite,
metasomatizing the wall rocks (fenitization).
Calcification of original alkali carbonatite volcanics
enjoys considerable support, and depends entirely on the
recognition of nyerereite pseudomorphed by calcite. Gittins
(1989) has provided a review of the position in terms of the
phase relations, urging restraint against the over-enthusiastic
adoption of the surface replacement processes. He also
shows that where (as in many examples) monocrystalline
calcite phenocrysts are present, the original alkali contents
(if any) need not have been great. A simplified example is
illustrated in Fig. 2, where it may be noted also that
temperatures on the calcite liquidus are higher than those
for natrocarbonatite, meaning that the observed magma is
not a possible parent for any carbonatites with calcite
phenocrysts. Obviously, alkali melts with a calcite liquidus
may exist, but the melt temperatures will be considerably
higher than natrocarbonatite, and the alkali content much
lower. Actual alkali carbonate melts with calcite phenocrysts
have yet to be observed in nature, and their existence still
awaits confirmation.
No intrusive carbonatites with pseudo-nyerereite have
been reported, so that any inference about their earlier
alkali content must at present be based on alkali
metasomatism of the wall rocks. As noted before, the rocks
are but remnants of a volatile-rich, open system, where the
total through-put of material is unknown. Alkali activity is
evident, but the alkali content of the original magma must
be conjectural: the only certainty is that natrocarbonatite
could not have been the original melt, because it is a low
energy, cotectic composition from which loss of alkalis (if it
were possible) could only transpose the material into
sub-solidus field of nyerereite (see Fig. 2). If the
assumption is that calcitic carbonatite is a residuum after
alkali loss, then it may be presumed that the original melt
had calcite on the liquidus. From Fig. 2 it may be seen that
this would set a maximum alkali carbonate content on the
bulk composition around 45%, ranging down to virtually
zero. An initial melt with greater than 45% alkali carbonate
would be effectively super liquidus (superheated), which
entails an unconstrained presumption about the nature of
the system: even this melt, however, must instantaneously
lose its superheated status once it is in reaction with wall
rocks. Hence the general case is represented by an intrusive
magma with calcite on the liquidus. The best test of the
likely alkali content lies in freshly quenched (unaltered)
calcitic effusive rocks.
Effusive calcio-carbonatite
Surprisingly perhaps, records of calcitic volcanic rocks

slightly predate that of the landmark eruption of
natrocarbonatite lava (Dawson 1962). James reported
Recent calcitic carbonatite layers on the flanks of Kerimasi
volcano (1956); ripple-marked calcitic tufts were reported
from the Cretaceous carbonatitic volcanoes of Zambia
254
D. K. B A I L E Y
(Bailey 1960, appendix V, plate V); and by 1961 the Recent

carbonatite lava flow at Fort Portal had been described (von
Knorring & Du Bois 1961). Dawson (1962) also pointed out
that calcitic ashes were widely distributed in East Africa,
making the valid suggestion that many of these might be
degraded natrocarbonatite. This possibility, however,
inevitably raised a question about the original composition
of any effusive calcio-carbonatite. In those cases where such
rocks contain calcite phenocrysts, the erupted bulk
composition cannot have been the same as the Oldoinyo
Lengai lavas, as indicated above, and in Fig. 2. The whole
question of effusive calcio-carbonatites has fortunately been
given new perspectives in reviews by Barker (1989) and
Keller (1989). Barker, concentrating on field relations
combined with petrography, is able to conclude (1989, p.44)
that 'srvite liquids can erupt as lavas of low viscosity'. Keller
presents detailed evidence on the calcite lapilli tufts of the
Kaiserstuhl, showing that a replacement origin is ruled out
by the magmatic chemistry combined with 'open inter-clast
frameworks and open vesicles in lapilli' (1989, p.85). Some
localities where calcitic effusive rocks are closest to
magmatic compositions are listed in Table 2. Many other
examples of calcitic volcanics are known, especially in East
Africa, but are not listed here because they have been
designated as calcitized alkali carbonatites (e.g. Clarke &
Roberts 1986), but in the light of the Kaiserstuhl experience
(Keller 1989) it would seem prudent to keep an open
verdict.
In terms of texture and composition the air-fall tear drop
lapilli of the Kaiserstuhl (Keller 1981) are apparently
determined by surface tension at a liquid-gas interface, the
droplets having the composition of almost pure calcium
carbonate (Table 1). As there seems little scope for major
losses or exchange after eruption, the present composition

must be close to that of the original erupted melt. In the
absence of a flux (e.g. H20) such a melt would be at a high
temperature and above its 1 atmosphere dissociation point,
leading to the conclusion that melt fragmentation occurred
under pressure in the volcanic vent, and that droplet shaping
was effected while the melt was supercooled in flight.
Calcite microphenocrysts indicate that the melt was on the
liquidus immediately prior to disintegration; the lack of
strong concentricity of phenocrysts parallel to the droplet
boundaries would be consistent with very rapid undercooling and quenching.
Unless substantial amounts of a component (or
components) have gone from the Kaiserstuhl lapilli, leaving
no trace, high melt temperatures must apply. Calcite
crystals in calcitic liquid would require a minimum
temperature of 1230 C at a minimum pressure of 40 bar
(Point Q, fig. 20.1, Wyllie 1989). Pressure presents no
problem, the melt could rise to 150 m below the surface;
indeed, melt ascent to a critically shallow depth might be a
plausible fragmentation/eruption trigger. Lowering of the
melt temperature by the small amounts of non-calcitic
components still present would not be dramatic, suggesting
values similar to mafic igneous melts (1000-1200 C): such
values would be consistent with the deduction (Keller 1989)
of a genetic link with melilite nephelinite. Similar
conclusions emerge from consideration of other associations. At Kerimasi there is a close association of lapilli with
melilite phenocrysts and those with calcite phenocrysts, and
there are melilitite lapilli tufts cemented by calcium
carbonate. In the Fort Portal lava flow, olivine, diopside
and phlogopite xenocrysts, are enclosed in a groundmass of
calcite, periclase, perovskite, apatite and spurrite, consistent
Table 2. Effusive calcio- and magnesio-carbonatites where the observed compositions are closest to erupted magma
Ref & Locality
Cognate minerals
Xenocrysts
A Calcio-carbonatites
1. Ft Portal
Cc, Cs, P, Ap, Mo O1, Di, Phi, Per, Ap
(Uganda)
2. Catanda
Carbonates.
O1, Cr-Di, Cr(Angola)
Mainly Cc
Sp, Phi, Kaer, Ap
3. Polino (Italy)
Cc, Zr, (Mo)
O1, Phi, OI + Phi
4. U.A. Emirates Cc, Cr-Sp
5. Khanneshin
Cc, Ank, Ba
(Afghanistan)
6. Rufunsa
Cc, Cr-Sp
San
7. Kaiserstuhl
Cc, Mt, Ap
(Germany)
8 Kerimasi
Cc
(Tanzania)
Silicate melts in
Complex
Province
None
K u/m
None
Tinguaite
(?)
K u/m
None
None
None
Lc tephrite
(minor)
None
Melilitite*
None
Melilitite*
Inference
Primary, direct
eruption from mantle
Primary, direct
Primary, direct
Primary direct
Primary direct
Primary, direct
Differentiate, high T
Differentiate (?)
High T
B. Magnesio-carbonatite
6. Rufunsa
(Zambia)
Dol, Cr-Sp
Phi
None
None
Primary Direct
* Silicate melt most closely related to carbonatite

Abbreviations: Cc, Calcite; Cs, spurrite; P, periclase; Ap, apatite; O1, olivine; Di, diopside; Phi, phlogopite; Per,
perovskite; Sp, spinel; Zr, zirconium garnet; Mo, monticellite; San, sanidine; Mt, magnetite; Dol, dolomite; Ank,
ankerite; Ba, barite; Kaer, kaersutite; Lc, leucite; K u/m, potassic ultramafic lava.
References: 1. Barker & Nixon 1989; 2. Silva 1973; 3. Stoppa & Lupini 1993; 4. Woolley et al. 1991; 5. Alkhazov et al.
1978; 6. Bailey 1990; 7. Keller 1981; 8. Mariano & Roeder 1983.
CARBONATE MAGMAS
with high-T eruption. Although there are no associated
silicate magmas at Fort Portal, the olivine-diopsidephlogopite constitutes a heteromorph of olivine leucitite,
and in the volcanic fields further south (Katwe-Kikorongo)
the characteristic eruptives are olivine leucitite and melilitite
lapilli tufts cemented by calcium carbonate (Lloyd 1985).
Similarly the only silicate magmas recorded from the
Khanneshin carbonatite volcano (Afghanistan) are minor
leucite tephrites (Alkhazar et al. 1978). Hence, a close
connection in time and space seems to exist for effusive
calcio-carbonatites and alkaline ultramafic melts in which
low silica activity is marked by the appearance of melilite,
leucite, kalsilite and perovskite, and there is no evidence to
indicate that carbonate and silicate melt temperatures were
radically different. Furthermore, the anhydrous character of
the silicate rocks and minerals (and the effusive carbonatites), when fresh, points to low activity of H20 in the
larger system. Further insights are provided by the Fort
Portal lava which is a small single flow ( 1 - 5 m thick,
covering 0.3km z) in a much larger field of carbonatite
pyroclastic rocks, and clearly constitutes a special form of
eruption. Barker & Nixon (1989, p. 167) say that the flow
was apparently fed by lava fountains from a fissure marked
by a spatter rampart. Either the additional components in
the groundmass (especially SIO2) reduced the dissociation
pressure of calcite, or the melt was undercooled, or largely
crystalline before it gained access to the surface. Olivine
and diopside have rims of monticellite, presumably formed
by reaction with CaCO3, which in any formulation, in the
absence of dolomite, releases CO2: the presence of
periclase in the groundmass would also be consistent with
degassing prior to, and during eruption. Even though it
seems necessary that this material was near its solidus prior
to final eruption, the mineral assemblage in effusive
calcio-carbonatite is consistent with high temperatures (in
contrast with alkali carbonatite) and low activity of SiO2 and
H20. At Kerimasi there is coarse grained srvite (plug?)
within the crater that may be analogous, consisting of
calcite, monticellite and periclase (Mariano & Roeder
1983). In this case the periclase is late as it mantles earlier
magnesio-ferrite, and in view of the near surface
emplacement may plausibly be attributed to final crystallization below the dissociation point for Mg carbonate. A
similar mineral assemblage is reported from Polino in the
Umbria-Latium province in Italy, where calcitic vent
tuffisite, carrying mantle-derived olivine and phlogopite, has
much of the olivine replaced by monticellite: again the
volcanic association is one of leucite- and melilite-bearing
silicate rocks, (Stoppa & Lupini 1993).
At present there is a strong current of support for the
proposition that many carbonatites form by low-P liquid
unmixing from a carbonated silicate melt (Le Bas 1989;
Kjaarsgard & Hamilton 1989), but the fact that the above
effusive calcio-carbonatites carry mantle debris (despite very
low melt viscosity) denies the general applicability of low-P
unmixing, and points to their formation in the mantle. A
direct source in the mantle for some calcio-carbonatites is
also indicated elsewhere. In the Zambian volcanic rocks,
minor amounts of calcio-carbonatite appear in a dominantly
magnesio-carbonatite assemblage (Bailey 1960), where the
primary nature of the activity is recorded in melt droplets
containing high Cr magnesio-chromite (Bailey 1989).
Extrusive calcio-carbonatite containing similar chromite has
been reported from the United Arab Emirates also
255
indicating a direct origin from the mantle (Woolley et al.

1991).
Liquid immiscibility: general considerations

Before discussing magnesio-carbonatites, it is appropriate to
examine the case for liquid immiscibility as a means of
generating carbonatite magmas, because this hypothesis is
currently in favour to explain alkalic and calcic carbonatites.
Although the concept applied to carbonatites is of
long-standing (e.g. von Eckerman 1961) experimental
demonstrations of silicate-carbonate melt immiscibility were
needed for a growing general acceptance of the possibilities
of the hypothesis (Koster van Groos & Wyllie 1966;
Freestone & Hamilton 1980). Recent reviews of the
experimental results have been given by Wyllie (1989) and
Kjaarsgaard & Hamilton (1989). Le Bas (1989) has
explored the possible applications to natural examples, and
puts the case for immiscibility as a general explanation for a
diversity of N a + Ca carbonatites. An opposite view is
propounded by Gittins (1989), who advocates fractionation
of primary olivine srvite (calcio-carbonatite) under hydrous
and anhydrous conditions as the central petrogenetic
process. With so much written on the subject, it is beyond
the scope of this review to evaluate the arguments for and
against immiscibility versus fractionation. Present evidence
does not rule out either, so that both mechanisms may be
valid, and, as indicated later, even con-jointly the two are
probably only part of the whole panoply of carbonatite
genetic processes. More evidence is needed on both fronts.
Carbonatite/nephelinite/phonolite volcanism is typically
explosive and yet good natural examples of incomplete
unmixing are still scarce. The most convincing example,
mixed phonolite glass/calcite ash flows (Mt Suswa, Kenya;
Macdonald et al. in press) still does not provide carbonatite
compositions of general applicability. Appeals may be
made to the low viscosity of carbonate melt, which permits
perfect melt segregation, but this requires a quiescent
'magma chamber' for which there is no great evidence in
sub-volcanic sections. Indeed in sub-volcanic complexes,
the carbonatite is widely reported as last in the main
intrusion sequence: the carbonatite obviously cannot be
derived from the silicate complex it intrudes, so that if a
parent magma chamber exists it awaits discovery (or
recognition) in deeply exposed sections. Differentiation of
any traditional type may not even apply; the carbonatite
may be simply the final residua expelled from the source
region. None of this rules out immiscibility, but it does
mean that the case for its wider applicability must remain
open. If there were doubt about the need for such caution it
must be removed by the latest information on Spitzkop, S.
Africa. This was one of the complexes featured by
Campbell Smith (1956) as having the classic pyroxeniteijolite-foyaite-carbonatite
assemblage, and nowadays
would be an obvious candidate for explanation in terms of
immiscibility, but Harmer (1993) argues from the isotope
chemistry that the carbonatite cannot be derived from the
silicate magmas.
Extrusive calcio-carbonatites, such as those at Fort
Portal, are crucial in this regard. They lack any associated
silicate magmas, they carry dense xenocrysts of possible
mantle origin, and dense xenoliths of deep crust and mantle.
An explanation by low pressure, liquid unmixing is wholly
inappropriate, and such cases (together with Spitzkop) serve
256
D.K.
BAILEY
to show that for each carbonatite the origin must be judged

on its merits. Only in the objective approach will the full
range of carbonatite origins be uncovered.
Calcio-carbonatite intrusions: a temperature enigma

Calcitic (s6vite) intrusive rocks are the most abundant
carbonatites, and they pose some of the same problems
identified by Campbell Smith (1956) in spite of subsequent
growth of knowledge. Most examples have field relations
and mineralogies indicative of emplacement temperatures
lower than might be expected from the evidence in the
extrusive rocks. In 1956, the problem was still in the form
that the melting temperature of calcite was too high (1339 C
at 1025 atmospheres CO2: Campbell Smith 1956, p. 190),
and although later experiments (Wyllie & Tuttle 1960)
showed that H20 profoundly lowered the temperatures of
calcitic liquids, the dilemma re-emerges in another form if
account be taken of the effusive calcio-carbonatites, with
low contents of H20. In alkaline silicate magmas generally,
H20 plays a subordinate role to CO2, S, F and CI (Bailey &
Hampton, 1990). In carbonate melts, fluorine would have a
similar effect to H20, and indeed in anhydrous alkali
carbonatite (Anal. 1, Table 1) halogens are very high, such
that a lowering of melt temperature by as much as 200 C
may be anticipated (Gittins 1989). But effusive calciocarbonatites are not characterized by high F contents (e.g.
Anals 3 & 5, Table 1). For all carbonatites the average
levels, and ranges, for different elements have been most
recently compiled by Woolley & Kempe (1989), and the
levels for the fluxing components are abstracted here in
Table 3: their chief modal expression is in early-crystallizing
apatite
(P,F,C1,OH),
pyroxene
(Na),
amphibole
(Na,C1,OH), phlogopite (K,F,OH) and sulphides, and in
late-crystallizing barite, fluorite and fluorcarbonates. At the
levels in Table 3, these constituents would not dramatically
lower magmatic temperatures; some fluxing components
must have been lost from intrusions but the amounts are
uncertain. Fluorite in late-stage vein deposits, presumably
results from build up of F in residual fluids, but in most
carbonatites such fluorite would make only a tiny fraction of
the total mass.
Temperature estimates for intrusive carbonatites show
wide variation, with many values reflecting sub-solidus
re-equilibration (as might be anticipated in carbonate rocks
pervaded by fluids) and it has long been recognized that
calcitic assemblages form a continuum through to

hydro/carbothermal deposits, hence Pecora's (1956) leaning
towards a spectrum of carbonatitic fluids. Other indicators
of low temperatures of final emplacement are the general
lack of thermal effects on country rocks and accidental wall
rock xenoliths. Textures frequently indicate final emplacement as a fragmental or crystal suspension, and the fact that
most intrusions carry dense minerals such as magnetite, in
large crystals, and in aggregates, also points to higher
viscosities than those of carbonate melts. One possibility
that has been widely mooted is that the original intrusion
was alkali carbonatite and lost its alkalis in metasomatizing
(fenitizing) the country rocks. Alkali metasomatism around
carbonatites (McKie 1989) varies in type and extent, and the
alkalis in the wall rocks may be the integrated product of
sustained passage of carbonatite (and other fluids) through
the conduit. Consequently, it is not possible to quantify the
amount of alkali loss from the carbonatite that remains in
the intrusion. Little if any alkali remains in the intrusions
now and the former presence of alkalis in some effusive
calcic carbonatites is at present conjectural, based on
inferred calcification of previous alkali carbonate. While
such a possibility cannot be excluded, the existence of
non-alkalic effusive calcio-carbonatites (with levels of other
fluxing components similar to those of intrusive carbonatites) requires another explanation for some intrusions.
High temperature melts unable to reach the surface may be
expected to have a protracted crystallization, during which
components not accommodated in the carbonates (and early
crystallizing phases) become progressively concentrated in
the residual liquid/fluid. Such a residuum would lubricate
the crystal mush during final emplacement, and fenitize the
wall rocks. In various forms, such an emplacement
mechanism has long found favour (Campbell Smith 1956,
p.203 [also citing Chayes 1942, p.506, for the interstitial
alkalic fluid to explain the carbonate intrusions of
Bancroft-Haliburton]).
Once again, it would perhaps be unwise to look for one
general explanation to cover all cases of carbonatite
intrusion. Alkali metasomatism adjacent to carbonatites is
variable in type (K or Na), reflecting in part at least the
history of the carbonatite prior to emplacement, e.g. a
primary mantle source versus a differentiate from carbonate
or silicate parents: new observations and techniques will
ultimately provide tests for distinctions, or possible
inter-relations, between different kinds of intrusion.
Table 3. Carbonatites: averages and ranges of analyses for hyperfusible elements (wt% )
Na20
K20
H20 +
P205
F
Ci
S
SO3
Ferro-carbonatite
Magnesio-carbonatite
Caicio-carbonatite
Av.
No.
Range
Av.
No.
Range
Av.
No.
Range
0.29
0.26
0.76
2.10
0.29
0.08
0.41
0.88
102
105
78
119
31
8
23
15
0.0-1.73
0.0-1.47
0.0-4.49
0.0-10.41
0.0-2.66
0.0-0.45
0.02-2.29
0.02-3.87
0.29
0.28
1.20
1.90
0.31
0.07
0.35
1.08
44
44
36
51
21
1
12
13
0.0-2.23
0.0-1.89
0.08-9.61
0.0-11.30
0.03-2.10
-0.03-1.30
0.06-2.86
0.39
0.39
1.25
1.97
0.45
0.02
0.96
1.08
46
51
35
54
20
3
12
14
0.0-1.52
0.0-2.80
0.04-4.52
0.0-11.56
0.02-1.20
0.01-0.04
0.12-5.40
0.06-3.00
(From Woolley & Kempe 1989).
C A R B O N A T E MAGMAS
Effusive magnesio-carbonatite
Extrusive magnesio-carbonatite has so far been reported
only from the Rufunsa volcanoes in SE Zambia (Bailey
1960). These are of Cretaceous age, and the sub-aerial
deposits mantle an old rift valley floor, which was cut into
Karoo (Jurassic) and Precambrian basement. Based on
their location in a complex intersection of major rifts and
the absence of silicate magmas, it was proposed that the
carbonatites had a direct origin from the underlying mantle
(Bailey 1960). At that time, understanding of the
relationships between igneous activity and the mantle was
still at an early stage of development, which meant that the
Rufunsa volcanic/mantle connection could not be pursued.
The earlier deduction of a mantle origin for the Rufunsa
volcanics was substantiated by the analyses of quenched
melt droplets in vent tuffisite, which were composed of
virtually iron-free, high Mn, high Sr, dolomite (Table 1)
containing microphenocrysts of high Cr magnesio-chromite
(comparable with spinels in deep mantle samples) (Bailey
1989). All the subaerially erupted material is fragmental,
and most is agglomeratic, composed of debris from the vents
and vent-walls, and earlier pyroclastic deposits. The matrix
is largely very fine carbonate ash of dolomitic/ankeritic
composition, heavily stained red-brown with finely disseminated iron oxide/hydroxide. Unequivocal melt droplets
are composed of colourless dolomite, or dolomite plus
calcite, although primary calcite contents are hard to
quantify due to accidental incorporation of calcite from
calcio-carbonatite intrusions penetrated by the volcanic
vents. Some rocks contain drop-like fragments of
iron-stained carbonate, adding to the sense (derived from
the calcite distribution) that the erupted melts were variable
(although the bulk composition of the deposits overall is
dolomitic/ankeritic). Most of the melt droplets in thin
section enclose accidental grains as cores, i.e. they are
essentially small autoliths, showing that, after fragmentation, the still-fluid melt coated the entrained solids before it
was quenched.
Experimental data on dolomitic liquids is limited, and in
the absence of obvious fluxing components (e.g. H20 or
alkalis) or evidence of their presence at the moment of
quenching, the required melt temperature and pressure
would have to be high. Dolomitic melt would require
quenching at temperatures >1000 C, at c. 10 kbar, if data
on the pure carbonate systems were applicable (Wyllie
1989). While some amelioration of these values may be
anticipated from the small amounts of extra components
(e.g. Sr, Mn, P) in the melt, the implication must be that
melt fragmentation and quenching took place at high
temperatures, deep in the volcanic vent: hence, melt
droplets had become part of the entrained solids long before
reaching the surface. Other components that may have
conditioned the original melt are iron (now in the
groundmass) and potassium (based on the ubiquitous
phlogopite, and phlogopitized fragments in the pyroclastic
rocks, and extensive K metasomatism) (Bailey 1989): but if
present originally, K and Fe had been largely segregated
before the melt droplets were formed, so that on present
evidence high T, high P quenching seems inescapable. If so,
it may be concluded that (a) similar melts could not exist at
the surface, and that (b) melt fragmentation (and
quenching) took place at great depths, with the tuffisite pipe
extending possibly into the mantle. Although undoubted
257
mantle xenoliths are as yet unreported from Rufunsa, the

possible deep tuffisite formation, the spinel compositions,
and the high K activity, suggest analogies with kimberlites
(or lamproites), especially as the mid-Zambezi-Luangwa
rift has been a locus of kimberlite/lamproite activity (Bailey
1989). In terms of Sr and Nd isotopes, the Rufunsa volcanic
rocks are also highly unusual for carbonatites generally,
being transitional to Group II kimberlites (Zeigler 1992).
Such a relationship gives special interest to the Rufunsa
province as a whole, because the intrusive carbonatites are
closely similar to the contemporaneous intrusions of the
classic Chilwa carbonatites of Malawi (Bailey 1960).
Magnesio-carbonatite intrusions
Although replacement of calcitic carbonatite by magnesiocarbonatite is commonplace in intrusive complexes, as
pointed out by Campbell Smith (1956 p.202) and recently
emphasized by Barker (1989), unequivocal intrusive
relations abound (Campbell Smith 1956, p. 203). In the
Rufunsa sub-volcanic sections, both intrusion and replacement are clearly displayed, and in common with many
intrusive complexes the general sequence is calcio-, followed
by magnesio-, grading into ferro-carbonatite. Later activity
took the form of replacement by silica-iron hydroxide, and
veining by calcite-quartz-barite-fluorite (Bailey 1960). In
places the intrusive carbonatites show transitions into
intrusive tuffisite, which led to the conclusion that all the
pyroclastics bore this relationship to the intrusions: the
discovery that the dolomitic melt lapillae were coming
directly from a mantle source rules out such a general
explanation. Some magnesian pyroclastic eruptions might
have originated from shallow intrusions, but they could have
carried melt only if the residual liquid in the intrusion was
rich enough in fluxes to lower the temperature and the
dissociation pressure. So far, no evidence has emerged to
identify such a melt.
Most magnesio-carbonatite intrusions show little evidence of very high temperatures, and the fact that they
appear 'intermediate' between calcio- and ferro-carbonatite,
which has links with late-stage mineralization in many
complexes, means that they share the intrusion temperature
problem, discussed above, of the calcitic intrusions.
Furthermore, pure dolomitic liquid would introduce another
complexity, due to its high dissociation pressure. For these
reasons, the case for emplacement as a crystal mush,
lubricated perhaps by fluid, is even stronger for magnesiocarbonatite in shallow intrusions.
The enigma of bimodal compositions

Another question, rarely (if ever) raised, and certainly
never properly aired, is posed by the compositional
dichotomy between calcio-and magnesio-carbonatites. A
traditional view, based on the common intrusion sequence,
is that magnesio-carbonatites are differentiates from primary
calcitic magmas, but a whole battery of questions is set in
train by the relative scarcity of intermediate compositions.
A bimodal composition distribution has been evident from
the outset, in the ease with which an original two-fold
classification was accepted, i.e. s6vite (calcitic) and
rauhaugite (dolomite) (Br6gger 1921): it appears clearly in
the statistical diagrams of Woolley & Kempe (1989, figs
1.1-1.4) with two peaks emerging in the histogram for CaO.
258
D . K . BAILEY
Few geologists who have worked on carbonatites would be

likely to suggest that the 'gap' in distribution is a sampling
artefact; indeed, it may be more likely that the bimodality
of magma types has been partly blurred by intermediate
samples that represent partial dolomitization or intrusion
mixing. If dolomitic carbonatite succeeds calcitic carbonatite in intrusive sequences, and each was largely
crystalline on final emplacement, it is hardly possible that
they are in a crystallization sequence. There is no
experimental evidence available with which to account for
the contemporaneous development of two such contrasting
magmas from a common source. May be it will be necessary
to look to distinctive modes of melt generation in the mantle
source. Providing a solution to this dichotomy represents a
major challenge to carbonatite geology; it is time that it is
clearly recognized.
Ultramafic and mantle connections

An intimate connection between carbonatites and ultramatic, alkaline ultramafic and lamprophyric rocks, was
perceived at the outset (Br6gger 1921) and was set out by
Campbell Smith (1956), who was by then able to include
examples where peridotite and pyroxenite were major parts
of the association. A growing understanding of the
relationships between igneous activity and the mantle, and
the finding of low initial 87Sr/e'6Sr in carbonatites (see Powell
et al. 1966 for review) effectively put the seal on the mantle
source. At that time there was an unresolved question as to
whether the ultramafic xenoliths in igneous rocks were
cognate or accidental fragments of the mantle. Such
xenoliths, reported from the classic complexes of Fen and
Aln6 (Griffin & Kresten 1987) and in different forms in
other examples, such as Catanda, Fort Portal, Polino, now
provide independent evidence of a mantle source region for
the activity, regardless of any subsequent roles assigned to
differentiation in carbonatite genesis. There remains,
however, a major area awaiting exploration, namely the
connection between peridotite and carbonatite where
revealed in deeply eroded complexes such as Shawa and
Dorowa (Zimbabwe). As Campbell Smith (1956) was
aware, an understanding of the peridotite connection is
essential to our appreciation of carbonatite activity. Not a
great deal of further progress has been made in field and
petrographic investigation, although our background knowledge of the mantle now indicates this could be a fruitful
area.
Carbonatites a n d kimberlites
A link between carbonatite and kimberlite was also hinted

at by Br6gger (1921) as noted by Campbell Smith (1956),
who gave prominence to Daly's (1925) work on the
carbonate dykes in the Premier kimberlite. Possible
connections are manifold and have been suggested
subsequently by many auihors (see especially, Barker 1989,
pp. 54-56, for a review); indeed, yon Eckermann (1963)
assigned a parental role for kimberlite, with carbonatite
forming by immiscible liquid separation. Petrographically
there are strong analogies between kimberlite and the
typical melilite lamprophyres of the carbonatite sub-volcanic
association (aln6ite/damptjernite) in the plutonic complexes. In one sense the link was made in the first
description of kimberlite when Lewis (1897 in Yoder 1975)
suggested that 'melilite basalt' was a heteromorph. More

recently the similarities were highlighted in Rock's (1991)
proposed classification of lamprophyres, where kimberlite is
effectively used as the basis of definition, and close links
with other highly undersaturated lamprophyres, e.g. aln6ite
are thereby emphasized.
A genetic link between kimberlite and carbonatite has
been robustly challenged, however, by Mitchell (1979, 1986)
drawing attention to the differences in spinels and ilmenites
between the two groups. Gaspar & WyUie (1984)
questioned this in showing that the compositional ranges
from the two groups overlap, but Wyllie (1989, p.539) still
found 'Mitchell's arguments are persuasive'. An important
additional point made by Mitchell is the occurrence of
carbonatites (and their associated lamprophyric rocks) in
alkalic complexes, in contrast with kimberlites: a view
echoed by others, including Wyllie (1989, p.500, p.537)
when he writes, 'carbonatites are normally found as small
bodies associated with much larger volumes of silicate
rocks'. This view also emerges in many generalized
descriptions of carbonatite complexes in igneous petrology
texts, but whether this represents the 'normal' arrangement
is another matter. Of the 84 unquestionable carbonatite
complexes listed by Gittins (in Tuttle & Gittins, 1966) for
Africa, 54 are recorded with silicate magmas either absent
or minor in amount. Five of the seven effusive
calcio-carbonatites listed in Table 2 are in the same category
(Catanda, Khanneshin, Polino, Fort Portal and Rufunsa).
As noted before, the last four show evidence of connections
with potassic magmatism or high K activity, and four of the
five give evidence of a direct mantle source. In the Fort
Portal area, diamond indicator minerals are reported from
alluvial deposits (Barker & Nixon 1989). Isotope chemistry
in the Rufunsa carbonatites is transitional to Group II
kimberlites, spinels are the same as those in kimberlites, and
there are no associated silicate magmas. It may be that
many carbonatites form parts of sodic or sodi-potassic
alkaline complexes, but others (notably with potassic
attributes) emphasize the possible kimberlite connection.
The matter is not academic: rather than rejecting this
possibility, more research could be devoted to exploring it,
and the differences between carbonatites in the sodic and
potassic associations. As well as scientific value the results
may have commercial application.
High K activity is marked in the Rufunsa province by
intense and extensive K feldspathization around the vents,
and abundant phlogopite in the volcanics, leading to the
view that the total material flux from the mantle was
characterized especially by carbonates, K and Fe (abundant
in the volcanic matrix). No sodic igneous rocks or minerals
have so far been discovered. Melt inclusions in diamonds
(Navon et al. 1988) show a number of compositional
analogies to the estimated primary flux from the Rufunsa
mantle (Bailey 1989), such that this would make a more
favourable comparison than with the lamproite and Group
II kimberlite chosen by Navon et al. (1988). This in turn
indicates another reason for keeping open the links between
carbonatites and kimberlites: perhaps the melt inclusions in
the diamond are giving another sample of the melt/fluids
involved in the generation of these rocks.
Mantle source and the primary flux

In his preface to the most recent multi-author volume on
carbonatites, Bell (1989) writes 'most contributors favour
CARBONATE MAGMAS
the formation of carbonatites from differentiation of a
carbonated silicate melt'. Only one strongly advocates, as a
general case, carbonatite magma generation by direct
melting of the mantle (Gittins 1989). Using other lines of
argument, based on experimental studies, Eggler (1989) and
Wyllie (1989) reach conclusions similar to each other, but
different from Gittins, namely that typical carbonatites are
derived from primary nephelinitic/melilititic magmas, with
effectively only kimberlites representing carbonate-bearing
magmas coming directly from the mantle source. Both
Wyllie (1989) and Eggler (1989) concede that primary
carbonatites are possible, but unlikely. For Wyllie (p.500),
'the high ratio of silicate:carbonatite in most alkalic
complexes argues against this origin' while Eggler (p.575)
having set requirements including high Mg number,
essential alkalis and magmatic isolation, concludes 'Few, if
any, carbonatites fulfil these criteria'. Even Gittins (1989)
does not indicate an example where his proposed primary
carbonatite has been erupted directly and he envisages
(p.588) 'nephelinite and carbonatite magmas forming
sequentially, or possibly simultaneously'. In essence, all
three views try to relate carbonatite genesis to a
generalization about the supposed ubiquity of the
'carbonatite/nephelinite' association (largely divorced from
kimberlite generation) but as indicated in previous sections
there are plenty of natural examples that show this
perception to be too narrow. The notion of differentiation
of carbonatites from alkaline ultramafic parent magmas has
a long history (reviewed by Campbell Smith 1956, p.213)
and the possibilities receive support from modern
experimental studies, but there are good examples of direct
eruption of carbonatite from a mantle source, and the latest
isotopic data on Spitzkop (Harmer 1993) suggests that even
carbonatite in the characteristic silicate association may
not be derivative (possibly the reverse). Given that both
primary and derivative options may be valid, what may be
deduced about the mantle source?
Alkaline magmas generally, whether associated with
carbonatites or not, are characterized by high levels of
volatiles and incompatible elements so that if generated
from the mantle, some mechanism of enhancing the levels of
mobile elements (compared to more common magma types)
is necessary. In the case of alkaline ultramafic magmas,
enhancement in the source mantle region is required, and
because the activity is repetitive in continental interiors
there is a case for pervasive metasomatism of the source
mantle as a precursor to magmatism (Bailey 1972).
Xenoliths of metasomatized mantle in alkaline eruptions
permitted initial estimates of the minimum bulk additives
needed as a precursor to high K magmatism, namely 'calcite
(cc) and kalsilite (kp)' (to produce the typical metasomite,
biotite clinopyroxenite) (Lloyd & Bailey 1975). Although
subsequent studies allow refinement of the requirements in
individual cases, the need to produce alkali clinopyroxenite
from peridotite still leaves 'cc + kp' as a useful basic model
(Bailey 1987). Although arrived at by an independent line
of enquiry, there are close analogies with the deduced
mantle flux through the Rufunsa carbonatite volcanoes, as
well as with melt inclusions in diamonds, suggesting that
fluids akin to ' c c + k p ' may be active in the mantle
generation of alkaline and carbonate magmas.
During the early 1970s there were parallel developments
in experimental petrology, with Eggler (1974) showing that
CO2 in
ultramafic
systems
produced
melts
of
259
nephelinitic/melilititic affinities. Predictions from Wyllie &

Huang (1976) and Eggler (1976) were that the first melts
from the deep mantle (in the presence of CO2) would be
dolomitic. Both fields, mantle metasomatism and melting at
the vapour saturated mantle solidus, have seen huge
developments in the intervening years, such that the
concepts are now firmly entrenched, as evidenced in many
contributions in Bell (1989). Haggerty (1989) has developed
the notion that metasomatic preconditioning is a prerequisite of carbonate and alkali rich magmas; Jones (1989) too
looks to mantle 'enriched in carbonate components and
incompatible elements'; and Gittins (1989) refers to a source
'from carbonated mantle', for his primary melts. Eggler
(1989, p. 561) proposes that primary dolomite-rich
carbonatites would be the initial primary melts from
'phlogopite-carbonate peridotite' at pressures below those
he proposes for kimberlite generation (55-60 kbar): but, as
noted above, both he and Wyllie et al. (1989, 1990) consider
most carbonatites to be differentiates from alkaline magmas,
generated by asthenospheric circulation/plume activity. In
these scenarios the lithosphere is an inert membrane, and
metasomatism an accessory process (largely post-magmatic).
In fact, Eggler, specifically rejects volatile flux as a possible
part of carbonatite genesis, saying (p.575), 'No magmatic
precursory events that decouple volatiles from more
refractory peridotite elements are necessary'. All the source
requirements are inherent in OIB (ocean island basalt)
mantle, subject to partial melting and fractionation (p.561).
Mantle with ocean island basalt characteristics is, of course,
a model composition deduced from the chemistry of ocean
island magmas, which include nephelinites and rare
carbonatites, so that its choice as a source for continental
carbonatites is perhaps unsurprising. It is an artefact of the
need to explain island magmatism in ocean sectors
dominated by MORB generation, and is widely considered
to be the characteristic composition of deep mantle plumes
penetrating the oceanic asthenosphere. Similar plumes are
figured in sub-continental sections by Eggler (1989, fig. 22.6)
and Wyllie (1989, fig. 20.12).
Both proposals, volatile flux and plume generated
magmas, require energy and materials released from the
deep mantle and through the lithosphere. Volatile fluxing,
however, will be dependent on lithosphere structure and
dynamics, whereas deep mantle plumes should be
independent of the plate that lies above. Unlike the oceans,
the continents reveal abundant carbonatite activity, which
can be examined more directly in the context of the
structure and history of the lithosphere. As about half the
known carbonatites are in Africa, the greater part of which
has been a stable plate for more than 550 Ma, this forms a
suitable example, and one that appropriately reconnects
with Campbell Smith's (1956) title theme. Eruption ages,
lithosphere structures and tectonic events, have been
examined elsewhere (Bailey 1992) and can be summarized
here.
Lithosphere structure and eruption ages

Rifting and magmatism are largely controlled by ancient
zones of weakness in the African lithosphere, this long
acknowledged relationship being clearly realized in the most
recent maps in Kampunzu & Lubala (1991). When the ages
of post-Jurassic igneous activity are compiled, four major
peaks emerge (Early Cretaceous, Late Cretaceous, Eocene-
260
D . K . BAILEY
Oligocene, and Miocene-Recent); in most areas, activity
was repeated at least once. The localization of activity by
old lesions in the lithosphere, the plate-wide synchroneity,
and the repetitions, rule out the possibility of a source in
deep mantle plumes impinging at random on the base of the
African lithosphere. Instead, the plate-wide igneous
episodes are found to correlate with external events such as
Africa/Europe collisions and a global change in plate
motion directions (Bailey 1992). Igneous activity peaks and
collision chronology are summarized in Fig. 3.
Black & Liegeois (1993) also emphasize the lithosphere
control over the location of alkaline magmatism in Africa,
but they prefer to attribute the magma chemistry to earlier
plume activity which enriched the mantle source. In this
case the plume provides only precursor enrichment, not the
thermal and mechanical driving forces of the magmatism.
Once it is recognized that melt generation is contingent on
tectonic stresses acting across the plate, it is evident that any
such earlier plume enrichment of the source is needed only
if all other processes of enrichment can be completely
eliminated from consideration. Even then, repetition of
activity at the same sites, and the mechanism of melt
generation are left unexplained. Connections between
alkaline magmatism and plume activity may continue to
enjoy wide favour, but the necessity for a connection
remains to be demonstrated.
60
(a)
30
500
400
3OO
100
200
Ma
(b)
100
Causes o f m a g m a t i s m
20
16
(c)
12
500
400
300
200
100
Ma
Fig. 3. Radiometric ages of igneous activity compared with collision
rates of the Africa/Europe closure. (a) Histogram of all igneous
rock ages in Africa (Cahen et al. 1984). The broad peak around
190 Ma corresponds to the continental flood basalt (CFB)
magmatism that marked the break-up of Gondwanaland. All
subsequent ages refer to alkaline/kimberlite/carbonatite activity
following break-up. Note the two Cretaceous peaks, the stepped
profile in Tertiary to Recent rise in the histogram, and especially
the low activity period (70-50 Ma) compared with the collision
record (b), below. (b) Collision rates for Africa/Europe closure
using the relative movement path depicted in Dewey et al. (1989,
fig. lb). Note the zero closure interval compared with the lull in
igneous activity across Africa between late Cretaceous and late
Eocene. (c) Histogram of carbonatite ages in Africa (Woolley 1989)
The difference in resolution compared with (a) is probably
attributable to the longer time intervals used in the original
compilation.
The line O through the diagrams marks the initiation of
Africa/Europe collision according to Olivet et al. (1987).
Given that episodic intraplate magmatism in Africa is a

consequence of external forces acting laterally across the
plate, it follows that small volume melts have been
permitted to erupt by stress release in the lithosphere. The
melts, or the volatiles, or the appropriate melt sources
(probably all three) must be continually available (Bailey
1993). Lithosphere strain is ameliorated by the re-opening
of old fissure systems (and some warping) allowing the
release of volatiles and fluids from the deep mantle.
Channelling focuses the volatiles from a large reservoir of
underlying mantle into relatively narrow zones through the
lithosphere. The ambient geotherm along the release path
controls the nature, volume, and source-depth of the
magmas (Bailey 1980) giving rise to the observed spectrum
of kimberlite/carbonatite/alkaline, magmatism, with progressively steeper geothermal gradients, which in general
reflect the pre-existing lithosphere thickness. Relationships
to continental rifting, and with melt transport and style of
eruption have been examined elsewhere (Bailey 1986).
Mantle metasomatism is an integral part of the scheme,
offering the means by which incompatible elements can
build up in previously depleted mantle. Carbonatephlogopite peridotite has enjoyed considerable favour as a
model mantle source for carbonatite magmatism, but it
should be recognized that unless this source were primordial
(which is not usually proposed) the carbonate-phlogopite
components must have been added, at or below the solidus,
subsequent to any previous melting event (Bailey 1986, p.
450). Within the magma genesis regime, carbonate magmas
are of multiple origins; some may separate from kimberlite,
some may differentiate from melilitite/nephelinite, some are
certainly primary, some from mantle characterized by
phlogopite, some from amphibole-bearing mantle. Carbonatites associated with syenites may be sourced in shallow
upper mantle, within the felsic mineral stability ranges (Fig.
CARBONATE MAGMAS
800
I000
1200
T C
~ 1
Depth
km
P
kb
I0
50
~ . ~ i ! )
"" ~ ~ ; : ! ; . : . . "
I00
~
I
"
ACCUMULATION
~'
AND
?ENRICHMEN
..... ~
I
~~-~J~.
" ....
- 20
I,,--
30
Fig. 4. Effects of melt/fluid percolation through the mantle to the

solidus, along an initial geothermal gradient G, appropriate to
off-craton regions (taken from Bailey, 1987). G1 is the initial
geotherm, G2 is the perturbation from crystallization as percolating
melt/fluid approaches the solidus. Crystallizing phases may include
amphibole, mica, felsic minerals and carbonates, enriching the
mantle in incompatible elements (fine stipple). Carbonatite melts"
could accumulate near the solidus (over the depth range indicated),
their low viscosity and low density would facilitate separation with
the possibility of carrying mantle debris (olivine, diopside,
phlogopite) if erupted directly to the surface. Melt accumulation is
possible until the geotherm is steepened to N. Melts would be
calcitic in this P T range (Dalton & Wood 1992), and dolomitic at
higher pressures (along less steep geothermal gradients in cooler
lithosphere). Potentially syenitic protoliths (and magmas) could
develop below the peridotite solidus(coarse stipple):
nephelinite/melilititemagmas represent melts that segregate and
ascend from points on the geothermal gradient above the solidus.
Solidus OE, in the presence of H20 and CO 2 (limited) (Olafssen &
Eggler 1983).
4). Formation of primary carbonatite, as in Table 2, is
shown schematically in Fig. 4, which also indicates possible
links with nephelinite and with phonolite magmatism.
Campbell Smith (1956) brought into a wider geological
perspective what had hitherto been a petrological curiosity,
thus helping to stimulate interest in what may now be
perceived as a key rock type in understanding deep Earth
processes. Important new information has come, and will
continue to come, from areas such as experimental
petrology and isotope geochemistry, but it is worth recalling
that Campbell Smith's insight was informed by petrographic
experience, harnessed to the field studies of his collaborators. Future advances can also be expected through
modern techniques in microanalysis, and in volcanological
research, thence adding an appropriate tribute to all the
early pioneers in the field of carbonate magmas.
Conclusions
(1) Most carbonatites are intrusions (mainly calcic) and the

controversy aroused by Brrgger's (1921) original proposal of
carbonate magma persisted for 40 years. Evidence from
effusive carbonatite is essential for understanding the wider
aspects of carbonatite magmatism, and for identifying the
most relevant applications of the results from experimental
petrology. Three types of effusive carbonatite are available
for this purpose: natro-, calcio- and magnesio-carbonatite.
(2) Natrocarbonatite is the only present-day example of
flowing magma, but this composition is still unique. The
261
melt corresponds to a low pressure cotectic composition,

presenting difficulties in relating it to other carbonatites, and
to explanations requiring that it is comagmatic with its
associated nephelinite/phonolite. Geochemistry also distinguishes this type from others. Its status as a composition
from which other carbonatites may be derived is therefore
questionable.
(3) Of seven examples of effusive calcio-carbonatite, at
least four carry evidence of direct eruption from the upper
mantle. These may be primary. Present compositions show
low, or negligible, contents of fluxing components, and the
mineralogy is consistent with high T eruption. In four cases,
links with leucite and melilite-bearing silicate magmas are
indicated.
(4) In the only known example of effusive magnesiocarbonatite, there is a similar lack of evidence of fluxing
components, which would indicate quenching in the deep
parts of a tuflisite system extending into the mantle. Other
possible links with kimberlite activity, are seen in Cr
minerals, high activity of K, and in the Sr/Nd isotope
chemistry. There are no silicate magmas, and all the
characteristics are consistent with a primary origin. Smaller
amounts of effusive calcio-carbonatite in this association add
weight to the possibility that some calcio-carbonatites may
be primary.
(5) While many small carbonatite intrusions, e.g. cone
sheets, may have been emplaced at high temperatures, large
intrusions, especially large plugs, indicate emplacement at
temperatures below those inferred for surface eruptions. In
the absence of flux components in the sampled compositions, the long-standing question of mode of emplacement
remains. Final emplacement as a mush still seems the most
reasonable answer.
(6) A compositional gap exists between calcio- and
magnesio-carbonatites, which is not explicable in terms of
fractionation (based on present experimental data). The
compositional gap may reflect primary differences in
sources, or in melt generation mechanisms. This remains a
crucial area for further research.
(7) An important magmatic association is that between
carbonatites and nephelinite/melilitite, but this is not
universal. Associations with syenites, or with ultramafic
rocks may be equally important (and overlapping), and
some carbonatites are erupted in isolation. Final eruption
of carbonatite through alkaline complexes may represent the
expulsion of residua from the source region.
(8) Hypotheses of origirr strongly favour a relationship
between nephelinite (s.l.) and carbonatite, stemming from a
prevailing perception of the ubiquity of the association.
Similar reasoning leads to the separation of kimberlite and
carbonatite genesis. Many carbonatites are not minor parts
of alkaline complexes, and to overlook this fact may create
an unnecessary stumbling block to progress. More research
on the ultramafic connections is vital.
(9) Analogies between carbonatite magmatism and
oceanic island volcanism (and thereby sub-lithosphere
plumes) is put in question by the observation of plate-wide
activity triggered by external events. This implies an origin
linked to permissive release of an energy and materials flux
from the deep mantle into the lithosphere.
(10) Carbonatites are of multiple origins, reflecting
different aspects of carbon activity in the mantle, and any
attempt to explain all the phenomena in a single hypothesis
may prove futile.
262
D.K.
One obvious prognostication, from looking at the

aftermath of Campbell Smith's (1956) review, is that now, as
then, new and unexpected data are still to come, to add to
the questions that still remain. Meeting these challenges
promises to unlock further secrets about the deep Earth.
M y o w n e n j o y m e n t o f the c a r b o n a t i t e challenge is c o n t i n u a l l y
q u i c k e n e d by the s h a r e d k n o w l e d g e o f friends a n d colleagues,
w h o s e continuing c a m a r a d e r i e I h e r e salute. E a r l y e n c o u r a g e m e n t
c a m e f r o m no less t h a n W. C a m p b e l l Smith, a n d it was a f u r t h e r
pleasure that the invitation to c o n t r i b u t e o n ' C a r b o n a t e m a g m a s '
should c o m e t h r o u g h M. J. L e Bas. M y t h a n k s also to A . R.
W o o l l e y , for calling m y a t t e n t i o n to the r e f e r e n c e s on the C a t a n d a
volcanoes, in A n g o l a . Final text revisions b e n e f i t t e d f r o m the
constructive c o m m e n t s o f D. S. S u t h e r l a n d a n d M. J. L e Bas.
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Received 22 December 1992; revised typescript accepted 15 February 1993
Addendum
Since this contribution was in press, other papers have appeared
relating to carbonate (and carbonate fluid activity) in the mantle,
which bear directly on some of the central issues (see especially,
Ionov et al. 1993, and references therein). Mantle carbonates must
obviously be seen in the context of effusive carbonatites erupted
directly from the mantle, and in the carbonatite ultramafic
connections (Conclusions 3, 4 and 7 above). Mantle carbonate trace
element signatures are reported as akin to those in crustal
carbonatites, which is welcome news but must be greeted with some
reservations. No fresh effusive carbonatites are used in the
comparisons, nearly all the examples being carbonatite intrusives
from a wide range of geological environments (with very
wide-ranging trace element levels). Most authors accept the
prevailing consensus (as in Bell 1989) that primary carbonatites are
unlikely, so discrepancies in trace element patterns are attributed to

low P differentiation and contamination in carbonatites. Such
processes undoubtedly contribute to carbonatite chemical variations, but there is the additional (and widely disregarded) factor
that some variations may relate more directly to differences in
carbonatite genesis (Conclusion 10). Relating the direct evidence of
carbonate activity in mantle rocks to erupted carbonatites is clearly
an imperative, and should provide a catalyst for more rigorous
re-appraisal of the whole spectrum of erupted carbonate magmas.
Additional reference
IONOV, D.A., DueuY, C., O'REILLY, S.Y., MAYA, G., KOPYLOVA,M.G., &
GENSHA~, Y.S. 1993. Carbonated peridotite xenoliths from Spitsbergen:
implications for trace element signature of mantle carbonate
metasomatism. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 119, 283-297.
From QJGS, 1 12, 189.

A REVIEW
OF SOME
PROBLEMS
OF AFRICAN
BY WALTER CAMPBELL SMITH, C . B . E . M . C . T . D .
CARBONATITES
S C . D . M . A . , PRESIDENT
ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE ANNUAL GENERAL

MEETING OF THE SOCIETY ON 25 APRIL, 1956
CONTENTS
Page
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
Introduction ..................................................................
Mineral composition of carbonatites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Carbonatites in eastern and central Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Structure of the complexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The problem of the m o d e of e m p l a c e m e n t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Associated igneous rocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The fenitized rocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Theories of the origin of carbonatites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
List of references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
ls9
191
194
198
202
205
208
212
216
217
SUMMARY
Carbonatites are known at m a n y places in eastern and central Africa, from near
Mount Elgon in U g a n d a to Spitzkop and Palabora in north-eastern Transvaal. T h e y
range in age from pre-Karroo, post-Waterberg in the south to Miocene-Pliocene
in the north. Owing to this great age difference d e n u d a t i o n has revealed carbon.
atites at various levels of erosion, the deepest corresponding perhaps with the carbonatites exposed at Aln6 in Sweden and Fen in Norway.
The composition and structure of the carbonatites, the associated alkaline igneous
rocks, and the altered country rocks known as fenites are all described. The carbon.
aces are mainly pure calcite but some are ankeritic and dolomitic and, locally, sideritic and manganiferous. T h e y carry characterisbic accessory minerals, particularly
pyrochlore. The associated igneous rocks are ijolites with, less frequently, nephelinesyenite and at some centres pyroxenite. Fenitization results in t h e formation of
aegirine-felspar rocks, nearly pure felspar rocks and felspathic breccia. Evidence as
to chemical changes involved in fenitization is n o t always consistent, b u t addition
of K or Na, or both, and loss of SiO s are satisfactorily d e m o n s t r a t e d . Current
theories are reviewed. The carbonatites are believed to owe their origin to concentration of carbon dioxide or of carbonatitic fluid of m a g m a t i c origin, derived
perhaps from pyroxenite highly charged with volatiles, a m o n g which carbon dioxide
played the most i m p o r t a n t part, associated with phosphoric acid, fluorine, water
etc., a n d in which the elements niobium a n d cerium, a m o n g others, were also
concentrated.
I. INTRODUCTION
T ~ E r o c k s n o w g e n e r a l l y s p o k e n o f a s c a r b o n a t i t e s m a y be b r i e f l y
d e s c r i b e d as r o c k s w h i c h , t h o u g h in g e n e r a l m i n e r a l c o m p o s i t i o n s i m i l a r
to limestones and marbles of known sedimentary origin, yet appear to
b e h a v e as i n t r u s i v e r o c k s a n d a r e c l o s e l y a s s o c i a t e d w i t h a l k a l i n e i g n e o u s
rocks. In composition they consist mainly of calcium carbonate with
subordinate amounts of carbonates of magnesium and iron. They occur
within complexes of alkaline rocks believed to be igneous and occasionally
at volcanic centres.
Their situation, habit and structures and their
r e l a t i o n t o t h e i g n e o u s r o c k s a r e all s u c h as t o s u g g e s t t h a t t h e y h a v e
b e e n b r o u g h t i n t o t h e i r p r e s e n t p o s i t i o n in a t l e a s t a " p l a s t i c " c o n d i t i o n
a n d a r e in f a c t i n t r u s i v e .
Index
Badcallian metamorphism, 26, 38-41, 42, 54
Badnaban dyke, 42
Bahama Banks, fissure fauna, 160
Bailey, E. B., 196
Ballantrae Ophiolite, 59
Baltica, 166, 167, 170
Banks, J., 5
Barberton greenstone belt, 18
barkhan dunes, 175-6
Barrande, J., 86
'barren beds', 101
barren intervals, 94
'Barren Mudstones', 99
Barrovian metamoprhism, 68, 78
Barrow, G., 74, 78, 223
'Barrow's zones of progressive regional metamorphism', 68
base metal production, 237, 238, 239
basinal brine theory, 243
Bather, F. A., 135
batholiths, 221,228, 230, 232, 233
Bauer, G. (Agricola, G.), 238-9
Beannach dyke, 42
Beartooth mountains, 32
Beaumont, E. de, 239, 240
Becker, G. F., 206, 211
bedforms and bedding
aeolian, 175-6, 178
aqueous and subaqueous, 176-7, 178-80
related to wind waves, 178-9
'Belcraig Shale', 108
Belgian Stage, 108
Belingwe region, Zimbabwe, 17, 28
Bellispores nitidus-Reticulatisporites carnosus Zone, 118
Ben Nevis volcano, 196
Ben Vuirich, 58
granite, 47, 48, 49, 50, 63
Betrand, M., 58
Beyrichoceras Ammonoid ZOne, 110-11
Bighorn mountains, 31, 32
bimodal mafic magmatism, 29
Binneringie intrusions, 29
'biochron', 137
biostratigraphy
Dinantian, 105-7, 110-21
Early Palaeozoic, 83-9
Moffat series, 93-101
time-resolution, Jurassic, see under Jurassic geochronology
biozones, 136
Birimian orogen, 13, 14
Bisat, W. S., 107
bivalves, British Dinantian, 111
blind ore bodies, 244
'blocking temperatures', 46
Blue Holes caves, fissure fauna, 160
Bohemain Massif, 168
'boils' on river surface, 176
Bollandites-Bollandoceras Ammonoid Zone, 110
boninitic magmatism, Precambrian, 32, 33
Bonney, T. G., 189
Borrowdale arc, 60
Bosost massif, 76
Bou Azzer ophiolite, 12-13
Bowen, N. L., 205, 206, 207, 213, 214, 216, 221,222, 227, 228
Bowen trend of silica enrichment, 209, 210
Bowen's reaction series, 228
Brabant Massif, 168, 170
brachiopod faunas, Budleigh Salterton, 165-9, 171
Abitibi Belt, 17
Abukuma Plateau, 69
Acadian orogenic events, 70
accretionary orogens, origin, 11, 12, 13-14, 19
Achiltibuie ultramafic bodies, 40
ACID processes, 226
'acme' of an evolving species, 133, 135
acritarchs in biostratigraphic calibration, 87, 88
acuity, 145, 146
adhesion structures, 176
Adirondack Mountains, 74
aeolian bedforms and bedding, 175-6, 178
Africa
carbonatites, 249-62
greenstone belts, 17
alkali metasomatism (fenitization), 249-50, 253, 256
alkaline magmatism, 251-3, 255, 256, 259, 260
Alpine Fault, New Zealand, 57
Alps, collision zones, 76, 77
Alston Block, 241-3, 244
Amassalik mobile belt, 30-1
Ameralik dykes, 26, 27, 28
Amitsoq gneisses, 26, 27, 28
ammonites
in biostratigraphic calibration, 130, 131, 132-5, 137-43, 146, 147
ecosomatic modification, 138
ammonoids, British Dinantian, 110-11
analytical top-down subdivision, 131
Andr6e, K., 189
anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility, 200
anorogenic magmatism, Proterozoic, 15
Antarctica, 31, 32, 73
Antrim flood basalts, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200-1
Appalachian orogenic belts, 70, 74, 75
Applecross Formation, 45
aqueous bedforms and bedding, 176-7, 178-80
Arabian-Nubian Shield, 12, 16, 18
aragonite, solution and precipitation, 186-7
Archaean
plate tectonics, 18-19
terranes, 16-18, 25-33, 246
Archaean-Proterozoic boundary, 29
Archaean-Proterozoic mafic suites, 27, 32
Archerbeck Borehole, 118
Ardgour gneiss, 44
Ardnamurchan intrusive centre, 196, 197
Ardnish pegmatites, 43
Arenig fauna, 166
Arenig Series, 86, 95
Arkell, W. J., 129, 133, 134
Armorica, 166, 167, 168
Armorican Massif, 224, 226
Arnsbergian Stage, 111
Arnsbergites falcatus Ammonoid Zone, 121
Arran Goatfell Granite, 196
Arundian Stage, British Isles, 108, 109, 110, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117,
119, 120, 121
Arunta Complex, 73, 74
Asbian Stage, British Isles, 108. 109, 114, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121
Asbian-Brigantian boundary, 109
Askrigg Block, 242, 244
assimilation of crustal rocks, 207, 210, 212
Australia, 17, 19, 20, 31, 32
Australian Platform cratons, 87
avalanching (grain flow), 177-8
Avalonia, 12, 167, 168, 170
Avon Gorge stratigraphy, 105, 107, 108
265
266
INDEX
brachiopod/coral zonation, 113-14, 121

Brady, H. B., 118
Brewster, D., 239
brick-pattern ripples, 178
Bridgend quarries, fissure fauna, 158
Bridport-Yeovil-Midford Sands, 146
Brigantian Stage, British Isles, 108, 109, 111,112, 114, 116, 117, 119,
120
Brinkmann, R., 142
Bristol Channel, Mesozoic fauna, 153, 156, 158
Bristow, W. H., 155
Britain, attachment to Gondwana, 166, 167, 170
British Isles, Dinantian stratigraphy, see Dinantian stratigraphy in
the British Isles
British Tertiary Province, 195, 196, 199, 230
see also North Atlantic Province
Brittany, 69
Br6gger, W. C., 249, 258, 261
Brongniart, A., 84
Buch, L. yon, 128-9
Buckman, S. S., 131-4, 138, 142, 146
Budleigh Salterton Pebble Bed, fauna from, 165-71
Bulman, O. M. B., 95
Bushveld complex, 29, 31,208
Bute, Island of, 61
Cadomian Belt, France, 226, 227
Cadomian-Avalonian belt, 19
caicio-carbonatite, 253-5,256, 257,261
calcitization, 186, 187
Caledonides, 59, 60-2, 98, 167, 230
metamorphism, 43, 47, 49, 68, 75, 77, 229
Norway, 68, 77
Cambrian System, 86, 87, 144, 145
Cambrian-Ordovician boundary, 95-6, 100
Cambrian-Silurian boundary, 85
Cambridge Time-Scale, 143
Campbell Smith, W. C., 249-51,255, 256, 257, 258, 261
Canadian shield, 17, 29, 73, 74
gravity anomalies, 15-16
Canigou massif, 76
Caradoc beds, 86
carbonate magmas, 249-62
carbonatites, 249-50, 263
alkaline, 256, 259
effusive, 250-1, 253-5, 256, 257-8, 261,263
intrusive, 250-1, 256, 257-8
link with kimberlites, 258, 260, 261
mantle source and primary flux, 258-9, 261
Carboniferous Limestone
fissure fauna, 153, 154, 155-60
stratigraphy, see Dinantian stratigraphy in the British Isles
Carboniferous System, 85, 86, 110, 113, 144
Carn Chuinneag, 39, 43, 58
Carn Gorm pegmatites, 43
Carrock Fell intrusion, 205,212
Cashel-Lough Wheelaun intrusion, 48, 50
Catanda carbonatites, 254, 258
cave pearls (pisolites), 187, 188
cementation of carbonates, 187
'Cenozoic', 85
Cenozoic-style plate tectonic processes, 19
Centenary History o f the Society, H. B. Woodward, 8
Central Highland Division, 63
Central Metasedimentary Belt, Ontario, 13
central volcanoes, 197, 199, 200, 201
Chadian Stage, British Isles, 108-9, 110, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118,
119, 120, 121
chalk, pelagic nature, 189
Challenger expedition, 185, 186, 189
Changbaishan volcano, 197
characteristic faunal horizons, 136
Charterhouse Carboniferous Limestone, 155
chemical modelling, 232
chemostratigraphy, 146
Chilas complex, 13, 17
Chile, 230
china clay deposits, 238, 245
chronostratigraphy, British Isles, 105, 108-9
Chugach Metamorphic Complex, 81
Churchill Province, 31
Circular, the, 8
Cleveland dyke, 200
climbing ripple cross-lamination structures, 176
clingani 'bands', 101
closed-system fractionation, 208-10, 222
Coastal Batholith, Peru, 226, 227, 228-9, 230-1
Coastal Range, British Columbia, 76
Code of Rules of Stratigraphical Nomenclature, 129, 130
collisional metamorphism, 75, 76
collisional orogens, origin, 11, 12-13, 14-15, 19
colonnade lava tiers, 199
Colonsay rocks, 63
columnar structures, formation, 180
complanatus 'bands', 101
'completeness of the geological record', 146
concurrent-range biozones, 136
Connemara schists, 46
conodonts, in biostratigraphic calibration, 87, 95-6, 97, 111-13
contact metamorphism, 68, 69, 222, 223, 233
continents, dispersal and growth, 59-60
convection in magma chambers, 209, 211-12, 231,232
convective fractionation, 206, 211,212
Conybeare, W. D., 85
cooling histories and mineral ages, 46-7, 48
Cooma Complex, 224, 225
Coral Brachiopod Zone, 118
coral]brachiopod zonation, British Isles, 113-14, 118, 119, 121
corals, composition changes with time, 186
Cordilleran granite magmatism, 222, 226, 228-30, 231
Cordilleran orogens, 11
Cornubian Batholith, 224
Cornubian orefields and orefluids, 237-8, 239, 243-5, 246
Coronation Supergroup, 14
Coronatum Zone, 147
Cotteswold Sands, 132-3
Courceyan Stage, British Isles, 108, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 118,
119, 120, 121
Craven Basin, 107, 109, 110, 111, 119
Cretaceous System, 144, 145, 146
fauna, 161
critical melt fraction, 224
Cromhall Limestone Quarry, fissure fauna, 158
crustal accretion, Precambrian, 25-6, 32
'crustal accretion-differentiation superevent', 26, 38
crustal anatexis, 70
crustal assimilation, 207, 213, 216
crustal extension and metamorphism, 75-6
crustal fracturing, 230
crustal melting, 20, 69-70, 231
crustal temperature changes, causes, 73
crustal thickening and magmatism, 32, 69-70, 73
crystal fractionation, 206-7, 208-12, 214-16, 228, 229
crystal settling, 206, 207,208-11,213, 215-16, 228
crystallization ages, in dating, 47-51
crystallization in fluid inclusions, 239-40
Cuillin Hills, intrusions, 195, 196, 197, 200, 201
Cullis, C. G., 186
current ripples, 176
Cuvier, G., 84
Dabje Mountains, 77
Dalradian block, 60-1, 63
Dalradian Supergroup, geochronology, 46-51
Dana, J. D., 58
Darwin, C. R., 86, 189, 205,206
Davey, H., 239
Davidson, T., 165
INDEX
Davies, A. M., 135
De La Beche, H. T., 84, 154
Dead Sea Rift Fault, 57
Deccan traps, fissure fauna, 161
'deep biotite granite', 224, 225
Degerloch Rhaetic bone bed, 155
Dehm, R., 156, 160
dehydration melting, 19, 70
Delhi orogen, 16
Derbyshire Dome, 242, 243
desiccation fractures, 179
destructive plate margins, movements caused by, 59-60
Devonian palaeogeography from pebble fauna, 169, 171
Devonian System, 85, 86, 144
dewatering structures, 179-80
Dewey, J. F., 59
Diabaig Formation, 45
diamond-bearing rocks, 77
diamonds, melt inclusions in, 258, 259
differentiation indices, 214-15
diffusion
intercrystalline, 77
in magmas, 206
Dinant basin, 118
Dinantian stratigraphy in the British Isles, 105-6
biostratigraphy, 105-7, 110-21
chronostratigraphy, 108-9, 121
eustasy, 107-8, 121
seismic sequence stratigraphy, 109-10, 121
dinosaur bones, discovery, 156
'dirty window', 28-9
'disequilibrium', 72-3
dish structures, 180
diurnal inequality of tides, and bedding patterns, 177
Dixon, E. E. L., 189
Dob's Linn, 93, 97, 98, 99, 100
dolomitic carbonatite, 257, 258
Donegal, 232
Donegal Main Granite, 221
Dorset Inferior Oolite, 138, 141,142, 147
double (multiple)-diffusive convection, 212
Drumbeg ultramafic bodies, 40
Dundry Hill, 134, 153-4
dunes, 175-7, 178
Dunham, K. C., 237, 241,243
Dunham's limestone classification scheme, 189
Durdham Downs, Bristol, fissure fauna, 156
Early Palaeozoic stratigraphy, 83-9

East African Rift, 214
East Cornwall, biostratigraphy, 110
East Greenland lava flows, 196, 197, 208
Eastern Layered Series, Rhum, 207
ecosomatic modification of Jurassic ammonites, 138
Elles, G., 94-5
Elsevirian orogeny, 13
'emanative centres', 244
Emborough Quarry, fissure fauna, 157
Embry & Klovan's limestone classification scheme, 189
emplacement mechanism for carbonatites, 256
Enderby Land granulite terrane, 76
entablature lava tiers, 199
Eoparastaffella Zone, 118
'epeiric seas', 190
equilibrium, mineralogical, 72
Eras, statigraphical, 85
Eskola, P., 72, 221,222, 223
Etheridge, R., 156
Europe, Northwest, palaeogeography, 166-71
European Variscides granulite terrane, 76
event stratigraphy, 87
extraordinarius Zone, 99
267
Faeringhavn terrane, 28
Falkland Island fossils, 86
Fascipericyclus-Ammonellipsites Ammonoid Zone, 110
'fast exposure paths', 76
fault controlled sequences, 57-64
fauna, from fissures, 153-61
faunal horizons, 133, 135-43, 145, 146, 147
Feltar mass, ophiolitic assemblage, 63
Fen carbonatites, 249, 258
fenitization (metasomatism), 249-50, 253, 256
Fenner trend of iron enrichment, 109, 210
ferro-carbonatite, 256
filtration differentiation, 228
Finland, granulites, 76
Fiskenaesset-type layered complexes, 27, 28
fissure faunas, Southern England, 153-61
flood basalts (plateau basalts), North Atlantic Province, 195, 196,
197-9, 200-1
floral biostratigraphy, British Dinantian, 114-18
fluid inclusions, 185, 190, 239-40, 246
techniques and methodology, 241-5
fluid-absent melting, 231
fluorite, inclusions in, 242, 244
Folk's limestone classification scheme, 189
foraminiferal biostratigraphy, British Dinantian, 118, 121
Forfarshire, Northeast, map of, 67
Fort Portal carbonatites, 254-6, 258
forward modelling approach, 215, 216
fossil extraction techniques, 157-8, 160
fossils, importance in stratigraphy, 83-4, 85
fractional crystallization, 206-7, 208-12, 214-16, 228, 229
fracture patterns in bedforms, 179
Franciscan Complex, Calfornia, 77
Ftichsel, G. C., 83
fundamental fractures, 57, 58-9, 62
Gabilly, J., 138
Gahard Formation, 166, 169
Gaima Plateau, 197
Galapagos, volcanoes, 197
Galway granite, 47
Garabal Hill Complex, 227-9, 230
Gargano fissure fauna, 160
garnet, petrological studies, 77
Garwood, E. J., 107, 113
Geikie, A., 185, 195, 199, 201
geochronology of Scottish metamorphic complexes, 37-51
'Geological Inquiries', booklet of, 6
Geological Society, the, 5, 6
origins of the Journal, 5-8
Geoscientist, the, 8
Geraldton-Beardmore terrane, 29
'ghost stratigraphy', 221
Giant's Causeway lavas, 199
Giletti, B. J., 37, 38, 43, 46, 47
Gilluly, J., 58
Girvan, fault controlled sequence, 60
Girvan district, palaeogeography, 97, 98, 99
Glen Dessarry syenite, 43, 47, 48, 50
Glen Kyllachy granite, 48, 50, 51
Glencoe volcanoes, 196, 201
Glenelg inlier, 44
Glenfinnan area pegmatites, 43
gneiss terrane accretion models, Precambrian, 26-7
Goatfell granite, Arran, 196
gold-quartz veins, 246
'Golden Spikes', 130
Goldschmidt, V. M., 72, 223
Gondwana, 166, 167, 170
Gorgona Island komatiites, 18, 31
Gorran Haven, Cornwall, 168
Gower Peninsula Carboniferous Succession, 189
'gradational differentiation', 228
268
grain settling, 177-8
Grampian Group, 63
Grampian Highlands, 46, 50, 51
granite
classification systems, 232
layering in, 228
magmatism, 70, 221-33
'Granite Series', the, 223-6, 227
granite-greenstone terranes, 17-18, 25, 26
granite rocks, composition change over Earth history, 19
granitization (partial melting), 223, 224, 225
granule ripples, 176
granulite metamorphism, 76, 77-8
granulite-gneiss terranes, Archaean, 18
graptolites, in biostratigraphic calibration, 86-7, 93-5, 96-7, 99
gravel dunes, 176, 177
gravel-bed rivers, 177
Graveyard dyke, 41, 42
gravitational crystal settling, 206, 207, 208-11,213, 215-16, 228
gravity anomalies, 15-16
Great Bear batholith, 15
Great Dyke, Zimbabwe, 29
Great Glen, 51
Great Glen Fault, 57, 58, 59, 62-4
Greenland, 28, 29, 31, 45, 196, 197, 208
Greenough, G. B., 6
'greenstone' belts, ancient, 27
greenstone terranes, 28-9, 246
greenstone-granite terranes, Precambrian, 17-18, 25, 26
Grenville orogen, 13
Grenville Province, 76
Grenvillian Belt, Labrador, 45
Grenvillian metamorphism, 44
Grenvillian Ocean, 13, 15
Grbs Armoricain, 165, 166
Gr~s de Goasquellou sandstone beds, 169, 171
Gr~s de petit May, 165-6
Gressly, A., 84
Grout, F. F., 212
Gruinard Bay, 40
Guettard, J. E., 83
guide-fossils, 128-9, 130, 131,132, 134, 136-8
Hall, J., 93
Harker, A., 69, 195-6, 205, 206, 207, 208, 212, 213, 215
Harker diagrams (variation diagrams), 208, 214
Harker index, 214
Hartville uplift, 31
Hastarian Stage, 108
Hawaii, volcanoes and lava flows, 197
heat production in the earth, 19, 20, 27
Hebridean basaltic plateaus, 195, 196, 201
Hebridean Province, 197
'hemarae', 133, 134
Hercynian Belt, Western Europe, 224
Hercynian orogeny, 85
Hibbard, C. W., 160
high-magnesium calcite, 187, 188
high-pressure metamorphic rocks, 77
high-temperature metamorphism, 69, 70
high-temperature-low-pressure metamorphism, 75-6, 77, 233
Highland Boundary Fault, 46, 49, 57-8, 60-2, 67
Highland granites, 228
Hill, A. J., 189
Himalayas, 11, 73, 75, 86
Hind, W., 107
Holkerian Stage, British Isles, 108, 109, 115, 117, 119, 120, 121
Holm, G., 95
Holwell quarry, fissure fauna, 153, 154-5, 156, 157, 161
homogenization temperature, 240
Hooke, R., 83
Horner, L., 240
Hottah island arc, 14, 15
hummocky cross-stratification, 178, 179, 180
INDEX
Hutton, J., 11
hydraulics of bedforms, 176-80
hydrocarbon inclusions, 242
hydrocarbon maturity, 114
hydrocarbon reservoirs, 189
hydrothermal oilfields and ore fluids, 237-8, 245'6
ore-genetic theory, 238-45
Iapetus Ocean, 46, 98, 99, 166, 167, 170
Iceland, lava flows, 196, 197, 199, 200, 201
Imitoceras prorsum Ammoioid Zone, 110
immiscibility of liquids, 213-14, 215, 255-6
Inchbae facies, 43
index-fossils, 130
Inferior Oolite, Southern England, 132, 133, 134, 138-42, 146, 147
intercrystalline diffusion, 77
interface method of fossil extraction, 160
intrusions
categories, 29
as cause of regional metamorphism, 69
Inverian metamorphism, 38, 40, 41
'inverted metamorphism', 75
ion-microprobe analysis, 50
Irish Caledonides, 230
Irish Dinantian stratigraphy, 110-21
Islay rocks, 63
isobaric cooling paths, 76
isoclinal folding, 99
isothermal decompression paths, 76
Ivorian Stage, British Isles, 108, 110
Jason Zones, 147
Jimberlana intrusions, 29
Johnny Hoe suture, 15
Jones, O. T., 58
Jormua ophiolite, 16
Journal, the, origins, 5-8
Journal des Mines, 6
Judd, J. W., 195, 201

Jukes-Brown, A. J., 189
Julianehaab batholith, 13
Jura, fissure fauna, 156
Jurassic geochronology, 129-31, 135, 147-8
biostratigraphic time-resolution, 127, 131-4, 135-7, 147
ammonites in, 130, 137-43, 146
estimates of, 143-6
polyhemeral chronology, 134-5
Jurassic Period, 86-7, 144
'juvenile' source theory, 243
K-Ar dating, 38, 40, 41, 43, 45, 47
Kaapvaal craton, 18, 19, 20
Kaapvaal shield, 18, 19
Kainozoic, 85
Kaiserstuhl lapilli, 254
Kangamiut dykes, 30
Kangmar dome, 75
kaolinization, 245
Kapuskasing terranes, 18
Karelian terrane, 14
Katwe-Kikorongo volcanic fields, 255
Kennedy, W. Q., 57, 58, 59
Kerimasi, Oldoinyo Lengai, carbonatites, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254,
255
Kermach, K., 157, 158
Ketilidian
belts, Greenland, 31, 45
crust, Scotland, 63
orogen, Greenland, 13-14, 15
Keuper]Lias boundary, 155
Keweenawan rift, 13
Khanneshin carbonatites, 255,258
Kilavea volcano, 208
kimberlites, link with carbonatites, 258, 260, 261
INDEX
Knoxisporites triradiatus-K, stephanephorus Zone, 115
Knoydart pegmatites, 43
'Knoydartian' metamorphism, 44
Kobberminebugt suture, 13
Kohistan arc, 13, 17
Kola suture zone, 14
Kola-Karelian orogen, 14
komatiitic magmatism, Precambrian, 28-9, 31, 32, 33
Koolau volcano, 200
Koslowski, R., 95
Kraeuselisporites hibernicus- Umbonatisporites distinctus Zone, 115
Krynine, P. D., 58
KUhne, W., 156, !60
Kun Lun orogen, 11
Kurunegala, granulite formation, 77
Kylesku gneisses, 38, 41
Lachlan Fold Belt, 224, 226

Lake District, 95, 97, 98-9, 107
Borrowdale arc, 60
Lambert, R. St. J., 37
lamination patterns in aqueous bedforms, 176, 177
Land6vennec Formations, 166, 169
Land's End mineral veins, 240
Lapworth, C., 86, 87, 93-4, 95, 96-7, 98, 99-100, 101,134
Laramie mountains, 31, 32
lateral displacement of faults, 57, 59
Laurentia, 12, 166
Laurentian platform limestones, 95
lava-flow structures, 199-200
Laxford Front zone, 54
Laxfordian metamorphic events, 27
radiometric dating, 38, 39, 40, 41, 54
layered mafic intrusions, 207, 208, 215,228
Lehmann, J. G., 83
Leny Limestone, 50
leucosome chemistry, 225
Lewisian Complex, 54
geochronology, 38-43
North West Scotland, 25, 26, 27, 29, 31, 32, 41, 45
Liassic fissure fauna, 155
lime-mud, origin, 187
limestones
classification, 189-90
structure and origin, 185-91
Limpopo belt, 18, 20, 76
Lindgren, W., 241
liquid immiscibility, 213-14, 215, 255-6
lithosphere structure and eruption ages, 259-60
lithospheric extension and regional metamorphism, 77, 78
iithostratigraphic time-resolution, 146
Llandeilo age of Scottish shales, 97
Llandovery Series, 86, 87, 88
local range biozones, 136
Loch Torr an Lochain dyke, 42
Lochan a' Chairn facies, 43
London-Brabant massif, 170, 171
longitudinal (seif) dunes, 176
Louis, J., Count de Bournon, 5
low magnesian calcite, 187, 188
low-pressure-high-temperature metamorphic belts, 69
Lulefi-Kuopio suture zone, 13
Lycospora pusilla Zone, 115
Lyell, C., 11, 84-5
Lys-Caillaouas massif, 76, 77
Mackenzie dyke swarms, 15, 200, 201
marie magmatism, Precambrian, 25-33
MAGIC processes, 226
magma mingling, 228
magma mixing, 206, 207-8, 212, 215
magma-flow directions, 200
magmas and magmatism, 19
alkaline, 251-3, 255, 256, 259, 260
269
anorogenic, 15
carbonate, 249-62
granite, 221-33
mafic, Precambrian, 25-33
plutonic, 69
tholeiitic, 208-10
see also magmatic differentiation
magmatic advection of heat, 70, 75, 78
magmatic differentiation, 205,208-11,212-16
early ideas, 205-7
mechanism, 207-12
modelling, 215
magnesio-carbonatite, 256, 257, 261
magnesium calcite, 187, 188
magnetostratigraphy, 88, 145, 146
Main Central Thrust System, 75
Malene metavolcanic rocks, 28
mammals, origin, 153
mantle metasomatism, 259, 260
mantle source and primary flux, 258-9, 261
mantle-plume-related magmatism, 27
Marathon dyke swarms, 15
marine bivalves in stratigraphy, 111
marine storm bedding, 178-9, 180
MASH processes, 226, 232
Massif Central, 224
Mberengwa aUochthon, 17
M'Coy, 86
medium-pressure regional metamorphism, 68, 69
melt fraction material, 224, 225
melt generation and tectonism, 260
Mendip Hills, fissure fauna, 155, 156
mesothemic boundary status, 107
'Mesozoic', 85
Mesozoic fissure fauna, Southern England, 153, 157
metal-bearing hydrothermal fluids, 245
metamorphism
'inverted', 75
related to extension, 75-6, 223
and tectonics, 71
see also geochronomogy of Scottish metamorphic complexes;
regional metamorphism
metasomatism
alkali (fenitization), 249-50, 253, 256
mantle, 259, 260, 261
micro-probe analysis, 232
microstructural studies, 71
Mid-Carboniferous boundary, 110
Midford Sands, 132-3, 146
Midland Valley, Scotland, 58, 60, 61,111
migma-magma, 223
migmatites, 224, 225
mineral ages and cooling histories, 46-7
mineral isochron ages, 77
mineralization of Cornubian and Pennine orefields, 237-46
Minnesota River Valley terrane, 18
miospore zonation, British Dinantian, 114-18, 121
Mississippi Valley Type mineral deposits, 238, 243,244, 246
Mistassini dyke swarms, 15
Miyashiro facies series, 72
'mobile belts', 26
Moffat area, palaeogeography, 93, 94, 97-9, 101
Moine thrust, 43, 46, 58, 63
Moinian Supergroup, geochronology, 43-4, 45-6, 47, 49
Molson dyke swarms, 15
monogenetic volcanoes, 197
Moorbath, S., 37, 38
Moore, C., 153-6, 160
Morar Group, 44
Moray Firth,Old Red Sandstone displacements, 62
Morecambe Bay carbonate platform, 107
Mourne Mountain granites, 196
Mozambique belt, 12, 19
Mull, Island Of, intrusive complexes, 195, 196, 197, 198, 201
270
multiple-diffusive convection, 212
Murchison, R. I., 83, 85, 86, 129
Murospora margodentata- Rotaspora ergonulii Subzone, 116
Nagssugtoquidian mobile belt, 30, 31
Nahanni terrane, 15
Nain Province, 31
Namur basin, 118
Namurian boundary, 110
natrocarbonatite, 251-3, 261
Neoarchaediscus Zone, 118
Neptunian dykes, 157, 158, 160
Neptunist theory, 83
New England, metamorphism, 71, 73
New England Appalchians, 69
Newer Granites, 46
Newsletter, 8
Nicol, H., 185
Nockolds, S. R., 221,222, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231
noritic magmatism, Precambrian, 29-31, 32, 33
Normandy-Wessex Basin, 146, 148
North America
cartons, 87
exotic terranes, 59
fissure fauna, 160
North Atlantic cratons, 26, 31
North Atlantic Province, 196, 197, 199
see also British Tertiary Province
North Sea Chalks, 189
North West Europe, palaeogeography, 166-71
North West Scotland
geochronology of Highlands, 37-51
Lewisian Complex, 25, 26, 27, 29, 31, 32, 41, 45
Scourie dyke swarm, 19, 27, 29, 31, 41-3
Northumberland Trough, 111, 113, 118
Norwegian Caledonides, 68, 77
Nfik gneisses, 26, 27
oceanic crust on the continent, 59
oceanic lithosphere, Archaean, 19
Oldoinyo Lengai volcano, Kerimasi, 250, 251,252, 253, 254-5
Onaman-Tashota terrane, 29
oolitic grain formation, 187-9
open-system magma chambers, 207-8
Oppel, A., 86, 94, 129-30, 133
Oppelian Zones, 129-30, 133, 134
Orbigny, A. d', 86, 129, 133
Ordovician series, North American, 86
Ordovician System, 86, 87, 145
Moffat Series, 93, 94, 95-6, 97, 98, 101
Ordovician to Devonain palaeogeography of Europe, 165-71
Ordovician-Silurian boundary, 100, 101
ore-genetic theory, 238-46
orogens, origin, 11-16, 19
orogeny and regional metamorphism, 68-9
P - T - t paths, 69-78
ostracodes, in biostratigraphic calibration, 87, 118, 167
Ottawan orogeny, 13
Outer Hebrides, 45
'outer limit' lines, 67
Oxford Clay, Peterborough, 131,138, 142-3, 147
oxide-oxide variation diagrams, 208, 209, 210, 214-15
oxygen fugacity, 209
oxygen isotope dating, 77
P - T - t paths, 69-78
'paired' metamorphic belts, 69, 81
palaeogeography of Northern Europe, 166-71
Palaeozoic, Early, stratigraphy, 83-9, 94, 95, 101
Pan-African belt, 12, 16, 19
partial melting (granitization), 223,224, 225
Payne River dyke swarms, 15
Payson ophiolite, 16
Pb-Pb dating, 38, 39, 40, 54
INDEX
Pearce element ratio diagrams, 214
Pechenga Series, 14
Pecora, W. T., 249, 250, 256
Pennine orefields and orefuids, 237-8, 239, 241-4, 245, 246
Penokean orogen, 13, 15
Periods, statigraphical, 85, 86
Permian Reef Complex, 189
Permian System, 85, 144
Perotriletes tessellatus-Schulzospora campyloptera Zone, 115
Peterborough Member, 142
Phanerozoic, 143
tectonism, 11, 19
Phillipines, tectonic activity, 59
Phillips, J. A., 84, 85, 241
Philosophical Transactions, 5, 6, 7, 8
Pikwitonei granulites, 18, 73, 74
Pilton Shale Formation, 110
plane beds, 176
plate tectonic uniformitarian model, 11-21
plateau basalts (floor basalts), North Atlantic Province, 195, 196,
197-9, 200-1
Pleistocene, time-resolution, 146
Plieninger, W. H. T. yon, 155
plumbing systems, 226, 232
plutonism, 69, 222-3, 232, 259, 260
'place' in, 222-3
'time' in, 223-4
plutons, shape of, 221
Polino carbonatites, 254, 255, 258
Poll Eorna dyke, 42
polygenetic volcanoes, 197, 199
Polygnathus communis carina Conodont Zone, 110
Polygnathus inornatus Conodont Zone, 115
Polygnathus mehli Conodont Zone, 115
polyhemeral chronology, 134-5
Pongola Supergroup, 18
Port aux Basques Complex, 71
Portsoy beds, 48, 50
Precambrian
crustal development, 25-37
plate tectonics, 19, 20
Preketilidian belts, Greenland, 45
Principle of Biostratigraphic Synchroneity, 128, 136, 137
Principles of Geology, 11
Proceedings, the, 7, 8
prograde metamorphism, 77
progressive regional metamorphism, 69
Proterozoic
crustal development, 25, 29-31
plate tectonics, 11-20
protolith formation and Badcallian metamorphism, 38-41
Pseudopolygnathus multistriatus Conodont Zone, 115
punctuated orogeny, 58
Purtuniq ophiolite, 16
Pyrenees, 76, 231
Quarterly Journal the, 7-8

quenched dykes, 30
Quercy phosphorites, 156
radiogenic isotope dating, development, 77
radiometric dating of Scottish metamorphic complexes, 37-51
Raistrickia nigra-Triquitrites marginatus Zone, 116
ramps, 190
Ramsbottom, W. H. C., 107, 108, 111
Rb-Sr dating, 37-8, 40, 41, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 77
Reaction Principle, 207
Read, H. H., 221,222, 227, 228, 230, 231,232, 233
regional metamorphism, 67, 68, 69, 78, 222, 223
orogeny and, 68-9
P - T - t paths, 69-74
recent advances, 74-7
retrograde metamorphism, 77
Rhaetic fissure fauna, 155, 156, 159
INDEX
Rhegreanoch dyke, 41, 42
Rheic Ocean, 167, 171
Rhum, Island of, igneous complex, 196, 197, 206-7
Riley, H., 111,156
rimmed shelves, 190
ripples, sedimentary, 176, 178
Robinson, P., 157-8
rock-time duality, 127-8, 135
role of fault, 62
'room (space) problem', the 221-2, 232
Rossendale Millstone Grit, 107
Royal Society, 5
Ruedemann, R., 94
Rufunso carbonatites, 254, 257, 258, 259
Rule of Priority, 129, 130
Russian Platform, 87, 98
Ryoke Metamorphic Belt, 81
Sahara, collisional orogen, 13
St Austell mineral veins, 238, 240
Saint Barth616my massif, 76
St Malo Migmatite Belt, 224, 226, 227
St Michael's Mount mineral veins, 240, 244
Salter, J. W., 96, 165
San Andreas Fault, 57, 59
San-yo granitoids, 81
Sanbagawa Metamorphic Belt, 81
sand ripples, 176
sand waves, 177, 180
Sandford Lane Fossil Bed, 134
Sawkins, F. J., 241-2, 243-4
Scaliognathus anchoralis Conodont Zone, 110
Scandinavian succession, 98
Schopfites claviger-Auroraspora macra Zone, 115
Scotland, 63
metamorphic complexes, geochronology, 37-51
Southeastern Highlands, regional metamorphism, 67, 68, 74, 78
Southern Uplands, 58-64, 93-4, 97, 98-9, 101
see also North West Scotland
Scourian (Badcallian) metamorphism, 27, 38-41
radiometric dating, 38-43, 54
Scourie dyke swarms, 27, 29, 31, 41-3
sea-level changes, stratigraphy related to, 87, 88-9
secular biochronological resolution, 137, 146
secular resolving power, 137, 145
Sedgwick, A., 83, 85, 86
sediment drifts, 176
sediment waves, 176
sedimentary structures, Sorby and the last decade, 175-80
sedimentation and faulting, 58
sequence stratigraphy, 101, 190
series, stratigraphical, 86, 87
Sgurr Breac pegmatites, 43
Sharyzhalgay complex, 72
sheet-like pillar structures, formation, 180
shells, in formation of limestone, 186-7
Shelveian event, 86
Sherborne Building Stone, 134
Sherborne Inferior Oolite, 133, 134
SHRIMP, 50, 51,232
Silesian Subsystem, 109
Silurian series, establishment of, 86, 87, 93
Silurian System, 85, 86, 87, 145
Moffat Series, 93, 94, 97, 98
Siphonodella crenulata Conodont Zone, 115
Siphonodella sandbergi Conodont Zone, 110
Skaergaard intrusion, 196, 207, 208, 209-11,214, 216
skeletal disintegration as source of carbonate, 187
Skye, Island of, lava flows, 195, 196, 197, 199, 200, 201
Slave Province, Canada, 14, 17, 18
Slickstones Quarry, 157
Sm-Nd dating, 39-40, 41, 42-3, 44, 47, 77
Smith, W., 83-4, 128-9, 153
soft sediment deformation, 179-80
solidification index, 214

Solomon, M., 242
Solway line, 58, 60
Sorby, H. C., 175, 178, 185-9, 191,237, 239-41,245
Soret coefficient, 212
Soret diffusion, 206, 212, 213
South America, dykes, 31, 32
South Australian noritic dyke swarms, 32
South East Greenland dyke swarms, 29, 30-1
South Harris complex, 39
South Kola belt, 14
South Tibetan detachment system, 75
South Wales Lower Limestone Shales, 110
South West Greenland, 26, 27-30, 31
Southern Brittany Migmatite Belt, 73, 74
Southern Uplands fault, Scotland, 58, 60
Sowerby, 85
Spelaeotriletes balteatus-Rugospora polyptycha Zone, 115
Spelaeotriletes pretiosus-Raistrickia clavata Zone, 115
Spitzkop carbonatites, 255,259
spring-neap cycle bedding patterns, 177
Spurr, J. E., 241
Staffa lavas, 199
Stages, stratigraphical, 86, 87, 130, 131
d'Orbigny, 130
Rule of Priority in Naming, 129
standard chronostratigraphic units, 129, 130-1,136, 145
'standard geological column', the, 128, 143
standard time-ordered succession, 127
star dunes, 176
Steno, M., 83
Steno's Principle of Superposition, 127
Stensio, E., 95
Stillwater intrusion, 29, 31,208
Stiperstones Quartzite, Shropshire, 166
Stoer Formation, 45
Stonesfield Slate, Oxfordshire, 153
storm bedding, 178-9, 180
Strathan dyke, 42
Strathmore syncline, 61
stratigraphical horizons, 136
Stratigraphical Nomenclature, Code of, 129, 130
stratigraphy, Early Palaeozoic, 83-9
Strichen granite, 48, 51
strike-slip faulting, 57, 59
Stutchbury, S., 156, 162
subaqueous dunes, 178
subduction geotherms, decrease in, 19, 21
subduction zone metamorphism, 76-7
Subzones, stratigraphical, 116, 130, 131, 145
Sudbury dyke swarms, 15
supercontinent, Proterozoic, 15
Superior Province, Canada, 17, 18, 29
suspect terranes, 59
Sutton, J., 25, 38
Svecofennian orogen, 13, 15, 16
swaley bedding, 179, 180
'syn-rift megasequence', 110
Synchroneity, Principle of, 136, 137
Systems, stratigraphical, 85-6, 100-1
Tarfside Culmination, 47
Tayvallich volcanic sequence, 50
Teall, 67
tectonic control on sedimentation, 58
tectonic processes
of magmatism, 230, 232
and metamorphism, 77-8
tectonic transfer of heat, 75
tectonism and melt generation, 260
temporal scope of an analysis, 145
Tertiary System, 85, 145
textural analysis, 71
textural modelling, 232
271
272
INDEX
Theory of Earth, 11
thermal modelling of orogenic belts, 73
thermobarometric measurements, 77
thermogravitational diffusion, 212-13, 215
thermometamorphism, 67, 68
tholeiitic magmas, differentiation in, 208-10
tholeiitic magmatism, Precambrian, 30
Thompson, A. B., 72
throw of a fault, 59, 60, 62-3
Tibetan sedimentary sequence, 75
tidal bedding, 180
Tien Shan orogen, 20
Tilley, C. E., 67-8
time-correlations, 127, 128-9, 147
time-duration, 137, 143, 144-5
time-interval, 137, 145
time-markers, 128
time-planes, 128
time-resolution, biostratigraphic, see under Jurassic geochronology
time-rock duality, 127-8, 135
time-scale of sedimentological events, 176-7
time-temperature trajectories, 47
Tornio-Koillismaa intrusions, 29
Tornquist Sea, 98, 166, 167
Torridonian sandstones, 43, 44-6
total range biozone-assemblage, 136
Tournaisian/Vis6an boundary, 113
Transactions, the, 6, 7
'transient', 135
transverse dunes, 175-6
Traonliors Formation, 169, 171
Tremadoc Series, 86
Triassic System, 85, 144
fissure fauna, 157, 158, 160
palaeogeography, 166-71
trilobites in biostratigraphic calibration, 118-19, 120, 121
Tripartites distinctus-Murospora parthenopia Subzone, 116
Tripartites vetustus-Rotaspora fracta Zone, 117-18
Trois Seigneurs massif, 76, 224, 225,227, 230, 231
Trueman, A. E., 135
Turner, F. J., 223
Twenhofel, W. H., 189
Tytherington Quarry fissure fauna, 158, 159
U-Pb dating, 37, 38-9, 40, 41, 42-3, 45, 48, 49-50, 51, 54, 77
Uchi-Sachigo terranes, 17
uniformitarianism, plate tectonic model, 11-21, 25
uhitary association biozone, 136
upper-stage plane beds, 176
Vallatisporites verrucosus-Retusotriletes incohatus Zone, 115

Vallis Vale, fissure fauna, 154, 156
vapour-liquid ratios, Sorby, 240
variation diagrams, 208, 209, 210, 214-5
Variscan belt, 74
Variscan massifs, 76
Vaughan, A., 105-7, 108, 113, 118

Ventersdorp rift system, 19
Verneuil, M. E., 85, 86
vertebrate fissure faunas, Southern England, 153-61
Vicary, V., 165
Vis6an Stage, 108, 113, 114, 115, 121
Vis6an/Namurian boundary, 118
volatile fluxing, 259
volcanic-hosted massive sulphide deposits, 246
volcanology, British, classic period of, 195-6
Waagen, W., 129-30
Wabigoon terrane, 17
Wales, 58, 143
wall rock assimilation models, 207
Walls Boundary Fault, 62
Ward, D. J., 160
Watson, J., 25, 38
wave-related bedforms, 178-9, 180
Wawa-Abitibi terrane, 17
Weardale granite, 243, 245
Welsh Basin, 87
Werner, A. G., 83
West African craton, 12-13
West Greenland
granulite-gneiss terranes, 18
lave flows, 196, 197
Westbury-sub-Mendip fissure fauna, 160
Western Alp blueschist belts, 77
whole-rock ages, 49, 77
determination of, 39-41
'Wilson cycle', 13, 29
Wilsonian cycle of megacontinent growth, 59
wind waves, bedforms related to, 178
Windsor Hill, Shepton Mallet, fissure fauna, 156, 157
Witham, H., 185
Witwatersrand Supergroup, 18-19
Woodward, H. B., 8, 134-5
Wopmay orogenic belt, 14-15, 73
Wyoming craton, 31, 32
Yangtze Platform cratons, 87
Yeovil Sands, 132-3, 146
Yorkshire Dales, 107
Zambian volcanic carbonatites, 253-4, 255
zibar ripples, 176
Zimbabwean craton, 17, 18, 20
zircon grain analysis, 45, 49, 50, 51,232
zonal mapping, 68
Zones, stratigraphicai, 86-7, 94, 130, 131,133, 145, 147
Opellian, 129-30
Zonules, 130
zoogeographical provincialism, British Isles, 107

1995 Milestones in Geology Geological Society Memoir No 16 PDF

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1995 Milestones in Geology Geological Society Memoir No 16 PDF

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Milestones in Geology

Reviews to celebrate 150 volumes of the

Journal of the Geological Society

Geological Society Memoirs

Series Editor A. J. FLEET

The meeting room after renovation.

Journal of the Geological Society

THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Published by the Geological Society from:

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Typeset and Printed by Universities Press (Belfast) Ltd, Northern

RUDWlCK, M. J. S. Historical origins of the Geological Society's Journal

WINDLEY, B. F. Uniformitarianism today: plate tectonics is the key to the past

Kennedy, the Great Glen Fault and strike-slip motion

BROWN, M. P - T - t evolution of orogenic belts and the causes of regional metamorphism

MCKERROW, W. S. The development of Early Palaeozoic global stratigraphy

FORTEY, R. A. Charles Lapworth and the biostratigraphic paradigm

CALLOMON,J. H. Time from fossils: S. S. Buckman and Jurassic high-resolution geochronology

ALLEN, J. R. L. Sedimentary structures: Sorby and the last decade

SELLWOOD,B. W. Structure and origin of limestone

WILSON, M. Magmatic differentiation

ATHERTON, M. P. Granite magmatism

RANKIN, A. H. Hydrothermal orefields and ore fluids

BAILEY, D. K. Carbonate magmas

RUDWlCK, M. J. S. Historical origins of the Geological Society's Journal

WINDLEY, B. F. Uniformitarianism today: plate tectonics is the key to the past

Kennedy, the Great Glen Fault and strike-slip motion

BROWN, M. P - T - t evolution of orogenic belts and the causes of regional metamorphism

MCKERROW, W. S. The development of Early Palaeozoic global stratigraphy

FORTEY, R. A. Charles Lapworth and the biostratigraphic paradigm

CALLOMON,J. H. Time from fossils: S. S. Buckman and Jurassic high-resolution geochronology

ALLEN, J. R. L. Sedimentary structures: Sorby and the last decade

SELLWOOD,B. W. Structure and origin of limestone

WILSON, M. Magmatic differentiation

ATHERTON, M. P. Granite magmatism

RANKIN, A. H. Hydrothermal orefields and ore fluids

BAILEY, D. K. Carbonate magmas

Department of Geology, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK

Science advances by taking new and unexpected turnings,

secular changes in heat production changed the course of

Dalradian schists. It marked the birth of meaningful

Ordovician and two Devonian, with tectonic reconstruction

discussions of petrogenesis begin with this assumption.

readers will find that the separate topics are not so

Historical origins of the Geological Society's Journal

The Geological Society was a publishing body even before it

The concern of the leaders of the Geological Society was

Magazine, which at this period carried many geological papers,

H I S T O R I C A L O R I G I N S OF THE G E O L O G I C A L SOCIETY'S JOURNAL

it finally made the financial burden of the periodical almost

membership; that ensured a steady and predictable level of

the Society's "prehistory' is by Weindling (1979). kaudan (1977)

Received 18 August 1992; accepted 21 August 1992.

GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON,

THE VICE-SECRETARY OF THE GEOLOGICALSOCIETY.

VOLUME THE FIRST.

Uniformitarianism today: plate tectonics is the key to the past

Department o f Geology, The University, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK

'The Present is the key to the Past' was the uniformitarian

constrained, modern analogues of pre-Mesozoic orogens. One

The Late Proterozoic (1.0-0.6 Ga)

The plate tectonic uniformitarian model

of the Phanerozoic. Most prominent are the many orogens