Another two new locations which we will be adding to the UKF site in the coming weeks. The first was to look at the Jurassic at Balintore. The Jurassic beds here are faulted against Devonian Old Red Sandstone and running parallel along the beach, limestone and shale are well exposed. This location is split into two areas, the first a mile south from south of Balintore Bay and the second is half a mile south from where the first Jurassic sequence ends. The first section known as ‘Port an Righ’ consists of upper Oxfordian and Corallian most of the siltstone beds here are mostly unfossiliferious with occasional oysters and belemnites. Although many fragments of belemnites and several broken large oysters were seen, no complete specimens could be found. Towards where the first sequence ends there is a lot of shale with corals and coral reef on the foreshore with a hard ‘red limestone’ bed running through the middle. The red bed is where the ammonites are found, these are well preserved. During our visit, the red bed was mostly covered with sand.
The second sequence starts with Lower Kimmeridgian and finishes with Estuarine Series, Brora Coal and Lower and Upper Oxfordian. Nodules can be found with well preserved ammonites and nodules can be picked up from the beach, sadly once again beach conditions where not in our favour. From the brora coal formation, plant material has also be found here.
Balintore like most cliff sections along North East Scotland are badly overgrown, this is caused by Scotland which is still rising. During the last ice age, the weight of the ice on Scotland pushed the South East of England up and just like a sea-saw when the ice glaciers retreated Scotland started rising forcing the South East to sink. More evidence of this can be seen in the rapid and widespread coastal Erosion in South East England and the large amount of raised beaches and reclaimed land in Scotland. For instance, at Dunrobin Castle in Golspie, the sea was once hitting the castle walls; today the sea has retreated quite a distance.
