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Sedimentary Basins Of Britain And Ireland
The sedimentary basins of Britain and Ireland are numerous, occurring beneath both the land surface of these islands and the surrounding seas. Sedimentary basins (not to be confused with drainage basins) have operated in this region over much of geological time from the Precambrian to the present day, typically accepting sediment from neighbouring areas where erosion is taking place, over timescales variously from millions to hundreds of millions of years. They may be referred to simply as basins or else as troughs, grabens or half-grabens, according to their mode of formation and morphology. Key to table *Column 1 indicates the name of the basin. Some variant names are recorded between sources. Sub-basins are noted. *Column 2 indicates the area (country/sea) in which the basin occurs. Some extend across more than one. Sea areas include the Atlantic Ocean, North Sea, English Channel, Sea of the Hebrides, Irish Sea, Celtic Sea, Bristol Channel, The Minch *Column 3 indic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sedimentary Basin
Sedimentary basins are region-scale depressions of the Earth's crust where subsidence has occurred and a thick sequence of sediments have accumulated to form a large three-dimensional body of sedimentary rock. They form when long-term subsidence creates a regional depression that provides Accommodation (geology), accommodation space for accumulation of sediments. Over millions or tens or hundreds of millions of years the deposition of sediment, primarily gravity-driven transportation of water-borne eroded material, acts to fill the depression. As the sediments are buried, they are subject to increasing pressure and begin the processes of compaction (geology), compaction and lithification that transform them into sedimentary rock. Sedimentary basins are created by deformation of Earth's lithosphere in diverse geological settings, usually as a result of plate tectonics, plate tectonic activity. Mechanisms of crustal deformation that lead to subsidence and sedimentary basin formati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cleveland Basin
The Cleveland Basin is a sedimentary basin in Yorkshire, England. Formed initially by rifting during the Mississippian period of the Early Carboniferous. It is West–East trending and lies between the intrabasinal highs of the Askrigg Block and the Market Weighton Axis, passing eastwards offshore into the Sole Pit Basin. It contains a thick development of the Bowland Shale, which has been assessed as being a major potential source of shale gas. It was inverted towards the end of the Carboniferous and most of the Upper Carboniferous sequence was eroded off. Subsequent deposition has also created a thick fill of Jurassic and Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of th ... sediments. References Sedimentary basins of Europe {{UK-geology-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slyne-Erris Trough
The Slyne-Erris Trough is a geological basin off the west coast of Donegal, Ireland. In recent years it has been shown to be prospective for hydrocarbons, hosting Royal Dutch Shell Corrib gas field (discovered by Enterprise Oil, bought by Shell), and several other prospects being evaluated by a number of other oil companies. Structurally, the trough is a series of NNE-SSW trending half-grabens. The Slyne Trough The Slyne Trough or Slyne Basin consists of three sub-basins, the Northern, Central and Southern Slyne Basins. The Northern and Central Slyne Basins are half-grabens of opposite polarity with the switch occurring across the Central Slyne Transfer, interpreted to be a splay of the Great Glen Fault. The Corrib Field is situated in the Northern Slyne Basin. In the Central Slyne the 27/5-1 well proved the presence of Late Permian evaporites including salt, possibly indicating fault activity at this time. The basin is interpreted to have been active particularly during the Tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rockall Basin
The Rockall Trough ( gd, Clais Sgeir Rocail) is a deep-water bathymetric feature to the northwest of Scotland and Ireland, running roughly from southwest to northeast, flanked on the north by the Rockall Plateau and to the south by the Porcupine Seabight. At the northern end, the channel is bounded by the Wyville-Thomson Ridge, named after Charles Wyville Thomson, professor of zoology at the University of Edinburgh and driving force behind the Challenger Expedition. At the southern end, the trough opens into the Porcupine abyssal plain. The Rockall Basin (also known as the Hatton Rockall Basin) is a large (c. 800 km by 150 km) sedimentary basin that lies beneath the trough. Both are named after Rockall, a rocky islet lying 301.4 km west of St Kilda. Features of the Rockall Plateau have been officially named after features of Middle-earth in the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, e.g. Eriador Seamount, Rohan Seamount, Gondor Seamount, Fangorn Bank, Ed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhynie Chert
The Rhynie chert is a Lower Devonian sedimentary deposit exhibiting extraordinary fossil detail or completeness (a Lagerstätte). It is exposed near the village of Rhynie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland; a second unit, the Windyfield chert, is located some 700 m away. The Rhynie chert contains exceptionally preserved plant, fungus, lichen and animal material preserved in place by an overlying volcanic deposit. The bulk of the Devonian fossil bed consists of primitive plants (which had water-conducting cells and sporangia, but no true leaves), along with arthropods, lichens, algae and fungi. This fossil bed is remarkable for two reasons. First, the age of the site ( Pragian, Early Devonian, formed about ) places it at an early stage in the colonisation of land. Second, these cherts are famous for their exceptional state of ultrastructural preservation, with individual cell walls easily visible in polished specimens. Stomata have been counted and lignin remnants detected in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Porcupine Basin
The Porcupine Seabight or Porcupine Basin is a deep-water oceanic basin located on the continental margin in the northeastern portion of the Atlantic Ocean. It can be found in the southwestern offshore portion of Ireland and is part of a series of interconnected basins linked to a failed rift structure associated with the opening of the Northern Atlantic Ocean. The basin extends in a North-South direction and was formed during numerous subsidence and rifting periods between the Late Carboniferous and Late Cretaceous. It is bordered by the * Goban Spur to the south * Slyne Ridge to the north * Porcupine Bank to the west * Porcupine Abyssal Plain to the southwest Due to subsidence, water depths range from 3000 m in the south near its mouth to 400 m in the north. The Porcupine Basin lies on the Caledonian metamorphic basement and preserves up to 12 km of sedimentary strata from Late Palaeozoic to Quaternary which includes significant hydrocarbon reservoirs. Sediment was lik ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orcadian Basin
The Orcadian Basin is a sedimentary basin of Devonian age that formed mainly as a result of extensional tectonics in northeastern Scotland after the end of the Caledonian orogeny. During part of its history, the basin was filled by a lake now known as ''Lake Orcadie''. In that lacustrine environment, a sequence of finely bedded sedimentary rocks was deposited, containing well-preserved fish fossils, with alternating layers of mudstone and coarse siltstone to very fine sandstone. These flagstones split easily along the bedding and have been used as building material for thousands of years. The deposits of the Orcadian Basin form part of the Old Red Sandstone (ORS). The lithostratigraphic terms lower, middle and upper ORS, however, do not necessarily match exactly with sediments of lower, middle and upper Devonian age, as the base of the ORS is now known to be in the Silurian and the top in the Carboniferous. Extent The exact extent of the Orcadian Basin is uncertain due to later tecto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northumberland Trough
The Northumberland Trough, also known as the Northumberland Basin, is an element of the structural geology of northern England, the origin of which dates back to the Carboniferous period when a block and basin province was established throughout the Pennine region. The trough is an ENE-WSW aligned half-graben, an asymmetric depositional basin. It is defined to the south by the Stublick and Ninety Fathom faults, which separate the trough from the Alston Block. To the north, where its depth is least, the trough's boundary with the Cheviot Block is less well-defined; nevertheless, the south-easterly down-throwing Featherwood and Alwinton faults can be identified along this margin. To the west, the trough is continuous with the Solway Basin. The surrounding blocks are buoyed up by granite batholith A batholith () is a large mass of intrusive igneous rock (also called plutonic rock), larger than in area, that forms from cooled magma deep in Earth's crust. Batholiths are almo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Munster Basin
::''This the Irish'' Munster Basin ''should not be confused with the'' Münster Basin ''in northern Germany'' The Munster Basin is a late Middle to Upper Devonian age extensional (rift) sedimentary basin in the south-west of Ireland. The basin fill comprises fluvial Old Red Sandstone (ORS) magnafaciesWilliams, E.A., Bamford, M.L.F., Cooper, M.A., Edwards, H.E., Ford, M., Grant, G.G., MacCarthy, I.A.J., McAfee, A.M. & O'Sullivan, M.J. (1989) Tectonic controls and sedimentary response in the Devonian-Carboniferous Munster and South Munster Basins, south-west Ireland. In: Arthurton, R.S., Gutteridge, P. & Nolan, S.C. (eds) The Role of Tectonics in Devonian and Carboniferous Sedimentation in the British Isles. Occasional Publications of the Yorkshire Geological Society, 6, 123-141. with minor silicic volcanic and mafic sub-volcanic centres. The depocentre of the basin is located between the MacGillycuddy's Reeks and the Kenmare River on the Iveragh peninsula where the succession ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London Basin
The London Basin is an elongated, roughly triangular sedimentary basin approximately long which underlies London and a large area of south east England, south eastern East Anglia and the adjacent North Sea. The basin formed as a result of compressional tectonics related to the Alpine orogeny during the Palaeogene period and was mainly active between 40 and 60 million years ago. Boundaries and shape Spatial boundaries The generally accepted boundaries are the Late Cretaceous Chalk Group's escarpments of the Chilterns and Marlborough Downs to the north and the North Downs and Berkshire Downs to the south. To the south lie the Weald and Salisbury Plain and to the north is the Vale of Aylesbury. The approximate western limit is in the Marlborough area of Wiltshire. The eastern end merges with the North Sea Basin, extending on land along the north Kent coast to Reculver and up the east coast of Essex and into Suffolk, where it is overlain by Pleistocene 'Crag' deposits which cover ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hatton Basin
The Hatton Basin is a ca. 600 km long SW–NE trending sedimentary basin, located off the west coast of Ireland. It lies between the Hatton and Edoras Banks to the west and the Rockall Bank to the east. The basin contains about 4,000 m of sediments of probable Cretaceous to Cenozoic age. Its relationship to the Rockall Basin remains uncertain. Fill Only the uppermost part of the fill of the Hatton Basin is known with certainty, based on DSDP boreholes (sites 116 & 117) and ODP borehole 982. The interpretation of the deeper parts relies on correlation with older sequences known from the Hatton Bank. The basement is thought to consist of metamorphic rocks of Paleoproterozoic age, based on sampling from the Rockall High. The oldest sedimentary rocks proven in the area are Albian (uppermost Lower Cretaceous) mudstones and sandstones, encountered in two British Geological Survey boreholes drilled on the Hatton Bank. By comparison with neighbouring basins both Paleozoic and Mes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hampshire Basin
The Hampshire Basin is a geological basin of Palaeogene age in southern England, underlying parts of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Dorset, and Sussex. Like the London Basin to the northeast, it is filled with sands and clays of Paleocene and younger ages and it is surrounded by a broken rim of chalk hills of Cretaceous age. Extent The Hampshire Basin is the traditional name for the landward section of a basin underlying the northern English Channel and much of central southern England, known more fully as the Hampshire-Dieppe Basin. It stretches a little over 100 miles (160 km) from the Dorchester area in the west to Beachy Head in the east. Its southern boundary is marked by a monocline, the Purbeck Monocline, resulting in a near-vertical chalk ridge which forms the Purbeck Hills of Dorset, running under the sea from Old Harry Rocks to The Needles and the central spine of the Isle of Wight and continuing under the English Channel as the Wight- Bray monocline. The northern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
