Holyrood Park Preview

Introduction

This preview is intended to provide some background to the Holyrood Park field excursion and some hints on what to look for in the field. It is not an alternative to the excursion. You might think of it as briefing notes - the more you know in advance the more you will be able to engage in discussion and observation during the event.

You will meet two major categories of rocks:

• Sedimentary rocks laid down in shallow seas and coastal lakes during the early Carboniferous era between 350 and 325 million years ago.

• Igneous rocks extruded as lava flows and intruded as dykes, sills and vent agglomerates during the period in which the sediments were being deposited.

The objective is to examine the different rock types and observe the characteristics that reveal the environments in which they were formed.