The Fish Bed Formation is a

geological formation A geological formation, or simply formation, is a body of rock having a consistent set of physical characteristics (lithology) that distinguishes it from adjacent bodies of rock, and which occupies a particular position in the layers of rock expo ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. The

fluvial A river is a natural stream of fresh water that flows on land or inside caves towards another body of water at a lower elevation, such as an ocean, lake, or another river. A river may run dry before reaching the end of its course if it ru ...

lacustrine A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from t ...

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

shale Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of Clay mineral, clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g., Kaolinite, kaolin, aluminium, Al2Silicon, Si2Oxygen, O5(hydroxide, OH)4) and tiny f ...

siltstone Siltstone, also known as aleurolite, is a clastic sedimentary rock that is composed mostly of silt. It is a form of mudrock with a low clay mineral content, which can be distinguished from shale by its lack of fissility. Although its permeabil ...

s and conglomerates preserve flora, arthropods, among which

eurypterids Eurypterids, often informally called sea scorpions, are a group of extinct marine arthropods that form the order Eurypterida. The earliest known eurypterids date to the Darriwilian stage of the Ordovician period, 467.3 million years ago. The ...

, invertebrates and early fish

fossils A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

dating back to the

Wenlock epoch The Wenlock Epoch (sometimes referred to as the Wenlockian) is the second epoch of the Silurian. It is preceded by the Llandovery Epoch and followed by the Ludlow Epoch. Radiometric dates constrain the Wenlockian between and million years ago. ...

of the

Silurian The Silurian ( ) is a geologic period and system spanning 23.5 million years from the end of the Ordovician Period, at million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Devonian Period, Mya. The Silurian is the third and shortest period of t ...

period Period may refer to: Common uses * Period (punctuation) * Era, a length or span of time *Menstruation, commonly referred to as a "period" Arts, entertainment, and media * Period (music), a concept in musical composition * Periodic sentence (o ...

.Fish Bed Formation
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Fossilworks Fossilworks was a portal which provides query, download, and analysis tools to facilitate access to the Paleobiology Database, a large relational database assembled by hundreds of paleontologists from around the world. History Fossilworks was cr ...

.org

Description

The fish beds are contained within red-bed sequences comprising conglomerates, sandstones and siltstones that exhibit sedimentological features suggestive of deposition in terrestrial–fluviatile and lacustrine environments (Bluck 2002). The sporomorph assemblage from the Fish Bed Formation indicates that it is entirely non-marine and was most likely deposited in a relatively permanent lacustrine setting (Wellman and Richardson 1993).Smithy Burn, Hagshaw Hills Inlier
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.org The formation, at the time part of

Avalonia Avalonia was a microcontinent in the Paleozoic era. Crustal fragments of this former microcontinent are terranes in parts of the eastern coast of North America: Atlantic Canada, and parts of the East Coast of the United States, East Coast of the ...

, was deposited during the Grampian orogeny.