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FOSSSIL EXHIBITION AT TOLBOOTH MUSEUM STONEHAVEN
When you are in Stonehaven you must visit the Tolbooth Museum where you will see the fascinating fossil exhibition.
Another reason why Stonehaven is special.
Pneumodemus newmani Exhibition
This relates to the oldest known air-breathing land animal: a tiny millipede that lived 428 million years ago.
The fossil, Pneumodemus newmani, is a 1 cm long fragment of millipede arthropod.
It was discovered in a layer of sandstone rocks on Cowie foreshore in Stonehaven by Mike Newman, a bus driver and fossil enthusiast from Aberdeen.
How did the oldest known air breathing animal in the world come to be found in here? What’s so special about Stonehaven?
To find out we have to go back a long way, well before the great age of the fossil itself (428 million years).
We have to understand how the sandstone sediment in which the dead animal was buried, came to be formed.
We also have to appreciate how the animal was preserved as a fossil and survived numerous geological events affecting its host sandstone until it finally came to light in January 2003.
The exhibition will provide you with all the details.
Highland Boundary Fault Exhibition
The story begins some 500 million years ago when three ancient continents of Laurentia, Avalonia and Baltica collided, causing a great crumbling and buckling of Laurentia into the Caledonia mountain range, and much horizontal slippage and
shearing between the colliding land masses. The mountain ranges were probably like the Alps where huge weathering and erosion takes place with large river systems bringing sediment down to low surrounding areas. The long zone of slippage and shearing is known in geology as a strike-slop fault (rather like the San Andreas Fault in California whise horizontal movements are evidently active to-day). This fault zone effectively ran along the southern edge of the Caledonian Mountains and is known to-day as the Highland Boundary Fault (HBF).
Such enormous collisions create basins or depressions of the Earth’s crust at their margins.
One such basin occurred around the area where Cowie, Stonehaven stands now, just south east of where the Highland Boundary
Fault can be seen at Craigeven Bay. The basin provided accommodation space for the rivers to fill with sediment.
This fault (HBF) is one of a number of parallel landform features stretching right across Scotland in a nort east to south west trend.
In fact, due to their creation in times when the continents were much closer together, all these faults can be traced through Ireland to Newfoundland.
The HBF stretches from Stonehaven in the North East to Arran in the South West and can readily be seen at various points along this course.
It’s best exposure however is at Stonehaven where it outcrops on the rocky coastal strip north of the town.
Visit the exhibition and discover another reason why Stonehaven is Special.
Tolbooth Museum
Old Pier
Stonehaven
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