Spanish Point Ireland

[MSirmon]

Kicking rocks near Spanish Point Ireland and ran across this item. I believe the area is Carboniferous but not sure where some of these rocks rolled in from. What is this barrel looking item hiding inside the large rock? Geological with some odd features?

[Ludwigia]

Could be some kind of vertebra?

[westcoast]

Looks like one of the many siderite concretions from that area, which you are correct is entirely carboniferous, however I've no idea what the thing inside it is...

[Mark Kmiecik]

Looks a lot like leaf scars. Plants common there?

[westcoast]

2 hours ago, Mark Kmiecik said:

Looks a lot like leaf scars. Plants common there?

Yep. Lepidodendron is found there 

[Rockwood]

It looks just as identifiable as the concretions I usually pick to break open. 

[Oxytropidoceras]

The Spanish Point headland consists of Carboniferous strata of Doonlicky Cyclothem. At the Spanish Point headland, it consists of "spectacularly‐deformed" siltstones and sandstones that are both slumped and faulted. East of the deformed sedimentary strata, the uppermost beds of the Doonlicky Cyclothem consist of a series of sandstone beds. They are capped by a layer of distinctive, meter-thick, well-cemented, white sandstone. The sandstone, which contains fossil rootlets, has an irregular top surface, and displays polygonal patterns, represents a mature, well-drained paleosol. This paleosol is overlain by several beds of well‐cemented, fine, dark sandstone that represent a major marine transgression and sea level rise. Four meters above the white sandstone, the Reticuloceras bilingue Marine Band outcrops in the intertidal platform as a 1.5 meter thick black shale that contains abundant goniatites and the bivalve Dunbarella (Wignall and Best, 2016).

 

Spanish Point exposures of the Doonlicky Formation Clastic Cycles

http://www.sepmstrata.org/page.aspx?pageid=476

 

Banner Rocks: The Geological Heritage of County Clare

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/heritage/pdfs/banner_rocks.pdf

 

References

 

Wignall, P.B. and Best, J., 2016. The Younger Namurian Cyclothems 

around Spanish Point. In A Field Guide to the Carboniferous Sediments 

of the Shannon Basin, Western Ireland, First Edition. Edited by James 

L. Best and Paul B. Wignall. International Association of Sedimentologists, 

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. pp.350-360.

 

Yours,

 

Paul H.

[Rockwood]

The ones I referred to do have a polygonal pattern and were associated with stigmaria.

Glad I kept them now.