Hopeman Sandstone Formation
geological formation in Scotland
The Hopeman Sandstone Formation is a geologic formation in Scotland. It preserves fossil footprints and body fossils from the Guadalupian Epoch in the Late Permian, to the Early Triassic, It preserves fossils and fossil footprints from various extinct animals such as pareiasaurs and dicynodonts, which are collectively often referred to as the Elgin Reptiles.
The formation, named for the village of Hopeman, lies unconformably over the Devonian Upper Old Red Sandstone, and it underlies the waterlain sandstones of the Burghead Sandstone Formation. It represents a windswept dune landscape.
The Hopeman Sandstones were previously referred to as the Cutties Hillock Sandstone, Quarry Wood Sandstones, Sandstones of Hopeman, and Hopeman-Cummingstown Sandstone, but these names have since been superseded.
Lithology
The Hopeman Sandstone Formation is predominantly composed of fine- to coarse-grained yellowish sand with well rounded grains, mostly deposited as wind-blown dunes, but occasionally deposited by sheet floods. Basal beds are pebbly and the unit varies, exhibiting large-scale crossbedding to fine rarely contorted laminations. Some beds are friable, while others hard and siliceous.
Origin of names
The name Cutties Hillock is believed to derive from the Scottish Gaelic ceide sealge, meaning 'hill brow of the hunting'. The name first appeared in print after the discovery of the Elgin Reptiles in 1884.
“Hopeman Sandstone Formation” enters the record as geological formation in Scotland. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hopeman, Sandstone and Formation can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hopeman Sandstone Formation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.