Shiel Burn

Also within

Lanarkshire County

Condition (NatureScot)

Habitats

Fast flowing river and stream

Geology & landscape

Geological Period: Silurian

Description

Shiel Burn Shiel Burn, located 6km west of Douglas, comprises exposures along a 325m stretch of stream that flows into the Monks Water. It lies within the Hagshaw Hills Silurian Inlier and exposes the lower Wenlock Fish Bed Formation of the Glenbuck Group. It yields the same fossil fauna as that known from the ‘fish’ beds of the Dippal Burn Formation (with which it is correlated) and the Slot Burn Formation in the Lesmahagow Inlier. It is the most prolific Hagshaw Hill site, and furthermore it is important because rare and unusual vertebrates can still be found here, whereas other sites with equivalent fossil fauna no longer yield as much material as they did 70 years ago, when the major collections were made. The faunal assemblage consists of the anaspids Birkenia elegans, Lasanius problematicus, Lasanius armatus and Lasanius sp. Nov., Ateleaspis tessellata the oldest known cephalaspid, and four thelodont species, Logania taiti, Lanarkia horrida, L. spinosa and L. spinulosa, have been recorded. This assemblage is comparable to the faunal assemblage at Rudstangen, Ringerike (S. Norway), which also now yields very little material. These primitive jawless vertebrates are all rare and important because of the information they can supply about the early origins of vertebrates, the first developments of bony exoskeletons, and the lifestyles of the first primitive fish. The site is a nationally important palaeontological locality for vertebrate studies.

Plant communities