Tynet Burn

Also within

Banffshire County

Condition (NatureScot)

Geology & landscape

Mining / Industrial: Quarry · Geological Period: Devonian, Silurian

Landscape processes: Fluvial

Description

Tynet Burn The Tynet Burn, located about 4km south-east of Spey Bay, is an important fossil fish site. Non-marine Devonian The site provides an important insight into Devonian freshwater lake habitats. It preserves Middle Devonian cyclic fluvial and lacustrine sediment successions that were deposited on the southern margin of the ‘Orcadian lake’ (a lake of varying size that periodically covered much of Moray, Caithness, Orkney and Shetland during the Devonian time period). The age of the rocks at Tynet Burn has been correlated with the fossil fish site at Achanarras Quarry near Halkirk in Caithness. However, the Achanarras site, was closer to the centre of the Orcadian lake, and the lake edge setting at Tynet Burn has resulted in a more complex series of lake transgressions and regressions being recorded in the rock record. Silurian - Devonian Chordata The burn exposes Middle Devonian shales with nodules interbedded with red sandstones and conglomerates. Several of these beds of nodules yield fossil specimens and appear to correlate with the Achanarras horizon and the higher Dipple Fish Bed. The fossils are some of the best preserved specimens from the Scottish Middle Devonian. Acanthodians are common and they are frequently figured and described in literature because of their remarkably fine preservation. It is the type locality for two specimens, Diplacanthus crassisimus and Rhamphodopsis trispinatus. The Tynet Burn is one of Britain’s most important fossil fish localities.