Valtos

Also within

Ross and Cromarty County Trotternish Scenic Area

Condition (NatureScot)

Climate exposure

This is about exposure to a nationwide pressure this habitat type carries — not a verdict on this site's own management.

Habitats

Fast flowing river and stream

Geology & landscape

Geological Feature: Gorge / Ravine · Geological Period: Jurassic · Rock Type: Limestone, Sandstone, Shale

Landscape processes: Coastal, Fluvial

Description

Valtos Valtos Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) is located on the north east coast of Skye and comprises three separate but adjacent stretches of coastline and a river gorge overlooking the northern end of the Sound of Raasay. The site encompasses sections of the Elgol Sandstone Formation, the Lealt Shale Formation and the Valtos Sandstone Formation that are of stratigraphical, sedimentological, paleoecological and paleogeographical significance; together the sections are of importance in studies of the great Estuarine Group of the Bathonian. The Elgol Sandstone Formation exposures at Inver Tote are amongst the most northerly occurrence of these sandstones and are delta-front deposits representing modified tidal currents flowing in a distributary channel. Here, they occur as the basal formation of the great Estuarine Group. The fossiliferous type section of the overlying Lealt Shale Formation is exposed in the Lealt River, and the type section of the Lonfearn Member (of the Lealt Shale Formation) occurs along the coast south of Port Earlish. The Lealt Shale Formation contains an assemblage of fossils, mainly bivalves with gastropods, ostracods and conchostracans, that are indicative of shallow waters of low but variable salinity in near-coastal lagoons. Overlying the Lealt Shale Formation is the Valtos Sandstone Formation. This is present in a fine and almost continuous section at its type locality in the cliffs below Valtos and in the roadside exposure at Dun Dearg. Three informal lithostratigraphical units have been recognised: a lower sandstone dominated unit, a middle limestone-shale dominated unit and an upper sandstone dominated unit. The fauna is dominated by the bivalve Neomiodon, a species indicative of an environment with rapid and wide fluctuations in salinity probably created as a result of the varying input of fresh water into a shallow lagoon. Valtos SSSI yielded Scotland’s first Jurassic dinosaur record with the uncovering of a footprint made by a tridactyl dinosaur, possibly a hadrosaur, found within the Lealt Shale Formation, and the discovery of the limb bone of a large sauropod (possibly cetiosaurus) found within the Valtos Sandstone Formation.

Plant communities