Shotover Hill, Calcareous Grit (Jurassic of the United Kingdom)

Also known as B

Where: England, United Kingdom (51.7° N, 1.2° W: paleocoordinates 42.4° N, 8.7° E)

• coordinate estimated from map

• outcrop-level geographic resolution

When: Calcareous Grit Formation, Oxfordian (163.5 - 157.3 Ma)

• "In the railway cutting at Kcnnington this sand, fully exposed, is varied with beds and large nodules of sandstone slightly calcareous, while, for a considerable space towards Littlemore, lie widely-interrupted parts of the next rock above, viz. coralline oolite. The oolite lies in separated patches on the same plane, which were probably connected; the intervals between them are occupied by sand which may be supposed to have been left after the decomposition of the oolite. The upper parts of the oolite are absent for a large tract hereabout; and it may be supposed that the large waste of them was caused by long exposure to atmospheric agency in very ancient times (pre-glacial or earlier). This process of surface waste has affected a great part of the area of coralline oolite in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Wilts, and seems to explain the patchy and irregular distribution often observable in this rock; though, as far as relates to the purely oolitic and not shelly part of the rock, the original circumstances of deposit must be taken into account."

• group of beds-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: marine; poorly lithified, fine-grained, shelly/skeletal sandstone

• "Sand partly consolidated into sandstone is the basis of this deposit through all the low escarpment of the tract which looks northwards on the upper vale of Thames. It is rarely exposed except in road-cuttings.... It is in these cases usually a fine sand, with occasional shells.... Near Oxford its total thickness is about 60 or 70 feet. The sand is sometimes so loose as to be 'quick, ' and choke the wells which in many places are sunk to it through the superincumbent rock and clay."

Size class: macrofossils

Primary reference: J. Phillips. 1871. Geology of Oxford and the Valley of the Thames. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1-523 [M. Carrano/M. Carrano/E. Vlachos]more details

Purpose of describing collection: general faunal/floral analysis

PaleoDB collection 100666: authorized by Matthew Carrano, entered by Hallie Street on 11.12.2010

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Show authors, comments, and common names
Bivalvia
 Ostreida - Pinnidae
Pinna sp.
Pinna sp. Linnaeus 1758 oyster
Cephalopoda
 Ammonitida -
Ammonites vertebralis