Publisher's Synopsis
This volume describes over 40 Upper Jurassic sites, from the Dorset coast to the Isle of Skye off north-west Scotland, and covers about 12 million years of Earth history from about 157 to 145 million years ago. Together, the site descriptions provide a representative picture of the British Oxfordian-Kimmeridgian succession, which is characterized predominantly by marine mudrocks with, in many areas, an intervening sequence of shallow-water marine sandstones and limestones. Arranged geographically, the site descriptions are divided between four chapters (Dorset-Oxford, East Midlands, Yorkshire and Scotland), each of which has an introductory section placing the sites in context. The volume thereby provides an up-to-date review of the Oxfordian-Kimmeridgian stratigraphy of Britain, calling on the extensive literature of over 150 years. The youngest part of the Upper Jurassic (the Portlandian Stage) is not covered by this volume but is included in the companion GCR volume on the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary interval. All three Upper Jurassic stages take their names from British localities, and the succession in Britain is thus of international interest.
