Benton, M.J., Cook, E. & Turner, P. 2002. Permian and Triassic Red Beds and the Penarth Group of Great Britain. Geological Conservation Review Series, No. 24, JNCC, Peterborough, ISBN 1 86 107 493 X. The original source material for these web pages has been made available by the JNCC under the Open Government Licence 3.0. Full details in the JNCC Open Data Policy
The Permian red beds of North-East England
Introduction
The Permian succession of north-east England lies within the Zechstein Sea Basin, the deposits at the western edge of which are exposed from Durham south to Nottinghamshire. The succession in Durham begins with 0–9 m of basal breccia, followed by the Yellow Sands, which are overlain by the Marl Slate at the base of the marine Zechstein sequence.
The thin basal breccia is a piedmont deposit, associated with uplift and erosion of underlying Carboniferous sediments. The Yellow Sands are predominantly aeolian in origin, and are either coeval with, or younger than, the basal breccias. There is no independent evidence for the age of these units, but they are generally considered to be Mid Permian, since they underlie the Marl Slate (Smith et al., 1974). The Marl Slate was traditionally dated as Ufimian, or Wordian, on the basis that it overlies the Rotliegendes units which include the major Illawara magnetic reversal; in the Jin Yugan et al. (1997) stage succession, this reversal is considered to occur in the highest Wordian (Middle Permian Series; see
One GCR site only, Crime Rigg, is selected to illustrate the Permian red-bed facies of northeast England. The remainder of the Permian succession, the marine Zechstein, is represented by marine Permian GCR sites (Smith, 1995).