Merritt, J W, Auton, C A, Connell, E R, Hall, A M, and Peacock, J D. 2003. Cainozoic geology and landscape evolution of north-east Scotland, Memoir of the British Geological Survey, Sheets 66E, 67, 76E, 77, 86E, 87W, 87E, 95, 96W, 96E and 97 (Scotland).
Site 14 Moss of Cruden ('Buchan Ridge')
The Moss of Cruden, 11 km south-west of Peterhead, is an area of unusual geological interest (Hall, 1993a)
Smallburn Sandstone Formation
The Smallburn Sandstone Formation occupies a small area on the northern flank of the Moss of Cruden
Moreseat Sandstone Formation
Weathering and glacial disturbance of the Moreseat Sandstone Formation is widespread and it is only in the ground north of Moreseat that relatively fresh material was recovered from the base of trial pits
W Braham). Thin sections reveal a spicular quartz sandstone with a mixed terrigenous/calcareous mud matrix. Grains are dominantly of quartz, but, prior to the development of voids (moulds) after the dissolution of mollusc fragments and foraminifera, the dominant grain type would have been sponge spicules. Feldspar grains and bioclastic debris have also undergone significant dissolution. Macroporosity is around 30 per cent (information from A R Duncan, Maud, Aberdeenshire, 1997).
The Lower Cretaceous rocks north of the Moss of Cruden were originally fine-grained sandy siltstones, but they are typically decomposed to clayey fine-grained sands and sandy silty clays of vivid orange, tangerine, yellow and white hues.
Buchan Ridge Gravel Member
The Moss of Cruden is the type area of the Buchan Ridge Gravel Member, part of the Buchan Gravels Formation (compare with Flett and Read, 1921; McMillan and Merritt, 1980)
The Buchan Ridge Gravel Member is poorly exposed. Temporary excavations and boreholes show white, clay-bound coarse gravels with minor sand and silt units (Merritt, 1981). Gravel clasts are dominantly flint with subsidiary quartzite and vein-quartz. Clasts are generally well-rounded pebbles and cobbles and bear numerous chatter marks. The deposits originally contained less resistant clasts, probably mainly granite, but these have decomposed to ghosts of white sandy clayey silt. This decomposition extends throughout the known thickness of the deposit into the underlying granite and gneiss bedrock. Both sand and gravel units are bound and, in places, supported by, white, sandy clayey silt consisting of well-ordered kaolinite with minor illite (Hall, 1982).
The base of the Buchan Ridge Gravel Member in places contains large nodules of flint and boulders of quartzite
A ground probing radar survey (Greenwood et al., 1995) on the northern slope of the Moss of Cruden has confirmed that the feather edge of the Buchan Ridge Gravel Member rests on weathered Lower Cretaceous sandstone (see Appendix 3). Within undisturbed parts of the Buchan Ridge Gravel Member, low-angle cross-stratification dips towards the axis of the ridge (
The Buchan Ridge Gravel Member is overlain by a variable thickness of till, and disturbance attributed to overriding ice is common. At Corse of Balloch, BGS Borehole NK04SW/4 (McMillan and Merritt, 1980) indicates that in situ Buchan Ridge Gravel Member is overlain by almost 10 m of till, derived in large part from the underlying gravel. Temporary excavations east of Camp Fauld revealed rafts of flint and quartzite gravel within till (Whittington et al., 1993). To the north of the ridge, a sheet of soliflucted flint gravel, up to 2 m thick, extends well downslope on to weathered granite (Hall, 1993a). This gravel forms part of the 'Flint-quartzite Head' deposits described in Chapter 6 that are widespread around the Buchan Ridge on sheets 87W Ellon and Peterhead 87E Peterhead (Maps 6 and 7).
Camp Fauld
This site
The stratigraphy is known only from trial pits. The oldest deposit recognised is the Camp Fauld Till Formation. This is at least 2 m thick and is a grey (2.5Y N5) to very dark grey (7.5YR N3) massive to crudely horizontally bedded diamicton with sparse pebbles. Clast lithologies comprise mainly rounded quartzite and flint, with lesser amounts of subangular granite, basic igneous, red sandstone and soft grey siltstone clasts. The matrix is a micaceous sandy silt and clay mineralogy is largely kaolinite, illite-smectite and minor glauconite. The diamicton rests on, and locally passes down into, and incorporates rafts of Moreseat Sandstone. The direction of ice flow during deposition of the Camp Fauld Till is difficult to establish owing to the dominance of very locally derived material. The presence of clasts of grey granite and red sandstone suggest transport from local outcrops to the west of the site.
The Berryley Peat Bed is up to 0.5 m thick in pit A and rests on the mottled top of the Camp Fauld Till
The Aldie Till at Camp Fauld is a greenish grey (5GY 6/1) sandy diamicton that is massive or shows a crude horizontal bedding and is up to 2.5 m thick. Clast lithology is dominated by broken rounded pebbles and cobbles of flint and quartzite reworked from the Buchan Gravels Formation, with sparse mica-schist, granite, basic igneous and red sandstone clasts. The matrix is kaolinitic quartz sand. Away from the type-site, the character of the Aldie Till varies greatly in response to marked lateral changes in bedrock and even drift geology. On the Buchan Ridge Gravels at Hill of Aldie, the Aldie Till closely resembles that at Camp Fauld. However, in the area underlain by the Moreseat Sandstone Formation, it is indistinguishable from the underlying Camp Fauld Till. To the north and east of Camp Fauld, the Aldie Till partly incorporates large masses of weathered brown sand with sparse quartzite clasts of unknown derivation and origin. This sand, named here as the Moreseat Farm Sand Bed, was also probably formerly exposed at an infilled gravel pit
South and east of Moreseat, the Aldie Till passes beneath red clayey diamictons of the Logie-Buchan Drift Group. It thickens on the southern and eastern slopes of the Moss of Cruden in accord with the apparent eastward carry of flint and red granite from the Moss of Cruden, and its weak north-west–south-east clast fabric. These features indicate that the unusual till thickness is probably a product of only minor subsequent glacial erosion as it lies in the lee of the Buchan Ridge. The presence of red granite erratics on the Moss of Cruden has been used to infer ice movement from the north-east prior to the last glaciation (Bremner, 1934a, 1939; Synge, 1956). However, the situation is complicated by the presence of coarse-grained red granites, similar to the Peterhead Granite, in the ground 1 km north and west of Moreseat.
The Berryley Peat Bed has yielded radiocarbon ages (SRR–3724) of 39 590 ± 550 BP for the humic fraction and 34 600 ± 910 BP for the humin fraction (Whittington et al., 1993) and luminescence ages of 160 ± 16 and 251 ± 24 ka BP (Duller et al., 1995). The significance of these contrasting ages is uncertain. Pollen analysis of peat layers from the adjacent pits suggests that the peat formed during an interstadial in which birch–pine woodland first developed, probably followed by tundra vegetation in which Bruckenthalia spiculifolia was present. This heath is found today in the Balkan Mountains, but is extinct in Scotland (Whittington, 1994). The vegetation assemblage of the Berryley Peat, including the presence of Bruckenthalia, is akin in certain aspects to that found at other Early Devensian sites in Scotland at Allt Odhar and Sel Ayre. Hence, the Berryley Peat may correlate with Oxygen Isotope Stage 5c or 5a, when pine–birch woodlands developed widely in north-west Europe during the Brørup and Odderade Interstadials (Behre, 1989)