Moine Thrust Belt

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The Moine Thrust Belt is a linear geological feature in the Scottish Highlands which runs from Loch Eriboll on the north coast 190 km south-west to the Sleat peninsula on the Isle of Skye . The thrust belt is a zone between an extensive landscape of rolling hills over a metamorphic rock base to the East and more rugged, terraced mountains with steep sides sculptured from weathered igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks to the West. Mountains within the belt display complicated layers and the width of the zone varies up to 10 km. Often, summits of hard rock cap softer sedimentary rock layers visible on lower slopes. Ben More Assynt, in the centre of the belt, is a typical example that rises from a glen of limestone caves up sandstone terraces to a quartzite summit cap.

[edit] Formation

The discovery of the Moine Thrust in 1907 was a milestone in the history of geology as it was the first thrust belt discovered. The formation has since been re-interpreted many times. Eventually, the Moine Thrust corroborated tectonic plate theory in that, during the Caledonian orogeny of the Silurian period, Scotland was compressed as a European plate thrust westwards over a thrust fault and above the ancient Lewisian Gneiss on a Greenland tectonic plate.

[edit] Sources

• Rob Butler, (2000) The Moine Thrust Belt [1] Leeds University. Accessed 01/27/2006
• Rob Butler (2002) Assynt's Geology [2] Leeds University. Accessed 03/12/2007
• Goodenough, Kathryn (2006), "Geological Foundations", in Kempe, Nick & Mark Wrightham, Hostile Habitats, Scottish Mountaineering Trust, ISBN 0 907521 93 2]