Description
Siccar Point on the Berwickshire coast is one of the most important geological sites in the world. The vertically tilted greywacke sandstone on the right is overlain by Old Red Sandstone (ORS) that is diagonally inclined, the former belongs to the Silurian period and the latter to the Devonian. It was here in the 18th century that James Hutton found evidence for his hypothesis that the world was much older than the biblical age of 6000 years. He realised that the greywacke had had time enough to be laid down, compressed into rock, tilted and eroded before the ORS was eventually deposited.
