Constraints on the significance of the Orlock Bridge Fault within the Scottish Southern Uplands: A discussion of “The Orlock Bridge Fault: a major Late Caledonian sinistral fault in the Southern Uplands terrane, British Isles” by T. B. Anderson and G. J. H. Oliver

Abstract

In their account of the Orlock Bridge Fault of Northern Ireland and its presumed continuation into the Scottish Southern Uplands (the Kingledores Fault) Anderson and Oliver (1986) provide welcome detail in support of major strike-slip movement. However, their identification of the Kingledores Fault as a line of massive strike-slip movement is based on a number of assumptions which are permissible only because biostratigraphical control is generally sparse. In particular the assertion that the Kingledores Fault is a “giant step in the diachronous southerly ascent of the turbidite base” is founded largely on a misinterpretation of evidence recorded by Peach and Horne (1899), Griffith and Wilson (1982) and others.