Record of Gifford Woods Biodiversity

A summary of the total formally recorded biodiversity within the woodland has now been brought together.  This is a fantastic record of all biodiversity within our woodland, and will serve as a record for now and into the future.

It is rather lengthy, but anyone wishing to investigate all the detail, click here to view an online spreadsheet with all the data. 

Fossil Find in Gifford Woods

On a recent volunteering day in Gifford Woods an unusual find was made by Gordon Steele, and thanks to Ian Watson you can now read all about it below...

Rugose Coral Fossil Find

Speedy Burn

(Found by Gordon Steele, 22^nd February 2020)

The finding of a fossil, tropical water, Rugose Coral specimen in the Speedy Burn in the Gifford Community Wood not only sounds unusual but actually is. It raises many questions about how it might have come to be there? A very good question was raised by the finder: “How does a fossil of a tropical sea species of coral end up in Gifford?” Here is what I, a retired local geologist, believe to be a possible explanation.

Beneath the soils & underlying glacial clays of the Community Wood lies a substrate of Early Carboniferous rocks of the lower Tournaisian series of the Dinantian Epoch (approximately 350 million years old). Corals are generally found in limestones, which are shallow marine rocks, whereas the rocks in the Gifford area are predominantly braid plain, fluviatile sandstones & shales with only infrequent marine incursions. However, slightly younger (geologically speaking), approximately 340 million year old, Visean, fossiliferous, limestone sequences do occur not too far away in various parts of East Lothian (eg at Barns Ness, Skateraw & Longniddry shoreline outcrops). The most likely origin of this find probably invokes Ice Age transportation by glaciers moving west to east across the region, perhaps eroding the coral from the limestones which form the substrate about 3km west of the wood at East Saltoun (see the excerpt from the Haddington  area Geology map, Sheet 33W).

The last few kilometres of the coral’s journey, via one or other of the 15 glaciations of the last 2 million years, is geologically very recent. In order to move from its likely tropical sea origin, we need the much longer time span of continental drift. What is now Scotland was at or perhaps just south of the equator when the limestones were first forming in coral reef, tropical lagoons. Over the ensuing 340 million years, the plate has gradually drifted north over 50 degrees of latitude to Scotland’s now far from tropical climate as part of NW Europe.

Although from an amateur visual inspection of this fossil (see the attached photos), we cannot be certain of its name & type, a good candidate would seem to be Caninomorph (ie similar to a dog-tooth), as per the figure taken from a recent Belgian paper on Rugose Corals of the Carboniferous. Many of the Early Carboniferous subdivisions in Europe are named after these type localities in Belgium: eg, Dinant, Tournai & Visé, etc, which lead to the geological names such as Dinantian with its subdivisions of Tournaisian & Visean.

After travelling several thousand miles over nearly 350 million years, being variably buried and exhumed & latterly encased in ice, this specimen deserves more than a casual glance.

Ian R Watson MSc DIC FRGS