I have returned unscathed from the Helmsdale field course, so here are some pictures from the second part of the trip.
Day 4: Siltstones and soft-sediment deformation at Kintradwell. Sketch that rock, quick, before the tide comes in!
Day 5: Syn-rift silts with occasional rapidly-deposited sands, at the railway bridge near Lothbeg. The river was low enough for me to hop across and take a photo from the other side: you can’t always do this. Weather a bit glum, but I was all excited because I found a fossil that came off a vertebrate:
I didn’t know what it was, but Tom the Palaeontologist says that it is a fin spine from a shark. He has packed it up carefully and taken it away. Whether it survives the trip home remains to be seen.
Day 6: Detour on the way home to see the (?) Triassic river deposits in Burghead harbour. The more you look at it, the more there is to see.
Further to the Jurassic Shark, Tom says that it is from the genus Hybodus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybodus)