On Footprints from the Permian of Mansfield (Nottinghamshire)

Abstract

It is the object of this brief communication to call attention to a series of footprints discovered so long ago as October 1897 by Mr. Francis Holmes, of Leicester, the description of which has been delayed by the lamented death of the geologist to whom we owe their preservation, the late Mr. James Shipman, F.G.S., of Nottingham. I. Notes on the Strata These impressions were obtained from the Rock-Valley Quarry, Mansfield, in the Permian rocks north-east of the town, some 500 yards from the Permo-Triassic boundary, where they are overlapped by the Lower Mottled Sandstone. The rock which is here quarried is a lenticular mass of sandstone intercalated in the Magnesian Limestone, described by Aveline in the Geological Survey-Memoir on Sheet 82 S.E. 2nd ed. (1879) pp. 10–12, as a locally-sandy type of the limestone, passing laterally into the normal type. The stone is here yellowish-red in colour, becoming almost white on the opposite side of the town. It is by no means pure sandstone throughout, but contains irregular bands of ‘bastard,’ a term used by the quarrymen to indicate a calcareous sandstone. Every gradation may be found between a pure sandstone and the almost pure limestone. The general succession in this quarry appears to be as follows, in descending order, though all the beds vary greatly in thickness: