Photo 28. Thick, dune bedded, iron oxide reddened, desert sandstones in road cuttings near Ruthin, in north-east Wales. Structures like this formed large areas of sand dunes across north-east Wales and the Cheshire Basin through much of Permian and Triassic times, when Wales was located in the low latitude desert belt within the large super-continent of Pangea, perhaps in a similar setting to the deserts of North Africa today. Porous and permeable, thick dune-bedded sandstones like these also extend to the north and west, beneath the eastern basin of the Irish Sea, where they were filled with hydrocarbons from the older, organic carbon rich Carboniferous age Bowland and Holywell shales.
Photo 28. Thick, dune bedded, iron oxide reddened, desert sandstones in road cuttings near Ruthin, in north-east Wales. Structures like this formed large areas of sand dunes across north-east Wales and the Cheshire Basin through much of Permian and Triassic times, when Wales was located in the low latitude desert belt within the large super-continent of Pangea, perhaps in a similar setting to the deserts of North Africa today. Porous and permeable, thick dune-bedded sandstones like these also extend to the north and west, beneath the eastern basin of the Irish Sea, where they were filled with hydrocarbons from the older, organic carbon rich Carboniferous age Bowland and Holywell shales.