Schiehallion Boulder Bed

Schiehallion Boulder Bed at Lassintulloch

Pink granite in the Schiehallion Boulder bed at Lassintulloch

The Schiehallion Boulder bed is a very unusual rock, which is about 600 million years old. It is thought that is developed because pebbles and boulders of pink granite from Greenland were transported to Scotland by floating ice (there were at least three periods of glaciation in the Dalradian). When the ice melted the granite rained down on the sea floor where it was included in the settling sediment. Over millions of years the accumulating thickness of sediment and earth movement compacted and crushed the sediment of the sea floor into the rock which we now name Schiehallion Boulder Bed. It outcrops around the shoulder of Schiehallion and at East Tempar. There is a large Boulder of the rock to be found at Lassintulloch and there are further outcrops stretch south west as far at Port Askaig on the island of Islay.

The original granite in Greenland has now disappeared altogether as a result of erosion.