Old Red Sandstone

The Old Red Sandstone is an assemblage of rocks in the North Atlantic region largely of Devonian age. It extends in the east across Britain, Ireland and Norway and in the west along the northeastern seaboard of North America. It also extends northwards into Greenland and Svalbard. In Britain it is a lithostratigraphic unit (a sequence of rock strata) to which stratigraphers accord supergroup status and which is of considerable importance to early paleontology. For convenience the short version of the term, ORS is often used in literature on the subject. The term was coined to distinguish the sequence from the younger New Red Sandstone which also occurs widely throughout Britain.

Sedimentology

The Old Red Sandstone describes a suite of sedimentary rocks deposited in a variety of environments during the Devonian but extending back into the late Silurian and on into the earliest part of the Carboniferous. The body of rock, or facies, is dominated by alluvial sediments and conglomerates at its base, and progresses to a combination of dunes, lakes and river sediments.

Sandstone

Sandstone (sometimes known as arenite) is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.

Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any color, but the most common colors are: tan, brown, yellow, red, grey, pink, white, and black. Since sandstone beds often form highly visible cliffs and other topographic features, certain colors of sandstone have been strongly identified with certain regions.

Rock formations that are primarily composed of sandstone usually allow percolation of water and other fluids and are porous enough to store large quantities, making them valuable aquifers and petroleum reservoirs. Fine-grained aquifers, such as sandstones, are better able to filter out pollutants from the surface than are rocks with cracks and crevices, such as limestone or other rocks fractured by seismic activity.

Quartz-bearing sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tectonic compression within orogenic belts.

Red Sandstone

Red sandstone is sandstone appearing red due to the inclusion of iron oxides (hematite). Red Sandstone may also refer to:

See also

Ashbel Smith Building

The Ashbel Smith Building, also known as Old Red, is a Romanesque Revival building located in Galveston, Texas. It was built in 1891 with red brick and sandstone. Nicholas J. Clayton was the architect. It was the first University of Texas Medical Branch building.

In 1949, the building named for Ashbel Smith, a Republic of Texas diplomat and one of the founders of the University of Texas system. The building was registered as a Texas Historical Landmark in 1969 and renovated in 1985.

In 2008, Old Red was flooded with six feet of water by Hurricane Ike.

References