The Carboniferous Rocks between the Ox Mountains and Donegal Bay

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Abstract
Summary: The area covers an outcrop of some 230 square miles of Lower Carboniferous rocks in the counties of Sligo, Leitrim and southern Donegal. The strata were laid down in what became a deep basin of sedimentation floored by Dalradian and Moine Series between the Ox Mountains and the Donegal and Londonderry mountains in the north. They are folded into a gentle syncline—the Sligo syncline—with a NE.-SW. axis, and are bounded on the south by the Ox Mountains fault. A conformable succession of nearly 4000 feet of very fossiliferous strata (calp overlain by massive limestone) is present. It is readily divisible into a series of litho-logical groups which exhibit a constant thickness except where the contemporaneous anticlinal effect of the Ox Mountains chain has reduced particularly the lower members. A fossiliferous reef limestone, which occurs as lenticular masses over large areas, is locally developed in the upper limestone : it exhibits a knoll topography at one locality and the Glenade Beds, which rest unconformably on it, appear to be banked round it. The succession extends from C 2 S 1 to D 1 , mainly in a Caninia facies. The overlying Glenade shales and sandstones contain goniatites characteristic of P 1 and P 2 .

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