The tectono-magmatic evolution of Southern Kintyre

Hundebøll, Victor (2026) The tectono-magmatic evolution of Southern Kintyre. MSc(R) thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Southern Kintyre is a remote and understudied area on the Scottish mainland, lying just north of the Highland Boundary Fault and underlain by the Southern Highland and Argyll groups of the Neoproterozoic-Cambrian Dalradian Supergroup. Southern Kintyre hosts igneous and contemporary sedimentary rocks of Devonian and Carboniferous age and limited exposure of Palaeogene igneous rocks. The Devonian rocks represent an outlier of Old Red Sandstone affinity but with an uncertain correlation with the stratigraphy elsewhere in Scotland. An extensive Carboniferous igneous record is only partly explored. Indeed, knowledge of Southern Kintyre’s geological record relies mostly on publications and maps from the early-mid 20th century, predating modern terminology and process-based interpretation. This thesis is therefore a re-analysis of Southern Kintyre’s tectono-magmatic evolution, incorporating data from new field observations, petrography, geochronology from UPb zircon laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, and wholerock geochemistry, to study the nature, age and petrogenesis of igneous rock exposures and their contemporary geological settings. Included is a detrital zircon study of the Lower Old Red Sandstone formations as they are predominantly of volcanogenic origin. Key outcomes of the study are as follows:

1. Dating of Devonian Lower Old Red Sandstone deposition between 419.7 ± 1.9 and 410 ± 3.3 Ma based on the weighted mean of the youngest zircon populations, and thus their correlation with the Lanark and Arbuthnott-Garvock groups in the Midland Valley of Scotland.

2. Devonian sediment was sourced from an igneous centre to the NW, potentially near Islay, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, based on zircon age profiles and palaeocurrents from previous authors.

3. A re-interpretation of some previously mapped Devonian volcanic ‘vents’ as channel- or as fluvial lenses of reworked volcanic rock.

4. Recognition of isolated Carboniferous exposures as part of a felsic magmatic episode, perhaps the largest of its type in Scotland, with an interpretation that there were likely to have been explosive eruptions and the generation of pyroclastic density currents resulting in the formation of at least one lava-like ignimbrite body.

5. The first description of felsic lapilli tuffs in Kintyre, plausibly linked to Palaeogene magmatism elsewhere in western Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Future work should focus on the wider correlation of Devonian sedimentary rocks located on Sanda Island, offshore Kintyre on the south of the Highland Boundary Fault. There is also potential to investigate how geological structures across South Kintyre and Sanda Island relate to the history of the Highland Boundary Fault. Overall, this study demonstrates the scientific merit of re-evaluating historically under-investigated regions of Scotland.

• Item Type: Thesis (MSc(R))
• Qualification Level: Masters
• Colleges/Schools: College of Science and Engineering > School of Geographical and Earth Sciences
• Supervisor's Name: Neill, Dr. Iain and Brown, Dr. David
• Date of Award: 2026
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2026-86091
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 01 Jul 2026 09:08
• Last Modified: 01 Jul 2026 09:38
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.86091
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/86091

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