Ashfield Shale | |
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Stratigraphic range: | |
Type | Geological formation |
Unit of | Wiannamatta group |
Sub-units | Kellyville Laminite Member, Mulgoa Laminite Member, Regentville Siltstone Member, Rouse Hill Siltstone Member |
Overlies | Mittagong Formation |
Thickness | up to 64 metres (210 ft) |
Lithology | |
Primary | Shale |
Location | |
Location | Sydney Basin |
Country | Australia |
Type section | |
Named for | Ashfield |
Ashfield Shale is part of the Wianamatta group of sedimentary rocks in the Sydney Basin. It lies directly on contemporaneously eroded Hawkesbury sandstone or the Mittagong formation. These rock types were formed in the Triassic Period. [1] It is named after the Sydney suburb of Ashfield. Some of the early research was performed at the old Ashfield Brickworks Quarry. This rock type is often associated with the Inner West and North Shore of the city. However, it has also been recorded at Penrith, Revesby, Bilpin and Mount Irvine.
Ashfield Shale comprises black mudstones and grey shales with frequent sideritic clay ironstone bands. The thickness ranges between 45 and 64 metres. [1] It is 20 metres thick at the Sydney Olympic Site. [2] The chemistry of the rock is typical of shales, with high iron levels, and some iron sulphide and low calcium levels. The geology of the shale lenses within the Hawkesbury Sandstone is chemically similar to the Ashfield Shale. [1] At Turramurra 33 metres remains and formerly there was a good deep exposure of it at the Railway Station until this suffered shotcreting.[ citation needed ]
Small scale bedding is abundant. The shales are sandy at the top of the sequence. There are up to ten bands in a fifteen-metre section. The fine grained silty sediments were laid down in a low energy, south-east flowing deltaic setting, near the shores of a shallow sea. Ashfield Shale underlies the Prospect dolerite intrusion in Pemulwuy.
Natural selection in which the Ashfield Shale is completely exposed is rare. However, it can be seen at railway and roadside cuttings, as well as old quarries. With weathering and exposure, the shale becomes a paler colour.
Weathering of the shale units produces a reddish/brown podsolic soil, often with poor drainage, such as that in the Cumberland Plain. [3] These clay soils are recognised as being reactive with an appreciable shrink-swell capacity.
The adjacent Hawkesbury Sandstone is considered a safer bedrock than the (less stable and laminated) Ashfield Shale for building construction. In 2005, the construction of the Lane Cove Tunnel was affected by the collapse of an exit ramp excavation, through Ashfield Shale. [4] Difficulties may be encountered where the Ashfield Shale interfaces with the Hawkesbury Sandstone and the Mittagong Formation. [5]
Ashfield Shale is associated with the critically endangered Blue Gum High Forest and Sydney Turpentine-Ironbark Forest. [6] [7]
In the earlier days of Sydney, the Ashfield Shale supported a number of quarries. The shale provided a suitable raw material for brickmaking. [6] Sydney soils based on shale are not particularly fertile. But at Parramatta they proved more suitable to agriculture than those at Farm Cove, in the early days of the First Fleet.
Ashfield Shale is considered a freshwater lacustrine paleoenvironment. It was gradually inundated by brackish water, then shallow marine waters over a long period of time.
Fossils are not common in this stratum, however, fossil bivalves, plants, isopods, insects and amphibians have been recorded. One outstanding example being of a Paracyclotosaurus [1] at St Peters, 2.25 metres long. It is one of the most complete mastodonsaurid skeletons ever recovered. Notobrachyops is a genus of brachyopid temnospondyl amphibian. It is known from a skull roof impression found in the Ashfield Shale at the old Hurstville Brick Company quarry at Mortdale.
The Ashfield Shale has also yielded a shark species, a lungfish species, six species of paleoniscid fish, a species of holostean fish, and a subholostean fish. [8]
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Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park is a national park on the northern side of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia. The 14,977-hectare (37,010-acre) park is 25 kilometres (16 mi) north of the Sydney central business district and generally comprises the land east of the M1 Pacific Motorway, south of the Hawkesbury River, west of Pittwater and north of Mona Vale Road. It includes Barrenjoey Headland on the eastern side of Pittwater.
The Sydney Basin is an interim Australian bioregion and is both a structural entity and a depositional area, now preserved on the east coast of New South Wales, Australia and with some of its eastern side now subsided beneath the Tasman Sea. The basin is named for the city of Sydney, on which it is centred.
Barrenjoey is a locality in the suburb of Palm Beach, at the most northern tip of Pittwater. The headland is made up primarily of sandstones of the Newport Formation, the top third is a cap of Hawkesbury sandstone. Around 10,000 years ago the headland was cut off from the mainland due to the rising sea level; subsequent buildup of a sand spit or tombolo reconnected the island to the mainland. It is the location of the Barrenjoey Head Lighthouse, a lighthouse that was first lit in 1881. In 1995 Barrenjoey was gazetted into Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.
Mount Gibraltar is a mountain with an elevation of 863 metres (2,831 ft) AHD that is located in the Southern Highlands region, between Bowral and Mittagong, in New South Wales, Australia. Further west is Berrima.
The geography of Sydney is characterised by its coastal location on a basin bordered by the Pacific Ocean to the east, the Blue Mountains to the west, the Hawkesbury River to the north and the Woronora Plateau to the south. Sydney lies on a submergent coastline on the east coast of New South Wales, where the ocean level has risen to flood deep river valleys (rias) carved in the Sydney sandstone. Port Jackson, better known as Sydney Harbour, is one such ria.
The Cumberland Plain, also known as Cumberland Basin, is a relatively flat region lying to the west of Sydney CBD in New South Wales, Australia. An IBRA biogeographic region, Cumberland Basin is the preferred physiographic and geological term for the low-lying plain of the Permian-Triassic Sydney Basin found between Sydney and the Blue Mountains, and it is a structural sub-basin of the Sydney Basin.
The Sydney Turpentine-Ironbark Forest (STIF) is a wet sclerophyll forest community of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, that is typically found in the Inner West and Northern region of Sydney. It is also among the three of these plant communities which have been classified as Endangered, under the New South Wales government's Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995, with only around 0.5% of its original pre-settlement range remaining.
The Wianamatta Group is a geological feature of the Sydney Basin, New South Wales, Australia that directly overlies the older Hawkesbury sandstone and generally comprise fine grained sedimentary rocks such as shales and laminites as well as less common sandstone units.
Notobrachyops is a genus of brachyopid temnospondyl amphibian. It is known from a skull roof impression found in the Ashfield Shale of Mortdale, New South Wales, Australia. The Ashfield Shale has also yielded a shark species, a lungfish species, six species of paleoniscid fish, a species of holostean fish, a subholostean fish, and the labyrinthodont amphibian Paracyclotosaurus davidi.
Platycepsion wilksoni is an extinct species of prehistoric amphibian, known from partial skeleton deposited in shale at the Gosford Quarry site of the Terrigal Formation in Australia. This specimen may represent a larval stage, as denoted by the presence of external gills, making it the first evidence of larval development in stereospondyls.
The Mittagong Formation is a sedimentary rock unit in the Sydney Basin in eastern Australia.
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The Blue Gum High Forest of the Sydney Basin Bioregion is a wet sclerophyll forest found in the northern parts of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It has been classified as critically endangered, under the New South Wales government's Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995. The principal canopy trees in this forest community are Sydney blue gum and blackbutt which are usually seen between 20 and 40 metres tall. 180 species of indigenous plants have been identified at Dalrymple-Hay Nature Reserve.
Bringelly Shale is a component of the Wianamatta group of sedimentary rocks in the Sydney Basin of eastern Australia. Formed in the Triassic Period, it has an extensive outcrop in the western parts of Sydney. The shale has its greatest geographical extent at Bringelly, near the suburb of Liverpool.
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