Geograph - photograph every grid square

View towards Cullernose Point.

Directly below the cliff on which the photographer stands is the surface bearing some of the oldest footprints in Britain, belonging to an amphibian probably part of the Baropezia family. They occur on a thin layer of mud upon the surface of a sandstone bed deposited by a small delta on a coastal plain dated to the Namurian stage of the Carboniferous period. They were preserved by subsequent deposition of a thin sandstone from the flooding of a nearby channel. Abandonment of the area led to the growth of plants and the formation of a thin coal seam, so that the footprint sandstone was rootleted to form a seatearth. The Howick footprints average 18 cm in length and 14 cm in width. They are now much eroded and very hard to see.
Amphibian footprints from the mid-Carboniferous of Northumberland, England: Sedimentological context, preservation and significance. Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology 113(2):335-349, February 1995.