GEOLOGICAL HIGHLIGHTS - Fossil Lightning Strike

When lightning strikes sand, the heat causes the sand to be fused together in a tube-like shape, the center remaining filled with soft sediment. Such structures are termed fulgurites.

Dune-bedded Permian sandstones from Corrie and the Cock of Arran have yielded such fossil lightning strikes. These examples consist of a near colourless tube of fused sand, which has begun to devitrify, filled with oxidized red sand. Fossil fulgarites are very rare indeed, they should not under any circumstances be hammered or collected.

The images shows a fossil lightening strike found in Permian desert sands on Arran, along the shoreline near Corrie.

The scale is in centimetres.