The Altar Stone story is already discredited

If you can't be bothered to get some samples yourself, just go out and 

do some shopping..............

OMG -- In his "Digging Deeper" blog, Mike Pitts reports the following, which I had missed in my quick reading of the "Nature" article.

Sample sources:

ALTAR STONE
1 National Museum of Wales ( assumed to have been excavated Hawley in the 1920s)
2 Salisbury Museum (assumed to have been collected from the underside of the Altar Stone in 1844)

ORCADIAN BASIN SAMPLES
Two Old Red Sandstone rock samples from the Orcadian Basin, bought from Natural Wonders Ltd, Whitby:
1 Cruaday, Orkney
2 near Spittal, Caithness

I checked this out, and it is indeed true.  Under "specimen provenance" in the extra info at the end of the paper, we read:  "We also analysed two sections of Old Red Sandstone rock from the Orcadian Basin (CQ1 and AQ1). CQ1 is from Cruaday, Orkney (59°04'34.2" N, 3°18'54.6" W), and AQ1 is from near Spittal, Caithness (58°28'13.8" N, 3°27'33.6" W). Both Orcadian Basin geological rock samples were purchased from the UK company: Natural Wonders ltd Registered office 20 Grape Lane, Whitby, YO22 4BA, North Yorkshire, Company Registration Number 05427798." 

 

There is no word about the formations or stratigraphic positions from which these samples have come.

This means that all four of the key samples have come from unverified or unvalidated sources, and that the team behind this paper has done no fieldwork whatsoever. This is quite extraordinary, as it undermines completely any claim that they might have to being a team of serious scientists.  They have also done no fieldwork on any of the other samples (and "characteristic signatures) which are supposedly representative of the other "terranes" from which the Altar Stone might have come.  All of these signature graphs have come from previously published sources.  For example, the Phillips article on the ORS of the Midland Basin contains a graph (or signature) from the Silurian Llandovery-Wenlock sandstones which are deemed to be representative of the whole of the  Midland valley ORS, with outcrops c 10,000 sq km in extent and up to 8 km thick.  

Why should anybody believe that the Midland Valley samples -- or indeed any of those cited for the Anglo-Welsh Basin, Ganderia, East Avalonia or anywhere else -- are truly characteristic of the vast expanses and thicknesses of ORS rocks scattered across the British Isles?  More to the point, how can the authors possibly claim, on the basis of the miniscule amount of research that has been done, that the Altar Stone could not possibly have come from anywhere, other than Orcadia?

But back to the 4 key samples that form the basis for this research and the fact that not one of those samples has been properly sourced or validated.  How on earth can they have been so stupid?