The Dalradian Supergroup (informally and traditionally the Dalradian) is a stratigraphic unit (a sequence of rock strata) in the lithostratigraphy of the Grampian Highlands of Scotland and in the north and west of Ireland. The diverse assemblage of rocks which constitute the supergroup extend across Scotland from Islay in the west to Fraserburgh in the east and are confined by the Great Glen Fault to the northwest and the Highland Boundary Fault to the southeast. Much of Shetland east of the Walls Boundary Fault is also formed from Dalradian rocks. Dalradian rocks extend across the north of Ireland from County Antrim in the north east to Clifden on the Atlantic coast, although obscured by later Palaeogene lavas and tuffs or Carboniferous rocks in large sections. Historical The land to the southeast of the Great Glen was the old Celtic region of Dál Riata (Dalriada), and in 1891 Archibald Geikie proposed the name Dalradian as a convenient provisional designation for the complicated set of rocks to which it was then difficult to assign a definite position in the stratigraphical sequence. In Archibald Geikie's words, "they consist in large proportion of altered sedimentary strata, now found in the form of mica-schist, graphite-schist, andalusite-schist, phyllite, schistose grit, greywacke and conglomerate, quartzite, limestone and other rocks, together with epidiorites, chlorite-schists, hornblende schists and other allied varieties, which probably mark sills, lava-sheets or beds of tuff, intercalated among the sediments. The total thickness of this assemblage of rocks must be many thousand feet." The Dalradian Series (as then defined) included the "Eastern or Younger schists" of eastern Sutherland, Ross-shire and Inverness-shire, the Moine gneiss, as well as the metamorphosed igneous and sedimentary rocks of the central, eastern and southwestern Scottish Highlands. Age The Dalradian is largely of Neoproterozoic (Sturtian to Vendian) age but likely extending into the Cambrian and possibly the Ordovician with the youngest rocks being at least 470 million years old. The oldest part of the sequence may be around 800 million years old. Sub-units The supergroup is composed of four groups which in stratigraphic order i.e. youngest at top, are: Southern Highland Group Argyll Group Appin Group Grampian Group The upper three groups are applied to Ireland too; the Grampian Group is not recorded here nor in Shetland where the Dalradian is divided into a Clift Hills ‘Division’ which equates to the Southern Highland Group, a Whiteness ‘Division’ which equates to the