Now in the UK, there are some names that bring a smile 
to the face, lets get it over with now, yes, it is really called Penistone 
. Penistone derives from penn the Primitive Welsh, which means head, end, top, height or hill, and the old English ing, a place-name forming suffix and tun, an enclosure, farmstead, village or estate. There is also a Penistone near Barnsley, but here we are just concerned with the West Yorkshire one.
The rocks of the Penistone area are Upper Carboniferous in age, so they are about 320 million years old. These rocks were laid down in deltas on the edge of a large continent, with mountains to the north and south. Sands and muds were deposited by rivers in shallow water. Because the continent was close to the equator, the climate was warm and wet so that tropical rain forest flourished. Dead plant material became trapped in stagnant swamps between river channels. Over geological time it was buried by muds and sands as the rivers in the delta changed position and built up more deposits. The water, oxygen and hydrogen were driven out of the plant remains, leaving only the carbon in coal seams. After the sediments were formed close to sea-level, they were buried by hundreds of metres of sediment and compressed. As the sea water was squeezed out, it carried minerals which cemented the sand and mud grains together to make rocks called sandstones and mudstones (shales). The rocks were tilted into a large fold, called the Pennine anticline, shortly after they were formed. The rocks of the Haworth area are close to the top of the anticline so they are nearly horizontal, which gives the flat plateaux surfaces you can see on the horizon. However, at Penistone Hill, the rocks dip at a few degrees to the south, so different sandstones outcrop near the top of the Hill. The sandstones in this area have different names. The Woodhouse Flags form the south side of Penistone Hill and have been quarried widely. The High Moor Sandstone (also called the Doubler Stones Sandstone) is older and is found on the north and west sides of the hill and has been quarried at Dimples Quarry. Both sandstone beds are not continuous and probably represented flood deposits in the delta area.
What we have at the earthcache location is sandstone, but look beyond that for now, and what does the rock reveal? We need to look for evidence of two geological features, fossils and slickensides. Lets start with fossils.
What is a fossil?
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous (fossil-containing) rock formations and sedimentary layers (Strata) is known as the fossil record.
The process of fossilization varies according to tissue type and external conditions.
(1) Permineralization
This is a process of fossilization that occurs when an organism is buried. The empty spaces within an organism (spaces filled with liquid or gas during life) become filled with mineral-rich groundwater. Minerals precipitate from the groundwater, occupying the empty spaces. This process can occur in very small spaces, such as within the cell wall of a plant cell. Small scale permineralization can produce very detailed fossils. For permineralization to occur, the organism must become covered by sediment soon after death or soon after the initial decay process. The degree to which the remains are decayed when covered determines the later details of the fossil. Some fossils consist only of skeletal remains or teeth; other fossils contain traces of skin, feathers or even soft tissues.
(2) Casts and Molds
In some cases the original remains of the organism completely dissolve or are otherwise destroyed. The remaining organism-shaped hole in the rock is called an external mold. If this hole is later filled with other minerals, it is a cast. An endocast or internal mold is formed when sediments or minerals fill the internal cavity of an organism, such as the inside of a bivalve or snail or the hollow of a skull.
(3) Authigenic mineralisation
This is a special form of cast and mold formation. If the chemistry is right, the organism (or fragment of organism) can act as a nucleus for the precipitation of minerals such as siderite, resulting in a nodule forming around it. If this happens rapidly before significant decay to the organic tissue, very fine three-dimensional morphological detail can be preserved.
(4) Replacement and recrystallization
Replacement occurs when the shell, bone or other tissue is replaced with another mineral. In some cases mineral replacement of the original shell occurs so gradually and at such fine scales that microstructural features are preserved despite the total loss of original material. A shell is said to be recrystallized when the original skeletal compounds are still present but in a different crystal form.
(5) Adpression (compression-impression)
Compression fossils such as those of fossil ferns, are the result of chemical reduction of the complex organic molecules composing the organism's tissues. In this case the fossil consists of original material, albeit in a geochemically altered state. This chemical change is an expression of diagenesis. Often what remains is known as a phytoleim, in which case the fossil is known as a compression. Often, however, the phytoleim is lost and all that remains is an impression of the organism in the rock—an impression fossil.
Among the three major types of rock, fossils are most commonly found in sedimentary rock. Unlike most igneous and metamorphic rocks, sedimentary rocks form at temperatures and pressures that do not destroy fossil remnants.
What have we got here?
What you can see is the remains of a Lepidodendron tree, also known as the scale tree, an extinct primitive, vascular, arborescent (tree -like) plant related to the club mosses. They were part of the coal forest flora. They sometimes reached heights of over 30 metres (100 ft), and the trunks were often over 1 m (3.3 ft) in diameter. They thrived during the Carboniferous Period before going extinct. They had tall, thick trunks that rarely branched and were topped with a crown of bifurcating branches bearing clusters of leaves . These leaves were long and narrow, similar to large blades of grass, and were spirally-arranged. The closely packed diamond-shaped leaf scars left on the trunk and stems as the plant grew provide some of the most interesting and common fossils in Carboniferous deposits. These fossils look much like tire tracks or alligator skin,and likely lived in the wettest parts of the coal swamps that existed during the Carboniferous period.
Slickensides
A slickenside is a smoothly polished surface caused by frictional movement between rocks along the two sides of a fault. This surface is normally striated in the direction of movement. The plane may be coated by mineral fibres that grew during the fault movement, known as slickenfibres, which also show the direction of displacement. Due to irregularities in the fault plane exposed slickenfibres typically have a stepped appearance that can be used to determine the sense of movement across the fault, such as vertical, diagonal or horizontal movement. The surface feels smoother when the hand is moved in the same direction that the eroded side of the fault moved , as the surface steps down in that direction.
A fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock, across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock mass movement. Large faults within the Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic forces, with the largest forming the boundaries between the plates. Energy release associated with rapid movement on active faults is the cause of most earthquakes.
The rocks were tilted into a large fold, called the Pennine anticline, shortly after they were formed. The rocks of the Haworth area are close to the top of the anticline so they are nearly horizontal, which gives the flat plateaux surfaces you can see on the horizon. However, at Penistone Hill, the rocks dip at a few degrees to the south, so different sandstones outcrop near the top of the Hill.
An anticline is a type of fold that is an arch-like shape and has its oldest beds at its core. A typical anticline is convex up in which the hinge or crest is the location where the curvature is greatest, and the limbs are the sides of the fold that dip away from the hinge. Anticlines can be recognized and differentiated from antiforms by a sequence of rock layers that become progressively older toward the center of the fold.
This being an earthcache, in order to log it, I ask that you answer some questions. Please send them to me, and do not include them in your log. You can send them to me by using the message facility or email, both of which can be found by looking at my profile. Don't worry, not looking for PhD standard here, remember this is friendly Yorkshire .
1. Please describe the sandstone, what does it feel like, and what is its colour?
2. Please examine the Lepidodendron fossil, how is it different from the rest of the sandstone? What does it feel and look like?
3. What type of fossil is it?
4 Now, please look over this area of sandstone, you will need to examine the whole face. Please find the areas of Slickensides, feel them, how are they different to the rest of the rock?
5. Now the slickensides have lines, these can tell you whether the movement of the fault was vertical, diagonal or horizontal. Please look at the lines and tell me, which of the three you think they are.