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Close ✕The Altar Stone is traced to north-east Scotland
2024-08 · Recorded · culture
The source states this happened, and its date is not in the future. The word the source used for it is observed.
Clarke, Kirkland and colleagues report in Nature that the recumbent Altar Stone at Stonehenge is not Welsh sandstone as long assumed but matches Old Red Sandstone of the Orcadian Basin in north-east Scotland, implying transport of a six-tonne block over several hundred kilometres. It changes the geography of the monument's supply network, and it changes it after two centuries of confident attribution to Wales.
- Source
- Nature (Springer Nature); Anthony J. I. Clarke, Christopher L. Kirkland and colleagues · Nature, vol. 632 (2024), published 14 August 2024
- Standing
- This record: partially verified · publisher: partially verified
- How it arrived
- Editorial — A dated record from the Richseen Atlas editorial corpus, written and cited by a curator. Not captured from anywhere, and not live.
- Where
- At a canonical Atlas object, placed and checked by a curator.
- Subject
- Stonehenge
Sources polled — usgs: newest 2026-09-10 · nws: newest 2026-09-10 · jpl-cneos: states no publication time, last reached 2026-09-10 · Official source connected · Basemap: Natural Earth (public domain) — marks are drawn only from sourced coordinates