Subduction-related accretion of fault-defined tracts built up the Southern Uplands terrane during the final stages of closure of the Iapetus Ocean (Llandovery to Wenlock). Contrasts in depositional environment and pronounced differences in geochemical composition, provenance studies and metamorphic grade across the Laurieston Fault between the Gala and Hawick groups, suggests that it has a greater regional significance than most other tract-bounding structures. Initiated by underthrusting, and acting as a locus for subsequent sinistral strike-slip, the fault overlies a regional gravity anomaly gradient that is interpreted to be due, in part, to a concealed NW-ward dipping shallow basement surface. This is modelled as an open ramp in the NE that steepens to a near-vertical step along-strike to the SW. A change in structural geometry noted at the Laurieston Fault, with excision of accretionary tracts, is related to a period of oblique closure of the Iapetus Ocean. The youngest Gala Group tracts were accreted during a period of intense transpression to form a regional strike-slip duplex over the shallow basement ramp with termination of the tracts at the Laurieston Fault, its surface expression. The ramp acted as an obstacle to forward-breaking thrust progress, forcing the out-of-sequence thrusting and repetitive thrust imbrication noted in the eastern Southern Uplands. Upper Palaeozoic reactivation of this basement structure may have transferred strain between extensional Permian basins.

The progressive changes in the provenance of Silurian greywacke turbidites in the Southern Uplands terrane reflect geotectonic events at the Laurentian continental margin during closure of the Iapetus Ocean. In the northern Gala Group, juvenile andesitic detritus in some beds gives εNd values no lower than −4·2; more commonly, quartzo-feldspathic greywackes have εNd values in the −5·5 to −6·7 range, produced by the mixing of juvenile plutonic and Proterozoic basement detritus during arc unroofing. In the southern (younger) Gala Group, Proterozoic εNd values range down from −7·7 to −11·2 with only sporadic evidence for a juvenile component. An abrupt change is seen between the Gala Group and its tectonostratigraphical successor, the Hawick Group. In the latter, εNd values have a compact range between −4·7 and −6·6, indicating the renewed dominance of a more juvenile, plutonic provenance. Regional variations in the Sr/Rb ratio suggest that this was more evolved than the source of the Gala Group plutonic material. The Wenlock greywackes of the Riccarton Group have εNd values in the range −5·1 to −7·8, overlapping with the Hawick Group and with coeval greywackes from both the Midland Valley and Lakesman terranes. Overall, the data support proposals that the Iapetus Ocean had effectively closed by mid-Silurian times. Conversely, data from greywacke boulders in the basal Old Red Sandstone conglomerate of the Midland Valley terrane militate against its Wenlock juxtaposition with the Southern Uplands.