Category: Palaeontology
Book review: The Trilobite Collector’s Guide, by Andy Secher
It’s that time of year again, with Christmas hurrying upon us, that our thoughts turn to presents for that fossil-loving friend, relative, and certainly the reader him or herself. And what better than a sumptuously illustrated coffee table book, with forwards by some high class palaeontologists, namely, the good and the great Richard Fortey and NHM aficionado, Melanie Hopkins? Well, this is it – look no further.
They were thought to be long extinct
Deborah Painter (USA) It’s all about time, rocks and living things. When humans make attempts to record the distant past, there will be gaps in our knowledge. Historians and archaeologists have the luxury of the written word and of the preservation of culture in the form of fences and aqueducts, … Read More
An early specimen of ‘AMMONITES Walcotii’ and Sowerby’s ‘Mineral Conchology’
Ru D A Smith (Malaysia) A fascinating aspect of palaeontology is the history of early descriptions and the process of assigning and revising the scientific names of fossils. A recently discovered nineteenth century ammonite specimen discussed here provides a vivid illustration of the sometimes tortuous process and can be connected … Read More
The hand-beast of Blackwaterfoot, Isle of Arran
Neil D L Clark (UK) In about 1999, a single, fossilised footprint was discovered on the Isle of Arran, off the west coast of Scotland (Fig. 1). It was known of before this, but kept secret in case it was vandalised. At that time, it was the first, and only … Read More
Fossils from Denmark (Part 3): Getting exercise walking the beaches of Denmark
Niles Laurids Viby (Denmark) I have written a few articles for this magazine on specific formations here in Denmark. However, a lot of local fossil collecting is done simply by walking along the seashore. Some beaches are fronted by cliffs – and some of those are base rock, like the … Read More
De Kuilen: A Dutch treasure trove of Neogene vertebrates
P Formanoy and HJ Ahrens (The Netherlands) De Kuilen is a wet sandpit forming a lake and recreational area located near the small village of Langenboom, about 15 miles south of Nijmegen, in the eastern part of the Dutch province of Noord-Brabant (Fig. 1). Among fossil collectors, the site is … Read More
A passion for fossils of mammalian ancestors leads to prize-winning PhD
Steve Koppes (USA) When he was still a high school student in Florida, Christian Kammerer turned his unusually keen, critical eye to reports about some enigmatic new synapsid fossils from Russia. He wondered — had the discoverers of these bizarre, mammal-like reptiles misinterpreted their finds? Kammerer shot off an email … Read More
Does the ground sloth, Mylodon darwinii, still survive in South America?
Dr Ross Barnett and Simon Sylvester In Zoology, nothing is more exciting than the rediscovery of an animal previously thought long extinct. The coelacanth (Latimera chalumnae) and the ivory-bill woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) are two famous recent examples of ‘Lazarus’ taxa. Well-publicised rediscoveries like these promote the idea that refugia containing … Read More
Fossils of the West Somerset coast
Neale Monks (UK) The West Somerset coastline, between Blue Anchor and Lilstock, exposes an almost complete succession of strata from the latest Triassic well into the Early Jurassic (Fig. 1). Fossils are abundant throughout, mostly invertebrates such as ammonites, brachiopods and oysters, but also with vertebrate remains at certain horizons. … Read More
Trace fossils of Redhill Ridge’s Dakota sandstones
Chris Retzlaff (USA) The Redhill Ridge area in Park County, Colorado is a hogback composed of Dakota Sandstone. This fine-grained, Cretaceous sediment – near the town of Fairplay – contains trace fossils (Figs. 1 and 2) that help palaeontologists understand what the environment was like there, more than 65 million … Read More
A personal view of the strange horizons of bear, hyena, cro-magnon and neanderthal in the caves of Soyons
Rob Hope (Franc) I worked over several summer seasons as a museum assistant and bilingual guide in the karstic cavern system of Soyons, in France’s rocky Ardéche region. Here, seven large caves hide a fantastic kaleidoscope of ancient organic reminders from the later shadows of the Pleistocene (Quaternary). Running parallel … Read More
Fabulous Fossils exhibition at Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery
Dean Lomax (UK) Dr Dean Lomax is now well known from his books, television appearances and especially for his work on marine reptiles. However, before all this, he wrote this article for Issue 21 of Deposits. After returning from a long summer working in the USA at the Wyoming Dinosaur … Read More
Book review: Geologists’ Association Guide No. 77 – Cumbria, compiled and edited by Richard Wrigley
In many ways, this updated guide is exactly what I want from a GA guide – extensive coverage, well written, and oodles of colourful photos and graphics. I liked and used the previous edition (GA No. 2), and it’s a shame that, for example, the Ordovician site of Stockdale Quarry has disappeared, but it – and no doubt other locations – has been replaced by, what I suspect, are just as good, if not better, sites.
Dinosaurs at the Nebraska State capitol
Neale Monks (UK) Not many palaeontologists would go on a field trip to the Houses of Parliament in London, but if you do something similar in the state of Nebraska, you will be surprised to find a whole variety of prehistoric life, including dinosaurs (Fig. 1), ammonites and trilobites. The … Read More
Mull’s famous leaf beds
Rosalind Jones On the Hebridean island of Mull, on a day just before 1850, when potato famine and clearances brought misery to the Highlands and Islands, a man (perhaps collecting shellfish to stave off starvation) ventured down into a wind-swept gully on the Ross of Mull. Known as Slochd an … Read More
More on the dinosaurs of the Booth Museum, Brighton
John A Cooper (UK) The legacy of Gideon Mantell’s fossil collection, sold to the British Museum in 1833, would have been so much more significant to Brighton had he been successful in establishing a permanent Sussex scientific institute to house it. In his article, Gideon Mantel and the dinosaur relic, … Read More
Shining white ammonites: remarkable ammonites from the Posidonia Shales, Southern Germany
Stephen Lautenschlager (Germany) The Lower Jurassic Posidonia Shale Formation of Southern Germany belongs to one of the most famous fossil lagerstätten in the world. Its sediments – finely laminated marly claystones – were deposited in a shallow, inland (epicontinental) sea, the Tethys Ocean, under tropical conditions. The dark grey colour … Read More
Gideon Mantel and the dinosaur relic
Rob Hope (France) A break from work, and also from reading about the history of palaeontology, enabled me to get away for a while. And a chance visit to the south of England found me driving through the lovely Sussex town of Lewes. Held up by a red light, I … Read More
Climate events let ice age mammoths go far below 40° north
Dick Mol (Netherlands) and Ralf-Dietrich Kahlke (Germany) The remains of four mammoth bulls have been discovered in southern Spain. They lived about 30 to 40 thousand years ago near Padul, a small city in today’s Granada. These are Europe’s most southerly skeletal remains of Mammuthus primigenius (Fig. 1) and were … Read More
A tiny waterfront town’s Big Fossil festival
Deborah Painter (USA) The breezes from the estuarine Pamlico Sound, which reach the tiny coastal town of Aurora, North Carolina in the USA along a meandering tributary, sometimes carry the evocative and not unpleasant ambiance of salt, mixed with decomposed estuarine life, such as fish, clams, crabs and other “shellfish”. … Read More