Animals – not plants Despite their common name ‘sea lilies’, crinoids are animals but not plants, although they look like a flower (Fig. 1). They are related to the sea urchins, sea cucumbers and starfish, […]
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Category: geology
From pencils to programming and graphene: graphite’s role in the transmission of knowledge
Once a mystery substance thought to be a type of lead, graphite is now one of the most vital components in the ever-expanding world of complex electronics. But this ‘mineral of extremes’ is more than […]
Caught between two mass extinctions – the rise and fall of Dicroidium
In the aftermath of Earth’s greatest biotic crisis 251.9 million years ago – the end-Permian mass extinction – a group of plants arose that would come to dominate the flora of the Southern Hemisphere. Recovery […]
Akal Wood Fossil Park, Rajasthan, India
The Akal Wood Fossil Park is located about 18km from the desert city of Jaisalmer in Rajasthan, India. It has preserved fossil evidence dating back to the Jurassic Period (Fig. 6) indicating a hot and […]
A shining hill in the Arizona desert
In the area east of the small community of Bagdad and on the northeast edge of the Arrastra Mountain Wilderness of central Arizona in the USA, my friends, Terril, Yvette and David, stood with me […]
Urban geology: productid brachiopods in Amsterdam and Utrecht
The most obvious manifestations of geological materials in the urban environment are building and facing stones, and similar rocks used in street furniture, such as kerbstones. As a Londoner, SKD was impressed as a boy […]
The very down-to-earth Vasquez rocks portray the surface of alien planets for the media
They have become associated with stark alien or other-dimensional landscapes since the 1960s, when the popular American television programme Star Trek used them as dramatic backdrops in two episodes, “Arena” and “Friday’s Child”. Prior to […]
Jesse’s Jaunts: New Zealand North Island – Part 1
Auckland and the AVF In a thick brain fog, crusty eyed and yawning, I sat up in bed at 4:30 am. I was in Auckland, New Zealand. It was still dark outside when I drove […]
How to recognise a pistol shrimp in the fossil record
Alpheid shrimps, colloquially referred to as “pistol shrimps”, exhibit a remarkable anatomical adaptation. These tiny marine crustaceans use their enlarged and highly modified claw to ‘shoot’ at their prey – hence their name. It is […]
The geology of Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), considered one of the greatest painters of all time, used his knowledge of geology to inform his art. Leonardo was also noted for his work in sculpture, anatomy, mathematics, architecture, and […]
“Cannibal the animal” – the making of a monster
A hellish monstrosity of an animal – like a beastly entity taken straight out of your worst nightmare – has come to sculptural life. And it has Death Metal, primordial life and Alex Webster written […]
Crinoids at Hartington
Much of the secondary railway route in Derbyshire, from Buxton south to Ashbourne, was closed in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, only the northern section is still in use as a railway, providing a route […]
Brihadeeswarar Temple, India
Construction of the Brihadeeswarar Temple (also spelt Brihadisvara or Brihadeshwara), which is in Thanjavur in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, began in 1003 AD by Rajaraja I and was completed in 1010 AD. It […]
Wealden insects: an artist’s update (Part IV)
An ‘artist’s impression’ of Wealden insects, inspired by the original work of Neil Watson, appeared in a three-part mini-series in Deposits issues 47 to 49. Since then, the discovery of a number of species new […]
Urban geology: the Boxtel wall game
The Netherlands is a land of museums, approximately 1,200 of them in a country the size of southeast England. Although the major cities have an ample supply – about 30 in Amsterdam, for example – […]
Geomodels in Engineering – an introduction
This article is based on the introduction to the newly published book Geomodels in Engineering Geology – An Introduction, which is reviewed [on the page opposite]. What, why and when? The Earth is an active […]
Duria Antiquior: a nineteenth-century forerunner of palaeoart
In a breath of inspiration in 1830, English geologist, Henry De la Beche (1796–1855), while exploring new intellectual territories in the emerging fields of palaeontology, painted Duria Antiquior (meaning “a more ancient Dorset”), a representation […]
Concretions in sandstones of the Inner Hebrides, Scotland
Concretions are a common feature in many sedimentary rocks, yet they seem sometimes to be misunderstood. So, how do concretions form? As well-studied examples, let’s look at the ones found in some of the sandstones […]
Important Green River Formation fossils come to New York
In the early Eocene Epoch, drainage from the newly uplifted Rocky Mountains filled an inter-mountain basin to form what geologists call Fossil Lake. The climate of Fossil Lake was subtropical, similar to the climate of […]
An introduction to aetosaurs
The Triassic Period was one of the key episodes in the evolutionary history of life. It marks the transition from the Palaeozoic to the Mesozoic Era, preceded by the Permian/Triassic mass extinction – the greatest […]
Urban geology: a failed example of gabions as false urban geology from the Netherlands
The provinces of Noord and Zuid Holland, including much of the Dutch North Sea coast and adjacent inland areas, are devoid of rocky exposures. In a region of flat-lying Pleistocene siliciclastic successions (Burck et al, […]
The prominent figures of the 1800s who gave rise to vertebrate palaeontology
For centuries, the creatures of the past, from the terrifying theropod dinosaurs to the tiny early mammals, have captured the imaginations of millions. However, the people who put those beasts into the limelight are rarely […]
The mystery of time: a quest to solve the age of the Earth
The question of the age of the Earth and its former inhabitants is one of great interest to us all. Most are aware that the Earth is understood today to be approximately 4.6 billion years […]
The Clarkia Flora: 16-million-year-old plants offer a window into the past.
Near the small town of Clarkia in Shoshone County, Idaho in the USA, exists a rich and unique fossil deposit. The Clarkia fossils, or Clarkia Flora, as the deposit is mostly called due to the […]
Stop the press: the Jurassic Coast starts in the Permian. A Geologists’ Association field meeting report of a two-day excursion to the South Devon Coast with Prof John CW Cope
This Geologists’ Association field meeting followed the publication of Professor John Cope’s Geologists’ Association (GA) Guide No 73, Geology of the South Devon Coast (https://geologistsassociation.org.uk/guidesales.html; £9 for members and £12 for non-members), which was reviewed […]
Rocks in Roslin Glen: a record of a swampy past
Midlothian is an area of central Scotland that lies to the west of Edinburgh and is an area with strong geological connections due to a history of mining for both coal and oil shale. As […]
Colourful bluffs in Long Island recall the most recent ice age
Imagine a tremendous piece of land moving equipment that scraped up the soil and some of the surface bedrock from four states within the United States’ Eastern Seaboard, carrying and dragging it all the way, […]
Bryozoans in the English Chalk
We are very fortunate in Britain to host one of the most remarkable deposits in the entire geological record, the Chalk. The Late Cretaceous Chalk (with a capital ‘C’) is an extremely pure limestone, famous […]
Volcanism in the ancient world
In the ancient Greek and Roman world, volcanism was recognised as a divine phenomenon standing in close connection with the fire god, Hephaestus or Vulcan. Although there did not exist any term corresponding to the […]
Urban geology: the strange tale of a windowsill
Leiden, in the Dutch province of Zuid-Holland, is a city with a fine selection of fossiliferous building stones, mainly Mississippian (Visean, Lower Carboniferous) limestones. which preserve an array of fossils, such as rugose and tabulate […]