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, […]
Fossils, Geology & Minerals. Deposits is a highly acclaimed international printed and digital magazine with regular online content
Category: geology
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 […]
La Gomera: a short geological guide
Introduction The island of La Gomera has an area of 370km2, it is 25km in diameter, has a maximum altitude of 1,487m (Alto Garajonay) and is situated approximately 40km west of Tenerife. Unlike the other […]
Whitby Jet and the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event
One hundred and eighty million years ago in the Toarcian Stage of the Lower Jurassic Period, the Earth was very different from the world we know today. The continents were all clumped together in a […]
The geological transformation of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
In this article, I will briefly deal with the fascinating and relatively recent geological transformation of the Sharjah region of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Sharjah needs no introduction in terms of it being a […]
The daily lives of fossil reptiles
The Mesozoic and Cenozoic deposits of Southern England have long been a rich source of fossil reptiles. Past finds of great historical importance include some of the earliest known examples of dinosaurs, ichthyosaurs and pterosaurs. […]
Microfossils in 3D – stereophotography of ancient micro-organisms
In the past 60 years, microfossils have increasingly attracted the attention of earth scientists for several reasons. Firstly, they are highly useful in biostratigraphic respects; secondly, they can be easily determined by light- or electron-microscopic […]
Headbanging, rocking and moonwalking fossils
One can never be too careful when given the opportunity to name a fossil organism that has proved to be new to science. In addition to a meticulous description and accompanying images showing the characteristic […]
Fulletby brickyard – a classic locality in the Upper Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay Formation in Lincolnshire
The Upper Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay Formation in Lincolnshire crops out along the western edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds scarp (Swinnerton and Kent, 1981) and many years ago was formerly exposed in many small workings that […]
Boxstones – in search of Miocene Suffolk
The date is 24 May 2014 and I am browsing across East Lane Beach at Bawdsey in southeast Suffolk. A brown lump of sandstone with a white fossil shell impression catches my eye. A boxstone. […]
A ‘Heavy Metal painter’ meets a ‘Heavy Metal palaeontologist’ – the conception of an unusual portrayal of the past
Sometimes, the stars just seem to align perfectly and make you appreciate life more than at other times. You know those ephemeral moments when, all of a sudden, you find yourself in the midst of […]
Saltwick Bay, North Yorkshire
Saltwick Bay is located along the Yorkshire Coast, between Whitby and Robin Hood’s Bay, and can be accessed from the Cleveland Way, which passes the spectacular Whitby Abbey. The geology of the area is predominantly […]
Colorado mountain memories
While headed for the California Gold Rush of 1849, George Giggey (who was my great-great-grandfather) first made his way through the mountainous and untamed wilderness of what would later become Colorado. He was among a […]
‘Finders, keepers’: the lost world of some Isle of Wight geological heroes
There is a growing misconception that most of the earliest important fossil discoveries were made by a select few famous geologists – established names, who were supposed to have ‘found’ everything in their collections. In […]
Carbonate platforms and coral reefs: the Coralline Oolite Formation of the Yorkshire Upper Jurassic – a prime source of palaeontological information
The Malton Oolite Member of the Coralline Oolite Formation (Corallian Group), as exposed in the Betton Farm South Quarry (TA00158555) at East Ayton, near Scarborough (Fig. 1), provides a wealth of fascinating palaeontological and sedimentological […]
The Dendermonde Mammoth: fighting pyrite decay and the preservation of unique paleontological heritage
Collecting fossil vertebrates is rather popular among amateur palaeontologists. However, little interest is shown in the different stages one should undertake to treat and safely guard these specimens for the future. Loads of fossils from […]
Urban geology: gabions in the Dutch townscape
Gabions are tools of the engineering geologist, facing elements that are used to stabilize over-steep slopes, such as sea cliffs or railway/roadway cuttings; they also have military applications. The word is derived from the French, […]
Folklore of fossil molluscs
The final article of this series on fossil folklore focuses on molluscs, excluding the ammonites, which were covered earlier (see Fossil folklore: ammonites in Deposits, Issue 46, pp. 20–23). Molluscs are second only to arthropods […]
Carrara marble from the Apian Alps – another famous ancient workable stone
This is the last in a series of four articles I have written on the quarries and marble of the ancient world and the works of art made from it. The others (Mining in Ancient […]
Wieliczka Salt Mine of Poland part-2
This the second of two articles on the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland. The first appeared in Issue [51] and covered some of the highlights that can be seen there. This one covers some more […]
The Wieliczka Salt Mine of Poland: part-1
The Wieliczka Salt Mine of Poland was included in the first UNESCO World Heritage list in 1978. It is also on the Polish List of Historic Heritage and, when visiting, provides an interesting way to […]
One way to ‘collect’ a massive specimen: simple photogrammetry in the field using a mobile phone
Inspired by the recent excellent series of articles by Trevor Watts discussing the types of Mid-Jurassic dinosaur footprints to be found along the Whitby coast (Deposits, Issues 46, 47, 48 and 49), when recently working […]
Pallasites: the meteorite jewels in the crown
Perhaps unsurprisingly (as a professional dealer in space rocks), I find all meteorites equally fascinating and, in their own way, aesthetically appealing. However, I have to admit, the meteorites known as the Pallasites, with their […]
Urban geology: the Worsley Park wall game, Manchester
Wall games are a very geological form of light entertainment and education. I certainly have amused myself by identifying rocks and their features in walls since my days as an undergraduate and before. I was […]
Fossil fish from the north of Scotland
The north of Scotland is famous to scientists and amateur collectors for its wealth of localities where fossil fish of Devonian age can be collected. From plate tectonics, we know that in Devonian times Scotland […]
Great Plains geology – a personal journey
I grew up in the 1940s and 50s in the eastern US state of Maryland and went to cinemas on my own from the age of six, mostly to see what were then to me […]
Agate: a mineral that develops with age, water and moganite
Agate is banded or variegated chalcedony and this distinctive appearance allows a ready identification from any source. Many agate thick sections from basic igneous hosts are reminiscent of a series of distorted onion-like rings with […]
A pale white dot
“There’s nothing new under the sun” goes a famous saying and these words are very apt when trying to understand Earth’s climate trends. Thanks to numerous discoveries made about Earth’s ancient past, we now know […]