“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 […]
Fossils, Geology & Minerals. Deposits is a highly acclaimed international printed and digital magazine with regular online content
Category: geology
What’s so special about South Devon?
Take a trip to the South Devon coast around Easter time and you are bound to come across student parties from universities engaged in fieldwork. What is it about this area that makes it so […]
Siri Scientific Press: A UK-based publisher specialising in palaeontology
I have written this article as a summary of how I established myself in the fossil publishing business because it might be of interest to a general readership. First, a little background about myself is […]
The Anthropocene: should we designate a new epoch? A geologist’s perspective
Whatever your views, this is a subject that will not go away, and the concept of the Anthropocene is gaining more impetus and consideration as time goes by. In a nutshell, the Anthropocene has been […]
The Jurassic Coast (or is it?) with the Geologists’ Association
Since 2012, the Geologists’ Association (GA) has put on annual field trips to the Dorset coast led by Prof John CW Cope (of the National Museum Wales), who is author of the definitive Field Guide […]
The Armboth Dyke, Lake District
The Armboth Dyke makes a good half day geology excursion in a scenic but quiet part of the UK Lake District. Parking is on the west shore of Thirlmere, in a pay-and-display car park accessed […]
Seeing into the ‘Stone Age’: the stone tools of early man
In the early part of his evolution, man made great use of rock and stone to assist him in his activities. The term ‘Stone Age’ has been given to the period of time during which […]
Urban geology: a rostroconch in Hoofddorp
Part of my job is to provide service teaching for the University of Leiden. The university lacks a geology department, but my colleagues and I provide tuition in stratigraphy and palaeontology for life science students […]
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) – using geology to fight climate change
Practically everyone has an opinion on climate change by now, although for the vast majority of scientists, the weight of evidence is overwhelming – emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing climate […]
Australia’s Polar Cretaceous mammals
The Cenozoic Era is commonly referred to as the ‘Age of Mammals’. That is certainly the time in the history of life when their fossils are most abundant and diverse. However, two-thirds of mammalian history […]
All change at Selsey, West Sussex, UK
Issue 26 of Deposits magazine in the Spring of 2011 included my article on fossil collecting at Bracklesham Bay in West Sussex, following in the footsteps of my guide book on Fossil hunting at Bracklesham […]
The Erzberg Mine in Austria – An iron ore reserve with a long tradition
The Erzberg Mine is situated in the Austrian county of Styria. From a geological point of view, it belongs to the so-called greywacke zone, which represents a band of Palaeozoic metamorphosed sedimentary rocks intercalated between […]
Hutton’s unconformity and the birth of ‘Deep Time’
I sometimes ask a question to students in an introductory class about geology: “What is the most famous geological site in the world?” For students from the western hemisphere, the Grand Canyon in the USA […]
The Giant’s Causeway (part 2): other volcanic highlights
This is the second and final part of an article on the volcanic highlights of Northern Ireland’s Giant’s Causeway and surrounds. We were in the area for several days and the weather was fairly mixed, […]
Jamaica’s geodiversity (Part 2): highlights from the Neogene
This is the second and concluding part of our introduction to Jamaica’s geodiversity. Here, we are concerned with more Neogene ‘highlights’ dating from the Middle or Late Miocene, about 10mya, when the island became, once […]
The Giant’s Causeway: part 1
This is the first of two articles on the volcanicity of the Giant’s Causeway and the surrounding area. The Causeway itself is an area of basalt columns, about 100m or so across, jutting into the […]
The Other Mass Extinctions
The extinctions at the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K/T) boundary make up what is probably the most famous geological event in popular culture. This is the point when the great reptiles that characterise the Mesozoic went extinct. Alongside […]
The geology and fauna of the South Ferriby foreshore
The large working quarry at South Ferriby, North Lincolnshire (SE991204) is a well known and productive source of Late Jurassic and Cretaceous fossils, exposing beds from the Upper Oxfordian stage, Upper Jurassic (Ampthill clay, Ringsteadia […]
Miocene, mud and more: Miste 2013
‘Miste’… This word has an almost magical meaning for many fossil collectors in The Netherlands and neighbouring countries. That is because the extremely fossiliferous Miste Bed lies close to the surface around the municipality of […]
A warming medieval climate supports a revolution in agriculture
In the light of our current worries about climate change and global warming, this is the first a series of articles for Deposits that will cover significant climate changes that have occurred in the geological […]
The geology of islands
Islands are attractive places to visit, not just for geologists. Nonetheless, for us, they provide three advantages that favour collecting and research in the Earth Sciences. One of the attractions of an island is its […]
Features in the field: ignimbrites of the Yr Arddu syncline (Caradoc, Upper Ordovician)
In July 1979, I was one of more than 20 undergraduate students at the Department of Geology, University of Manchester, to undertake their final year mapping project in the Snowdonia National Park in North Wales. […]
An alternative view on climate change
Before you start shouting at your magazine, don’t worry, you’re not going to read that I think climate change isn’t happening or that human beings aren’t contributing to it. However, I am going to try […]
The geology of East Greenland
Eighty percent of Greenland is covered by ice and, in places, this is up to 3.4km thick. So, Greenland might not immediately spring to mind as a place to go to observe rocks. However, it […]
Salthill Quarry, Clitheroe: a resource being revitalised
A while ago, SKD published a critique of the poor geoconservation practices on one of England’s most productive Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) of Mississippian age – the so-called scraped surface at Salthill Quarry, […]
Utah: A Geologist’s Wonderland
Often referred to as the Red Rock Country, the state of Utah boasts some of the most breathtaking landscapes formed from years of erosional artistry. Dominating this impressive landscape is the Colorado Plateau that spans […]
Exploring the Jurassic at Zalas Quarry, southern Poland
The area of southern Poland is well known for its widespread Jurassic deposits, in particular, Middle and Upper Jurassic sedimentary rocks that outcrop in a belt running from south-east to north-west in the area known […]
The Bradshaw Foundation: rock art
For one of the oldest forms of human expression, there is still much uncertainty regarding rock art. What is it? Where is it? How old is it? And what purpose did it serve? The last […]
Pico Partido: volcanic perfection in the Canaries
Lanzarote is the easternmost island of the Canaries, less than 100 miles (about 150km) off the coast of Morocco. It is part of Spain, but not officially in the European Union and Pico Partido is […]
World earthquakes
For millions of people in the western part of Sichuan province in China, the morning of 12 May 2008 started out as a day like any other. People left their homes for work as usual, […]