Fossils, geology and minerals. Highly acclaimed international earth science blog with over 750 articles and book reviews.
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
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
Fiona Henderson and Evelyn Krull (Australia) Biochar has the potential to sequester carbon, improve soil health and increase crop yield. Even its production can be classed as beneficial, as it is a by-product of a process that burns waste materials to produce bio-fuel. However, questions remain. Although biochar offers an … Read More
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
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
Dick Mol (The Netherlands), Evangelos Vlachos (Argentina), Spyridoula Pappa (UK), Nikos Vasileiadis (Greece), Nikos Bacharidis (Greece), Vassilis Makridis (Greece), Evangelia Tsoukala (Greece) Over the past 30 years, systematic excavations by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Northern Greece have unearthed many Proboscidea fossils, including the longest tusks in the world … Read More
Dick Mol and Wilrie van Logchem (The Netherlands) Parts of a skeleton of a Pliocene mastodon were excavated near the village of Milia in West Macedonia, Greece, between 17 and 29 July 2007. Members of the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, together with the authors, unearthed the specimens in a sandpit, … Read More
Liz Porter (Australia) Australia has 14 different major types of soil. Maps showing soil profiles of different areas are very useful for farmers, people planning cities, people who look after natural resources and increasingly … forensic scientists! The foray into the world of crime solving by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and … Read More
Deborah Painter (USA) Mali is frequently associated with the Tuareg rebel insurgents, poverty and the desertification we see in the 2023 news items about the country. I also think of Mali in terms of the healthy recipes using fish, green pepper, sorghum, spinach, rice, peanut butter, and other ingredients in … Read More
If you have ever wondered what a penguin’s great, great, great, great, great (and so on, for a very long, long time) grandparent looked like, then this is the book for you. Better still, if you are five to nine years old, it is certainly the one for you.
George Burden (Canada) The rickety taxi bumped and rattled its way southward, into the scenic peaks of the Dominican Republic’s northern cordillera. Frequent washouts from seasonal torrential rains make the going tricky and, at times, even a little perilous. However, we finally arrived at a small community, the site of … Read More
Steve Koppes (USA) Although he is an experimental physicist who discovered new elementary particles in the early 1950s and invented the high-resolution scanning ion microprobe, Riccardo Levi-Setti also is known in paleontological circles for co-discovering a giant trilobite subspecies and for his book, Trilobites. Decades ago, as a diversion, Levi-Setti … Read More
Flavia Faedo (UK) The Thiepval Memorial is situated four miles (almost 6.5km) north of the town of Albert, in northern France, and was built to commemorate British soldiers who have no known grave, yet died here during the Great War of 1914-1918. This memorial rises majestically from the woods and, … Read More
Megan Jacobs (UK) The history of geosciencein the UK is heavily dominated by men, with eminent figures such as Sir Richard Owen, Charles Lyell, William Buckland and Gideon Mantell famed for making many big advances in the early days of the science. However, in the background were powerful and intelligent … Read More
Peter J Perkins (UK) This article is for those who like a geological excuse for visiting places. There may well be quaint villages, wonderful scenery and unusual wildlife but, if there is some special geology, so much the better. La Rioja is one of the small regions of northern Spain. … Read More
This book has something of an aspirational, rather than practical, feel to it. However, there is no doubt – in my mind anyway – that it is the best book on the geology of the Himalaya I have read. It is written with a nice light touch, with some humour. And it covers far more than just geology – where appropriate, it includes history, especially about the exploration of the subcontinent, and Asian culture.
Khursheed Dinshaw (India) Gobustan in Azerbaijan is an interesting site depicting prehistoric rock art. The petroglyphs here vary in age from the Upper Palaeolithic Era to the Middle Ages (Fig. 1). A UNESCO World Heritage Site, more than 6,000 images can be seen here (Figs. 2 to 9). The petroglyphs … Read More
Recently, I have finished the Great Silurian Controversy, a magnificent book about the nineteenth century arguments over the age of the lower Palaeozoic greywackes/sediments of Devon, and the creation of the concept of the Devonian. And reading The Lewisian: Britain’s oldest rocks by Graham Park, perhaps it occurs to me that this should perhaps be called, The Great Lewisian Controversy. It shares the same historical and scientific intentions, and the same grand sweep of scientific history from the early twentieth century, namely, the exploration over decades of the geology of the Lewisian of northwest Scotland.
Jon Trevelyan (UK) One rainy afternoon in March, rather than getting wet collecting fossils near Radstock, I abandoned my plans and paid a brief visit to the Wells & Mendip Museum in Somerset. It is not a geology museum, but it does have some great geological exhibitions. The museum (Fig. … Read More
The Cro-Magnons were a population of early modern humans (that is, they were physically indistinguishable from us, today), who lived in Europe between about 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, during the Upper Palaeolithic period. This information comes from Trenton Holliday’s excellent book, which tells the story of these people in the context of recent scientific advances. However, while it does not shy away from complex scientific issues, the book is written with a light, understandable touch.
Allen Fraser (UK) Shetland is a spectacular group of islands with a varied geology, a wonderful landscape and a special flora and fauna, peopled by a culture distinct within the British Isles. Shetland remains one of Britain’s natural treasures.” (J. Laughton Johnston) The islands Shetland sits on the edge of … Read More
Khursheed Dinshaw (India) Mohansinh Sodha (Fig. 1) is the founder of the Kutch Fossil Park located in Kutch, in the state of Gujarat in India. The park exhibits invertebrates, including ammonites, belemnites, nautilus (Fig. 2), brachiopods, gastropods (Fig. 3), corals (Fig. 4) and echinoderms. Marine fossils, including brachiopods and echinoderms, … Read More
Jon Trevelyan(UK) Contained in what was once the Radstock Market Hall (Fig. 1), this is perhaps one of my favourite local museums. Maybe it is because the museum is close to wonderful relics of the Somerset coal industry and to the Upper Carboniferous plant fossils that were a waste product. … Read More
Khursheed Dinshaw (India) The Salkhan Fossil Park is located in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. Spread over 25 hectares, it is an important geoheritage site for stromatolites. These stromatolites were identified by Professor RC Misra and Professor S Kumar of the University of Lucknow. Stromatolites are layered sedimentary … Read More
Ken Brooks (UK) Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was born in the Auvergne region of France on 1 May 1881. His enthusiasm for science developed in his childhood, partly through the influence and encouragement of his father, who was a keen naturalist. In 1899, at the age of 18 and having … Read More
Khursheed Dinshaw (India) The Geology Museum of Ipoh in Malaysia is located inside the premises of the Department of Minerals and Geoscience Malaysia (Fig. 1). The museum is an interesting venue where you canlearn about both the geology and the geosciences of the country. The easy to navigate museum was … Read More
Dr Steven C Sweetman (UK) Ask any palaeontologist, professional or otherwise, to name the first fossil vertebrate or vertebrate group that comes to mind and the chances are that the majority will come up with something like the charismatic dinosaurs, Dimetrodon (Fig. 1), the saber-toothed ‘tiger’ or some other large … Read More
Michael E Howgate One hundred years ago, a grapefruit-sized lump of rock ended its four and a half billion year long journey through space by crashing into a field in northwest Essex. To be more precise, at 1pm on Friday, 9 March 1923, Frederick Pratt, a thatcher and farm labourer, … Read More
Deborah Painter (USA) Tiger’s eye is definitely an unusual semiprecious gem because of a phenomenon called “chatoyancy” seen in only a few minerals and stones. “Chat” is of course the French word for “cat”. The golden bands of polished specimens remind one of a cat’s eye. Chatoyancy refers to the … Read More
This is a charming little book, which describes itself as an “admittedly idiosyncratic compendium of [geological] words and phrases chosen because they are portals into larger stories”. It succeeds brilliantly at its professed goal, combining a great deal of information, education, and a gentle sense of fun, brought out very nicely by some attractive and humorous illustrations.
