Fossils, geology and minerals. The highly acclaimed international earth science magazine with over 450 articles and book reviews.
Stephen K Donovan (The Netherlands) and David AT Harper (UK) 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 by the massive kerbstones that… … Read More
Steven Wade Veatch and Teresa L Stoiber (USA) The legend of “Genevieve”, a fossilised dinosaur not only made of stone — but also of gold — began on 3 July 1932. That was the day WK Jewett, owner of the London Mine near Alma in Colorado, stopped at the Antlers… … Read More
Matúš Hyžný (Slovakia), Andreas Kroh (Austria), Alexander Ziegler (Germany) and John WM Jagt (The Netherlands) 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… … Read More
Mats E Eriksson (Sweden) 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 all over it. Last year, a new gigantic fossil polychaete worm… … Read More
Stephen K Donovan (The Netherlands) 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 for major limestone quarry traffic (Roberts and Emerson, 2018). But… … Read More
Biddy and Ed Jarzembowski (UK) 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 to science (belonging to diverse groups) has meant that an… … Read More
Anthonie Hellemond (Belgium) Spiders represent the most diverse group of obligate predators (that is, predators that feed solely on other animals) in terrestrial ecosystems today, with almost 48,000 extant species in 118 families described to date. The number increases annually by approximately 500 species as a result of new discoveries… … Read More
Steven Wade Veatch (USA) 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 of a prehistoric Dorset coast. De la Beche’s work was ground… … Read More
Jack Shimon (USA) This article is adapted from a presentation given at the Denver Gem Show, September 17, 2016 by me, Jack Shimon. When I was six and a half years old, my Grandpa took me fossil hunting in central Texas. We went to a Carboniferous Limestone quarry that he… … Read More
Jon Trevelyan (UK) This is the second Geologists’ Association (GA) guide by Professor John Cope to be published in the last two years. The first was the second edition of his excellent Dorset guide, which was reviewed in the last issue of Deposits. And, on the grounds that “if it … Read More
Les Lanham (UK) Just to the east of Herne Bay in Kent, on the way to Reculver at Beltinge, there is a small area on the foreshore where fossils of shark and other fish remains can be found on a good low tide. As this is a beach location, success… … Read More
Stuart Wilensky and Douglas Miller (USA) 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 Florida today. The lake persisted for about two million… … Read More
Megan Jacobs (UK) 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 acknowledged for their work and, in many cases, remain unknown. So here… … Read More
Margret Steinthorsdottir and Helen K Coxall (Sweden) 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 abundance of fossil plants, is so well preserved… … Read More
Mervyn Jones (UK) 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. It is also the companion to GA Guide No 22, Geology of the Dorset Coast. John retired in 2003 after lecturing at Swansea… … Read More
Jack Wilkin (UK) The Messel Pit represents a Konservat-Lagersttätte dating to the Eocene Epoch 47 million years ago. The site is in Hessen State in Germany, close to the city of Darmstadt. It is a disused oil shale quarry that was scheduled to become a landfill in the mid-1990s. Thankfully,… … Read More
Dr Paul D Taylor (UK) 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 for the White Cliffs of Dover and responsible for the… … Read More
Stephen K Donovan and John WM Jagt (The Netherlands) 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 corals, brachiopods, bryozoans, molluscs, and crinoids.… … Read More
Sue Beardmore (UK) Located amid the scenic Southern Alps, on the Swiss-Italian border, is Monte San Giorgio, a mountain that rose up like many across Central Europe as a result of continental collision between Africa and Europe during the Alpine Orogeny. It is not particularly big or distinct by alpine… … Read More
Arthur Speed (UK) 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 supercontinent called Pangaea, which was just beginning to split apart. Sea level… … Read More
Robert Coram (UK) 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. Fossil material, including new species, continues to be revealed, mainly at rapidly… … Read More
Ever since Charles Darwin pointed out the problem, evolutionary biologists have been worried by the incompleteness of the fossil record. Fortunately, discoveries of formations containing exceptionally preserved fossils (conservation Lagerstätten) have provided fascinating and important information on the history life’s diversity.
There are several good books on the fossils of the Gault Clay and, by extension, Folkestone. However, this little guide has an advantage over the others that I have looked at.
Dr Robert Sturm (Austria) 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 studies in most cases; and thirdly, sampling, preparation and storage of… … Read More
Mats E Eriksson (Sweden) 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 traits of the fossil, a unique and formal, Latinized scientific name… … Read More
John P Green (UK) 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 exploited the Lower and Upper Kimmeridge Clay Formation for brickmaking. The… … Read More
Tim Holt-Wilson (UK) 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. This is the first one I have ever found with a fossil… … Read More
Mats E Eriksson (Sweden) 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 something that you would not have dared dream about. All your… … Read More
I’ve been waiting for a book like this for a very long time and am delighted that a publication of this quality has now arrived. New books covering British palaeontology are always welcomed by this magazine and we published an article a while ago by the founder of the publisher of this book – David Penney – explaining the need for such guides.
Jon Trevelyan (UK) This is a nice little guide for the non-specialist collector of all things that go bump from above (and the effects they have on the rocks they impact). As is clear from the title, the book covers three wide categories: meteorites, tektites and impactites. Broadly speaking, a … Read More
