Fossils, geology and minerals. The highly acclaimed international earth science magazine with over 700 articles and book reviews.
Fred Clouter (UK) Just a few kilometres inland from the Mediterranean Sea in the south of France, and not too far from Montpellier, is an extraordinary theme park. Driving along the D613 from Mèze towards Pezenas, a life size model of a Spinosaurus comes into view perched high on an … Read More
Stephen K Donovan (The Netherlands) 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 at the undergraduate and masters degree level. One of my … Read More
Dr Robert Sturm (Austria) 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 the Northern Limestone Alps and the Central Alps. The Erzberg Mine … Read More
Jack Wilkin (UK) The Museum am Löwentor in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, is one of the world’s greatest depositories of fossils. The museum was founded in 1985 and, since then, it has built up a vast collection of over 4.1 million fossils and has a 3,500m2 exhibition space, spilt over two levels. … Read More
Peter Perkins (UK) The generally accepted reason for the fame of Arouca is Princess Mafalda, born 1195, who was responsible for the convent becoming Cistercian. Here is an interesting story – she was beatified in 1793. However, I won’t go into that now, but it is well worth investigating. For … Read More
Dick Mol (The Netherlands), Evangelia Tsoukala (Greece), Evangelos Vlachos (Greece), Anna Batsi (Greece), Hans Wildschut (The Netherlands), Dimitra Labretsa (Greece) and Wilrie van Logchem (The Netherlands) The Historical Palaeontological Collection of Siatista (HPCS), housed in a school building in Siatista, Kozani, Macedonia in Greece, was studied by the authors during … Read More
Klaas Post (The Netherlands) In 2007, the vessel, Anita, was fishing with bottom gillnets in about 400m-deep waters northwest of the island of Mykines in the Faroe Islands (about 62˚05’N-09˚28’W). One day, fisherman Bjarni Jacobsen from the village of Sumba in the Faroe Islands, observed a strange object in the … Read More
Bram Langeveld (The Netherlands), Colin van Elderen (The Netherlands) and Stef Mermuys (The Netherlands) ‘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 Winterswijk-Miste, … Read More
Dr Robert Sturm (Australia) The mineral, emerald, represents the green variety of the hexagonal silicate mineral beryl, which has the chemical formula Be3Al2Si6O18. Its colour may be interpreted as the result of the addition of vanadium and chromium ions into the crystal lattice. In fact, the etymology of the word … Read More
Stephen K Donovan (The Netherlands) My young son and I both have a taste for oysters, and have a favourite restaurant in which we like to eat them. It is in the Spui district of Amsterdam, which is also an area with a high density of bookshops. Therefore, there is … Read More
Stephen McLoughlin (Sweden), Benjamin Bomfleur (Sweden) and Vivi Vajda (Sweden) On some occasions, it is the hard sweat and toil of palaeontologists labouring in the field at carefully planned excavation sites that yields the prize specimen on which careers are built. On other occasions, it is the chance discovery by … Read More
Dick Mol (The Netherlands) If we consider the huge number of fossil remains of ice age mammals dredged up from the floor of the North Sea, we can only conclude that the Pleistocene era must have resembled a paradise between what is now the UK and the Netherlands. The majority … Read More
Dr Trevor Watts (UK) In 2012, my wife Chris and I booked a volcano tour around the north of Iceland. At the time, it was our third visit to the country, so we knew of extra things we wanted to do. Before joining the group with Volcanic Experiences of Bromsgrove, … Read More
Stephen K Donovan (The Netherlands) In a country with a limited resource of pre-Quaternary geology in outcrop, the Netherlands nevertheless has a wealth of rock types in building stones (Donovan, 2015a; Donovan and Madern, in press), street furniture (Donovan, 2015b) and artificial ‘outcrops’ (Donovan, 2014). Perhaps the commonest rock type … Read More
Steven Wade Veatch (USA) Glittering jewels, precious metals and religious relics – ranging from a spine from the Crown of Thorns to a twig from the Burning Bush, and sundry relics of saints – were important to all medieval monarchs as physical symbols of power, pomp and religious expression. King … Read More
Adrian Lister (UK) As palaeontologists, we are used to relying on the preserved hard parts of extinct organisms – shells, bones, teeth and so on – to reconstruct their appearance and adaptations in life. The reconstruction of soft tissue relies upon our knowledge of related living forms, plus clues such … Read More
Almeria is a province in southeast Spain, situated in the furthest southeast part of the Iberian Peninsula. It is a classic area for southern European and Mediterranean Neogene and Quaternary geology.
Bram Langeveld (The Netherlands) Holland is a small country that lies for the most part below sea level, which can be quite problematical. However, if you are a fossil collector hunting for the fossils of animals from the Weichselian (Last Ice Age) and early Holocene, it is not such a … Read More
Stephen K Donovan (The Netherlands) The last weekend in September 2013 was sunny after more than two weeks of grey skies, rain and even some fog. Saturday was spent as planned, moving bookcases ahead of Karen’s insatiable paintbrush, the walls changing from lime green to white as she progressed. Sunday … Read More
Dean Lomax (UK) A Lagerstätte is a sedimentary deposit that exhibits exquisite fossil richness, detail and/or completeness, often preserving fine details, including soft parts, which wouldn’t normally be found as fossils. There are two main types of fossil Lagerstätten: concentration Lagerstätten, which simply consists of large concentrations of fossils found … Read More
Dr Robert Sturm (Austria) Ancient civilizations had a high demand for raw materials, like clay, diverse rocks and, most of all, metals. These were required for buildings, crafts, agriculture, their armed forces, financial concerns, art and culture. Clays and rocks produced by opencast mining primarily served for the production of … Read More
Dick Mol (Netherlands)and Wilrie van Logchem (Netherlands) Somewhere around the Dutch coast, a mammoth herd, led by an experienced matriarch strolls along a trail on the cold, dry and treeless steppe – the mammoth steppe – typified by tall, tough grasses and Artemisia. The impressive herd numbers about thirty animals, … Read More
Stephen K Donovan (The Netherlands) My writings on urban geology are normally centred in the area around my home in Noord Holland, but sometimes I am lucky enough to travel. A personal wish that I have had since I was a teenager was to see and, if possible, board a … Read More
Benjamin Kear (Australia) and Georgios Georgalis (Greece) Most people are familiar with the famous giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands – isolated oddities evolving in the absence of predators on a remote tropical paradise. However, as little as 5mya, continental landmasses (including Europe, Africa and India) also had their own … Read More
Henk Oosterink (Netherlands) The Lower Muschelkalk (from the Anisian age of the Middle Triassic) of the quarry at Winterswijk in The Netherlands is well known for its beautiful and sometimes abundant finds of reptile footprints and bones. A few, almost complete, skeletons have even been found. Most of the bones … Read More
Dr Michał Zatoń (Poland) The Middle Jurassic Bathonian stage, which is preceded by Aalenian and Bajocian and overlaid by the Callovian, was established on the basis of oolitic limestones outcropping at Bath in Somerset. This historical and English connection is a major reason I have chosen the Bathonian as a … Read More
Trevor Devon (UK) Slovakia is situated at the north-western end of the Carpathian Mountains, a region well-known for its metal ore mines and quarries. One of the Sussex Mineralogical Society’s members had been a schoolteacher in Slovakia and had explored many of its mineral locations. Through his contacts there, an … Read More
Dr Ross Barnett (UK) The lion (Panthera leo) can rightly claim to be the most oft-invoked animal in all of human culture. Whether praising someone as leonine or lion-hearted, or throwing them to the lions, the second largest of felines has the ability to evoke emotions that the tiger (Panthera … Read More
Stephen K Donovan (The Netherlands) Building stones may tell us something or nothing about the geology of the local area. As Ted Nield (2014) recently highlighted in his book, Underlands, stones used in Britain today are rarely local. Once upon a time, local stone would have been derived from a … Read More
Stephen K Donovan (The Netherlands) A misconception shared by many non-palaeontologists is that fossils are rare. For example, when governments pass legislation to protect their fossil heritage, they are stopping the export of complete and well-preserved specimens, such as those of Mesozoic dinosaurs, hominids and Ice Age mammoths. There can … Read More
