Category: United Kingdom

England Fossils Geology Palaeontology

The lost rainforest of the West Cumberland Coalfield (Part 4): After the drowning – the roof-shale succession

Every coal seam in the West Cumberland Coalfield district records the accumulation of peat in a mature lycopsid swamp. But just as revealing as the coal itself is what lies immediately above it – the roof shales. These fine-grained sediments record the moment when the forest drowned, the swamp surface subsided or flooded, and a new ecological phase unfolded above the buried peat. In the West Cumberland Coalfield, roof shales are exceptionally well developed and preserve a full sequence of the events that followed each catastrophic rise in water level.

Fossils Geology History & biographies Minerals Mining Museums & societies Palaeontology Wales

Geology museums of Britain: The Blaenavon Industrial Landscape (Part 2) – Big Pit, Blaenavon, Monmouthshire

Jon Trevelyan (UK) Rising above the hills near the town of Blaenavon is the distinctive headgear of Big Pit, one of the most recognisable symbols of the South Wales Coalfield (Fig. 1). Today, the site forms part of the National Coal Museum of Wales, but for nearly a century it … Read More

England Fossils Geology Palaeontology Wales

The weird and wonderful of the Ordovician (Part 2): Didymograptus murchisoni – a classic marker of the Middle Ordovician

Jon Trevelyan (UK) This is the second in my series of short articles on fossils of the Ordovician. Among the many colonial organisms that chart the course of Ordovician seas, Didymograptus murchisoni remains one of the most recognisable. A key graptolite of the Middle Ordovician, it combines elegant morphology with … Read More

Geology History & biographies Minerals Mining Museums & societies Wales

Geology museums of Britain: The Blaenavon Industrial Landscape (Part 1) – the Iron Works, Blaenavon, Monmouthshire

Jon Trevelyan (UK) The ruined furnaces of Blaenavon rise unexpectedly from the Welsh hillsides like the remains of some vast industrial fortress. Massive retaining walls, towering masonry structures and steep charging ramps still dominate the landscape, despite the silence that now surrounds them. Grass and wild flowers spread across terraces … Read More

Dinosaurs England Fossils Geology History & biographies Minerals Minerals Museums & societies Palaeontology

Geology museums of Britain: The Crystal Palace dinosaurs – the birth of scientific reconstruction

With the restoration of the Crystal Palace prehistoric sculptures and their remarkable Geological Court now virtually complete, it is perhaps worth asking why this unique Victorian landscape continues to command such scientific and historical importance. Why should geologists, palaeontologists and members of the public still make the journey to south London to see reconstructions that are now more than 170 years old and, in many respects, scientifically outdated?

England Fossils Geology Palaeontology

The lost rainforest of the West Cumberland Coalfield (Part 2): A forest of giants – Lepidodendron and Sigillaria

The most visually arresting fossils from the West Cumberland Coalfield, indeed from almost any British Carboniferous site, are the great patterned slabs of lycopsid bark that, if you are lucky, can sometimes be found. Their surfaces carry unmistakable geometric signatures: the diamond-shaped leaf cushions of Lepidodendron or the vertical rows of elongated scars typical of Sigillaria.

Fossils Geology History & biographies Minerals Minerals Mining Palaeontology Wales

Aberdare: Coal, memory and the fossil forests beneath

This article explores a single landscape – Aberdare – through three interlocking layers: the Carboniferous forests that formed the coal, the industrial system that extracted it, and the lives lived within that system. Each survives only in fragments: fossils weathering from shale, objects preserved in family memory, and traces embedded in the modern landscape. Taken together, these fragments allow the reconstruction of a place in which deep time, industry and lived experience are inseparable.

England Fossils Geology Palaeontology

The lost rainforest of the West Cumberland Coalfield (Part 1): A window into the Carboniferous tropics

The fossils described in this series formed during the Carboniferous Period, around 320 million years ago, when Britain lay close to the Equator. The above figure places the Carboniferous within Britain’s wider geological history. During this interval, extensive tropical wetlands covered much of the country, producing the peat deposits that would later become the coal seams of the West Cumberland Coalfield. This series explores one remarkable record of that vanished landscape.

England Fossils Geology Northern Ireland Palaeontology Scotland Volcanoes Wales

A tectonic history of Britain (Part 4): A quiet crust with a long memory – tectonic inheritance in the modern British landscape

Modern Britain lies far from active plate boundaries. It has no active volcanoes and experiences only minor earthquakes, and is often described as tectonically quiet. Yet its landscape is anything but passive. Hills and lowlands, coastlines and drainage patterns all reflect a deep structural inheritance established during earlier phases of continental collision, collapse and rifting.

BOOK REVIEWS England Fossils Geology Palaeontology Wales

Book review: In Search of Sea Dragons: A Fossil Hunter’s Odyssey, by Matthew Myerscough

Matthew Myerscough’s In Search of Sea Dragons: A Fossil Hunter’s Odyssey begins not with fossils, but with survival. Early in the book, Myerscough recounts how he and his future wife narrowly escaped death in an avalanche on Snowdon. The experience casts a long shadow over everything that follows. What initially appears to be a book about fossil hunting, gradually reveals itself as something rather more personal: a memoir about recovery, obsession, friendship and the strange hold that collecting can exert over people.

England Geology Northern Ireland Palaeontology Scotland Volcanoes Wales

A tectonic history of Britain (Part 3): Britain breaks apart – rifting, volcanoes and the birth of the Atlantic

By the end of the Carboniferous, Britain had already passed through more than one major phase of mountain building, each followed by long periods of erosion and structural collapse. The Caledonian mountains were long eroded, and the Variscan belt of southern Britain was entering its final stages of decay. Yet tectonic influence did not fade away. Instead, the dominant regime changed. Britain was no longer being compressed – it was being stretched.

Climate England Fossils Geology Northern Ireland Palaeontology Scotland Wales

A tectonic history of Britain (Part 2): When mountains fall – collapse, basins and the foundations of Britain’s lowlands

The collision that assembled Britain at the end of the Silurian (see A history of the plate tectonics of Britain (part 1): Britain assembled – oceans, collisions and the making of a geological patchwork) did not mark the end of tectonic influence on the landscape. Instead, it marked the beginning of a new phase – one that is often less intuitively grasped, but just as important. Mountain belts are temporary features. Once continental collision ceases, thickened crust becomes gravitationally unstable. Erosion strips material from the surface, while extension and faulting affect the deep roots of the orogen. The geological record that follows is not one of rising peaks, but of collapse, subsidence and redistribution.

Climate England Fossils Geology Northern Ireland Palaeontology Scotland Volcanoes Wales

A history of the plate tectonics of Britain (Part 1): Britain assembled – oceans, collisions and the making of a geological patchwork

Britain is often described as geologically quiet. There are no active volcanoes, no subduction zones, and only modest earthquakes. Yet, for its size, few countries display such a concentration of geological variety. Mountain uplands, volcanic terrains, deeply folded rocks, and ancient metamorphic cores all occur within a relatively small area. The explanation for this diversity lies not in Britain’s present tectonic setting, but in a long and complex tectonic history that assembled the country piece by piece from fragments that originated far apart.

BOOK REVIEWS Climate England Fossils Geology Palaeontology Scotland Wales

Book review: A Field Guide to Collecting British Cenozoic Fossils, by Steve Snowball and Alister Cruickshanks

Books devoted specifically to collecting Britain’s Cenozoic fossils are surprisingly rare. While collectors are well served by guides to the country’s Palaeozoic and Mesozoic fossils, the younger deposits that record the last 66 million years of Earth history have received far less attention. A Field Guide to Collecting British Cenozoic Fossils aims to address that gap by providing a practical introduction to the fossils and collecting sites associated with these deposits.

England Fossils Geology History & biographies Palaeontology

The death of the Upper Greensand: A stratigraphic obituary for a vanished formation

For much of the twentieth century, generations of students (and amateurs like me) learned a tidy, mid-Cretaceous succession for southern England:

Lower Greensand – Gault Clay – Upper Greensand – Chalk.

It appeared in every textbook, diagram and museum panel. There was an appealing symmetry to the sequence, with two sands bracketing the impervious Gault and the Chalk resting neatly above. It seemed so natural that few doubted it.

England Geology Palaeontology

The geology of Essex

Robert J Williams (UK) To the north-east of London lies the county of Essex, which extends out to the east coast of England. Although not noted for its geology, it does have quite a bit to offer the amateur geologist. In addition, there is a significant body of published geological … Read More

Climate England Europe Fossils Geology Palaeontology Volcanoes

Volcanoes, monsoons and a flooded supercontinent (Part 1): The climate engine of the Carnian Pluvial Event

This is the first of three articles on the Carnian Pluvial Event (CPE), often referred to as an ‘event’, although increasingly recognised as a prolonged episode, as I will discuss) of the Triassic that seems to have grown in importance and interest, and only become more widely known in relatively recent times. In this article, I will introduce the topic, concentrating on what might be called the “climate engine” driving what was happening.

England Geology

A pebble across Deep Time: From Staffordshire to Budleigh Salterton and back again

I found the pebble almost by accident, while staying with friends near Eccleshall in Staffordshire. We had taken their two dogs (the much missed Holly and Chutney) out for an afternoon walk – the kind of slow, stop-start loop where the dogs dictate the pace and the conversation meanders as much as the footpath. Along a muddy stretch of track, something smooth and rounded caught my eye: a faintly banded, reddish stone lying half-buried among the usual Midlands gravel and mud.

England Fossils Geology Palaeontology

The weird and wonderful of the Ediacaran Period (Part 2): Charniodiscus – a frond in the quiet depths of the Ediacaran seas

Jon Trevelyan (UK) This is the second of my series of short articles on fossils of the Ediacaran Period. Charniodiscus is one of the most characteristic frondose organisms of the Ediacaran Period, living around 560-555 million years ago in the quiet, low-energy seafloors that preceded the Cambrian explosion. With its … Read More

BOOK REVIEWS England Fossils Geology Minerals Minerals Mining Palaeontology

Book review: The Southern Pennines, by John Collinson and Roy Rosen (Classic Geology in Europe 13)

The Classic Geology in Europe series has, over many years, established a distinctive and reliable identity: authoritative regional syntheses written by specialists, designed for geologists who want to understand landscapes through field observation rather than armchair generalities. The Southern Pennines sits comfortably within that tradition and, in several respects, exemplifies the mature strengths of the series.