Geological anomalies: Chalcedony breccia in a cinnabar matrix and the disappearance of Michigan’s geology professor
Steven Wade Veatch (USA) Hidden among geological marvels at a mineral show was a cinnabar-bearing chalcedony breccia-specimen (Fig. 1). The term “breccia” refers to a rock composed of angular fragments, while “chalcedony” describes a type of cryptocrystalline quartz. Adding “cinnabar” specifies the presence of mercury sulphide, which creates a distinctive … Read More
Natural climate forcings and the relevance for modern climate change
Jack Wilkin (UK) Climate sceptics often argue that, because the climate has changed in the past, contemporary global warming must therefore also be natural. However, in this context, paleoclimatologists study the causes and effects of climate change throughout geological time to better understand human-induced (anthropogenic) warming. And it is this … Read More
Fossils from Denmark (Part 3): Getting exercise walking the beaches of Denmark
Niles Laurids Viby (Denmark) I have written a few articles for this magazine on specific formations here in Denmark. However, a lot of local fossil collecting is done simply by walking along the seashore. Some beaches are fronted by cliffs – and some of those are base rock, like the … Read More
De Kuilen: A Dutch treasure trove of Neogene vertebrates
P Formanoy and HJ Ahrens (The Netherlands) De Kuilen is a wet sandpit forming a lake and recreational area located near the small village of Langenboom, about 15 miles south of Nijmegen, in the eastern part of the Dutch province of Noord-Brabant (Fig. 1). Among fossil collectors, the site is … Read More
A passion for fossils of mammalian ancestors leads to prize-winning PhD
Steve Koppes (USA) When he was still a high school student in Florida, Christian Kammerer turned his unusually keen, critical eye to reports about some enigmatic new synapsid fossils from Russia. He wondered — had the discoverers of these bizarre, mammal-like reptiles misinterpreted their finds? Kammerer shot off an email … Read More
Does the ground sloth, Mylodon darwinii, still survive in South America?
Dr Ross Barnett and Simon Sylvester In Zoology, nothing is more exciting than the rediscovery of an animal previously thought long extinct. The coelacanth (Latimera chalumnae) and the ivory-bill woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) are two famous recent examples of ‘Lazarus’ taxa. Well-publicised rediscoveries like these promote the idea that refugia containing … Read More
Fossils of the West Somerset coast
Neale Monks (UK) The West Somerset coastline, between Blue Anchor and Lilstock, exposes an almost complete succession of strata from the latest Triassic well into the Early Jurassic (Fig. 1). Fossils are abundant throughout, mostly invertebrates such as ammonites, brachiopods and oysters, but also with vertebrate remains at certain horizons. … Read More
Iron from the sky
Michael D Johnson It has now been 63 years since a huge iron meteorite impacted the Sikhote-Alin Mountains of the former USSR. Imagine what it must have been like on that cold morning of 12 February 1947 – the tremendous smoke trail, the thunderous crash and the roaring sound it … Read More
Providing deep benefits to the deep Pocomoke River
Deborah Painter (USA) The famed English explorer of the “New World”, Captain John Smith, led expeditions during the early 1600s to create charts and plan settlements along the east coast of the United States, from what is now Virginia to Maryland and, on a subsequent voyage, New England. Smith’s map … Read More
Trace fossils of Redhill Ridge’s Dakota sandstones
Chris Retzlaff (USA) The Redhill Ridge area in Park County, Colorado is a hogback composed of Dakota Sandstone. This fine-grained, Cretaceous sediment – near the town of Fairplay – contains trace fossils (Figs. 1 and 2) that help palaeontologists understand what the environment was like there, more than 65 million … Read More
A personal view of the strange horizons of bear, hyena, cro-magnon and neanderthal in the caves of Soyons
Rob Hope (Franc) I worked over several summer seasons as a museum assistant and bilingual guide in the karstic cavern system of Soyons, in France’s rocky Ardéche region. Here, seven large caves hide a fantastic kaleidoscope of ancient organic reminders from the later shadows of the Pleistocene (Quaternary). Running parallel … Read More
Barrow Hill: An ancient very British volcano
Dr Trevor Watts Barrow Hill (Fig. 1) is a little gem. It is virtually unknown, very accessible and in the middle of a large town – Dudley, in the West Midlands of England. Nowadays, it is almost swallowed up in the western suburbs of Birmingham (Fig. 2). A brief summary … Read More
Fabulous Fossils exhibition at Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery
Dean Lomax (UK) Dr Dean Lomax is now well known from his books, television appearances and especially for his work on marine reptiles. However, before all this, he wrote this article for Issue 21 of Deposits. After returning from a long summer working in the USA at the Wyoming Dinosaur … Read More
Book review: Geologists’ Association Guide No. 77 – Cumbria, compiled and edited by Richard Wrigley
In many ways, this updated guide is exactly what I want from a GA guide – extensive coverage, well written, and oodles of colourful photos and graphics. I liked and used the previous edition (GA No. 2), and it’s a shame that, for example, the Ordovician site of Stockdale Quarry has disappeared, but it – and no doubt other locations – has been replaced by, what I suspect, are just as good, if not better, sites.
Dinosaurs at the Nebraska State capitol
Neale Monks (UK) Not many palaeontologists would go on a field trip to the Houses of Parliament in London, but if you do something similar in the state of Nebraska, you will be surprised to find a whole variety of prehistoric life, including dinosaurs (Fig. 1), ammonites and trilobites. The … Read More
Book review: Cave Biodiversity: Speciation and Diversity of Subterranean Fauna, by J Judson Wynne (author and editor)
This is something of a departure for me, as this book is really about biodiversity rather than geology. However, you won’t be surprised to learn that this book certainly does involve geology, as its context is locations from large caves to small gaps in ground. And given that, for example, bio-stratigraphy involves evolution and extinction, this book really covers both in the raw – and these are all things that geologist and palaeontologists are involved with all the time.
Mull’s famous leaf beds
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
More on the dinosaurs of the Booth Museum, Brighton
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
Biochar: What is it and why is it generating so much interest?
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
Shining white ammonites: remarkable ammonites from the Posidonia Shales, Southern Germany
Stephen Lautenschlager (Germany) The Lower Jurassic Posidonia Shale Formation of Southern Germany belongs to one of the most famous fossil lagerstätten in the world. Its sediments – finely laminated marly claystones – were deposited in a shallow, inland (epicontinental) sea, the Tethys Ocean, under tropical conditions. The dark grey colour … Read More
Gideon Mantel and the dinosaur relic
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
Climate events let ice age mammoths go far below 40° north
Dick Mol (Netherlands) and Ralf-Dietrich Kahlke (Germany) The remains of four mammoth bulls have been discovered in southern Spain. They lived about 30 to 40 thousand years ago near Padul, a small city in today’s Granada. These are Europe’s most southerly skeletal remains of Mammuthus primigenius (Fig. 1) and were … Read More
A tiny waterfront town’s Big Fossil festival
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
An excursion to Krakatau (Part 2)
Dr G Trevor Watts In the fisrt part of this article (KratataAn excursion to Krakatau (Part 1)), I started to describe the geology of this famous volcano and also my visit to it. I now continue and you find me on fresh scoria and sulphurous steaming rock, standing on the … Read More