News and Notices
GCG/HoGG/BRLSI Joint Meeting 2018
Joint Meeting of HOGG and GCG (History of Geology Group and Geological Curators’ Group)
Collectors, Collections and the geology of South West Britain
Hosted by the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, Bath
Tuesday 18th September 2018,
with a day of related field trips in Bath and immediate area on Wed 19th September
When it comes to geology and history, the southwest of England has a lot to offer. HoGG has teamed up with the Geological Curators Group (GCG) and the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution (BRLSI) to convene a two-day meeting to highlight the many and fascinating aspects of this interesting part of Britain.
The meeting will be held at the BRLSI site in the centre of Bath and is open to any and all who are interested in the geology, history of geology and personalities who have explored the geology of the SW of England both now and in the past. The meeting will take place on 18 – 19 September 2018, and will include one day of talks followed by a day of related field trips. Abstracts will be made available as pdf files for participants to print out in advance, and the proceedings may be published as a thematic issue of the GCG journal, The Geological Curator.
GCG Event: Essential information
Event title:
Collectors, Collections and the geology of South West Britain
A joint meeting of GCG, HoGG and BRLSIVenue:
Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, 16-18 Queen Square, Bath
https://www.brlsi.org/about-us/contact-usLed by:
Matthew Parkes (GCG) mparkes@museum.ie, +353-87-1221967
Nina Morgan (HOGG) nina.morgan@cooptel.net +44-1608 676530 (or 01608 676530)
Matt Williams (BRLSI)Date and time:
Tuesday 18th September, with optional field trips on Wednesday 19th September 2018. Very small additional charges for transport may apply for fieldtrips on day 2.
09.00-10:00 registration for 10.00 startCatering:
Complimentary tea, coffee and cold drinks will be provided between sessions
Lunch not included but many local cafes etc serve a variety of food at lunchtime, or bring your own and eat at the venue
Details of field trip lunch venues will be circulated with booking detailsSuitable for:
Curators, researchers, educators, volunteers, collectors, enthusiasts
Cost:
£19 includes all refreshments, discount rate £15 available for GCG, HoGG, BRLSI, and Bath Geological Society members
Booking:
Available now via GCG. Opens 6th August 2018 and closes 13th September 2018
Provisional Programme (as of 10th June 2018)
Collectors, Collections and the geology of South West Britain
Tuesday 18th September 2018
09.00
Registration (poster set up, coffee available)
10.00
Keynote Speaker – Steve Etches of The Etches Collection, Kimmeridge:
A new museum – starting from scratch!
10.30
Chris Duffin, Earth Science Department, Natural History Museum, London:
Charles Moore and Late Triassic vertebrates.
10.50
Matt Williams, Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution:
Charles Moore & Strawberry Bank, Ilminster, Somerset
11.10
Coffee break and poster viewing
11.40
Tom Cotterell, National Museum Wales:
Francis Basset, 1st Baron de Dunstanville and Basset, and his mineral collection
12.00
Maurice Tucker, Bath Geological Society and Earth Sciences Department, Bristol University:
The source of stone for Roman Bath.
12.20
Owen Green and Tony Watts, Earth Sciences Department, Oxford University:
The Beacon Hill Silurian Volcano: An ancient analogue of a modern island arc?
12.40
Jan Freedman: Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery:
Plymouth’s lost Pleistocene sites.
13.00
Lunch break and poster viewing
14.10
Geoffrey Warrington, School of Geography, Geology & Environment, University of Leicester:
The Bristol Spore: The origin of Triassic palynology in Britain.
14.30
Simon Harris, British Geological Survey:
Lost and Found – the rediscovery of the Christian Malford Lagerstätte.
14.50
Roy Starkey, Independent researcher:
“Shall I send them to you now?”– Richard Talling of Lostwithiel, the greatest Cornish mineral dealer of all time.
15.10
Mike Howe, British Geological Survey:
BGS and the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall Collections.
15.30
Coffee break and poster viewing
16.00
Karen Cook, Kansas University, US:
Reflections across the Pond: Cuvier and Brongniart’s Carte géognostique des environs de Paris(1811) and Conybeare and De la Beche’s Map of 24 miles round the city of Bath coloured geologically (1823).
16.20
Debbie Hutchinson, Bristol city Museums:
Mr Sanders' Map of Bristol.
16.40
Brian Rosen and Jill Darrell:
Stratigraphic solutions: fossil corals of William Smith and Arthur Vaughan from SW England.
17.00
Close of meeting and final information on fieldtrip options
17.15
End
all day
Poster Presentations
David Hill and Natalie Watson, Alfred Gillett Trust:
The Alfred Gillett Fossil Collection of Marine Reptiles from the 19th Century Quarries of Street, Somerset.
Jan Freedman, Curator of Natural History, Plymouth Museums, Galleries, Archives:
The South West’s Greatest Mineral Collectors
Graham P Hickman. Bath Geological Society:
Geology and hydrology of the Limpley Stoke valley and Somerset Coal Canal.
Deborah Hutchinson, Bristol Museum:
J.W. Tutcher (1858-1951) — Geologist and pioneer of scientific photography.
Wednesday 19th September 2018
Morning
10:30 - 12:30 Gravestone geology walk in Haycombe Cemetery, Whiteway Rd Bath BA2 2RQ, led by Nina Morgan and Phillip Powell, Oxford University Museum of Natural History. You'll never look at cemeteries in the same way again!
Afternoon
2:30 - 4:30 Trip to examine exposures at Brown's Folly, Bathford, some of the best outcrops of the Chalford Oolite Formation, Great Oolite Group, the strata that provided stone for Bath for 2000 years. Led by Maurice Tucker, Bath Geological Society and Department of Earth Sciences, Bristol University
All day
Full day trip to Moons Hill volcanics, led by Tony Watts and Owen Green, Department of Earth Sciences, Oxford University
Online registration for the meeting is now open at
Please note December 9th 2017 meeting will be in the Millennium Hall(next door to Century Hall)
IMPORTANT NEWS
Take 2nd left (just before the village green
opposite church) into
Turn immediately left into Social Centre car park, Millennium Hall is on left
- From Cheltenham take the A46 towards Brockworth / Gloucester
After passing the Bell Inn (on the right) take the 1st
right downhill, near the Pedestrian Lights, into
Take 2nd left (just before the village green
opposite church) into
Turn immediately left into Social Centre car park, Millennium Hall is on left
- If requiring more detailed maps go to www.shurdington.org/SocCtr/Location.htm
GEOMAP - FOREST OF DEAN
The Forest of Dean Local History Society has been awarded a grant of £107,200 by DEFRA’s Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund administered by Natural England to produce a spectacular piece of sculpture.
Geologists are fairly certain that this is a unique project, with certainly nothing like it in the UK, and even in the world.
The Geomap will be a geology map of the Forest of Dean. Instead of bright colours on a piece of paper, the rock strata will be represented by the actual rock types, taken from both operational and disused quarries. It will be a 900 square foot rock map in surface view. It will be flat and polished, but not shiny, so that the public can walk on it.
On the map, the most important mines and quarries will be marked by discs of different colours set into the rock. The major railways and possibly some important tramways will also be marked on the map. Plaques mounted on stone will provide information about the geology and the mines and quarries shown on the map. The Geomap will demonstrate the link between the geology and the quarrying and mining industries in the Forest of Dean, and will celebrate these great industries both of the past and the present in this unique area.
Planning permission has been granted for the Geomap to be situated at New Fancy on a flat grassy area opposite the Miners Memorial which the History Society erected in 2005. An overall view of the Geomap will be obtained from the high viewpoint accessible by a footpath and there will be disabled access.
The sculptor/stonemason who will carry out the project is David Yeates, who constructed the large rock viewing points at Lydney Docks.
The idea of the Geomap evolved from discussions between David Owen of the Gloucestershire Geology Trust and the Secretary of the History Society, Dr. Liz Berry and her husband Professor David Berry. Liz and Dave then put together the grant application on behalf of the Society and they will be overseeing the ongoing work with a sub-committee with full support from the Society’s Chairman and the rest of the committee.
As partners, the Forestry Commission, Gloucestershire Geology Trust, Forest of Dean District Council and Coleford MCTI Partnership will all be offering their expertise as the project progresses.
The Geomap will be completed by March 2008. The project will be of great educational value for the local community and the wider public, as well as a unique and beautiful work of art.
The map should be like the following.
A few weeks ago I visited the project to see how far it has gone.
The following photo shows where they are at the moment.
They are about nearly halfway there as you can see. The actual rock is on the left hand side of the pattern.
If you want to keep up to date with this go to the following Web- Site.
www.forestofdeanlocalhistory.com.uk.
Latest photo news on the Geomap after its opening on 03/05/08.
Over 250 people attended the opening.
This is what it looks like. I am sure it would look far better when wet.
A noticeboard is by the Map giving all the necessary information.
A picture of the artist who made the Map, David Yeats.
For anyone interested go to David`s website
Shells and Seaweed
On April 22 nd 2006 CMGS had a field trip to Cassington Pit, near Oxford. It was well attended and plenty of interesting finds were made. I picked up a rather unspectacular piece of shale, in fact I’m not sure what made me pick it up, but on turning it over I was rather intrigued by the pattern made by some very small ‘bumps’ on the surface. As I didn’t know whether it was just ‘bumps’ or possibly some fossil trail I asked Joe Angseesing, who was also on the trip, did he know what it might be? It turned out to be bivalves. He was very interested in what seemed to be evidence that this particular bivalve attached itself to a substrate rather than being free swimming. The article below has been reprinted from the Proceedings of the Cotteswold Naturalists’ Field Club, XLIV (I), with the kind permission of the Editor. I must add that Joe wrote the article and I provided the photographs - until I asked Joe about what I’d found, I’d never heard of Bostitra buchii (Roemer).
ANCIENT SEASHELLS AND LONG-GONE SEAWEED FROM CASSINGTON, OXFORDSHIRE
Bositra buchii (Roemer) is a thin-shelled bivalve that lived in open seas in the Jurassic, more than 140 million years ago. Individual shells were probably attached to a substrate by byssus threads, in a similar manner to modern-day mussels; unlike most mussels they were attached to soft substrates above muddy sea floors (see e.g. Duff 1978). Suitable substrates were often sparse, so it might be expected that shells should be concentrated in clusters above them. It is not universally accepted that they were attached, and some authors have regarded them as probable swimmers, with clustering due to transport by currents after death (e.g. Jefferies & Minton 1965)
It is not possible to say whether the seaweed was attached to the sea floor or whether it drifted near the sea surface, but it may be concluded that the fossil assemblage was buried quickly as many individuals have their valves closed. A likely scenario is that the weed collapsed to the sea floor while at least some of the B. buchii were still alive; the community was then buried before the elastic ligament could pull the valves apart (once the shell is open the two valves lie adjacent to each other, joined at the hinge, rather than one above the other; Figure 2 suggests both modes of preservation are present).
Fig. 1.
Figure 1. The disclike structures aligned in a chain are shells of Bositra buchii. It is likely they were once joined together by mutual attachment to a piece of seaweed, now decayed. Each shell is about 1 cm. across, total width of the field of view is 30 cm. The other fossils on the slab are ammonite fragments, mainly Kosmoceras.
Fig. 2 enlarged view.
Figure 2. – close up of Fig.1. The leftmost pair of shells are a single individual with the valves opened out and joined at the hinge. In the top right shell only a single valve can be seen, as is also the case with the two shells dead centre; it is likely that these shells were buried before the ligament could pull the valves into the ‘open’ position, and that one valve was superimposed upon the other.
References
Duff, K.L. 1975. Palaeoecology of a bituminous shale: the Lower Oxford Clay of Central England. Palaeoecology 18, 443-482.
Jefferies, R.P.S. & Minton, P. 1965. The mode of life of two Jurassic species of ‘Posidonia’ (Bivalvia). Palaeontology 8, 156-185.
Ann Kent & Joe Angseesing.