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MAGAZINE OF THE MAGAZINE OF THE

GEOLOGISTS’ ASSOCIATION GEOLOGISTS’ ASSOCIATION

Volume 7 No. 1 March 2008Volume 7 No. 1 March 2008

GAGA150

is published by the Geologists’

Association. Four issues are

produced in the year. ISSN 1476-7600Production team: JOHN CROCKER, Paula Carey, John

Cosgrove, Vanessa Harley, Bill French

Printed by GRAYAM PRESS, Billericay.

The GEOLOGISTS’ ASSOCIATION does not

accept any responsibility for views and opinions

expressed by individual authors in this magazine.

The Geologists’ AssociationThe Association, founded in 1858, exists to foster the progress and

diffusion of the science of geology, and to encourage research and

the development of new methods. It holds meetings for the read-

ing of papers and the delivery of lectures, organises museum

demonstrations, publishes Proceedings and Guides, and conducts

field meetings.

Annual Subscriptions for 2008 are £40.00, Associates £30.00,

Joint Members £58.00, Students £18.00.

For forms of Proposal for Membership and further information,

apply to the Executive Secretary, The Geologists’ Association,

Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0DU.

E-mail [email protected]

Telephone 020 7434 9298 Fax 020 7287 0280

Website: http://www.geologistsassociation.org.uk

President: Mike Benton

Executive Secretary: Sarah Stafford

Magazine of the

Geologists’ Association

Volume 7 issue 1, 2008

© The Geologists’ Association.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in

any form or by means, without the prior permission in

writing of the author and the Geologists’ Association.

LAST Copy dates for the CircularMarch Issue January 14th June Issue April 22nd

September Issue July 22nd December Issue October 21st

Please note that the dates given are for the Circular. They also

represent dates at which the magazine will go to press. However,

because of the greater time required to set the magazine, items

should be submitted as soon as possible and not targeted on these

dates. We welcome contributions from Members and others. We are

currently limited to 24 pages. Pictures for publication can be as slides, pho-

tographs or high resolution digital images - preferably on CD.

Advertising RatesFull Page £360 Half Page £190

Quarter Page £100 Other sizes by arrangement.

GA Magazine of the Geologists’ Association Vol. 7, No. 1, 20082

CONTENTS

3. The Association

4. GA Meetings April/May-AGM/June

5. Birth of Our Association

8. Rockwatch News

9. Book Review

10. History of GA Field Codes

12. Ecton Geology Course supported by the Curry Fund

13. The Aurora Collection

14. GA150 - Regional Metings

16. GA150 - Your Planet Earth

19. Letter to the Editor/Librarian Report

20. Report of January & February Meetings

21. GeoSuffolk goes to Church

22. Book Review/How we used to do it!

23. Photographic Competition

Cover picture:

Part of the winning photograph of the photographic

competition “Dyke complex ophiolite Cyprus” by

Linda McArdell, - see complete photograph on

page 23

ADVERTISEMENTSWhile precautions are taken to ensure the validity of advertise-

ments the Association is not responsible for the items offered, for

any loss arising or for their compliance with regulations.

GAGA

Notice of Special General Meeting

There will be a Special General Meeting

before the AGM to consider the motion

“The life of the present Council should be

extended by one year”

150150

THE ASSOCIATION

GA Magazine of the Geologists’ Association Vol. 7, No. 1, 2008 3

FROM THE PRESIDENT

Our 150th anniversary year hasarrived! 2008 is going to be a goodyear for the earth sciences, as it isalso UN Year of the Earth.

We are celebrating GA150 in anumber of ways. Elsewhere in themagazine, you can read about ourflagship initiative, ‘Your Planet Earth’,a service to schools and educators.Sponsored by Shell, and supportedby the Geological Society of Londonand the Earth Science Education Unit,we offer a programme of talks on abroad array of earth sciences themesto be presented in schools. The pro-gramme is in development, and wehave launched the web site with thefirst five talks: more are to follow,and I will keep GA membersinformed. If you visit schools to givetalks, do please try the YPE talks out,and let me know how they go down.

Our second celebration is to launcha number of initiatives to spread themessage across the country, andespecially in association with ourRegional Groups. We have funds tosupport local events, to continue the'Local Heroes' initiative begun by theGeological Society last year, and tosponsor one or more major regionalevents each year. Again, there ismore elsewhere in the magazine.

Finally, note the date in your diary!The annual GA reunion/ geology fes-tival returns to London this year onNovember 1st-2nd, after a very suc-cessful visit to Liverpool in 2007. Tocelebrate GA150, we plan a GalaDinner on the Friday night (October31st), after the Local GroupsMeeting. Register your interest now,so we can get on with the planningfor the dinner: details are elsewherein this issue of the Magazine.

With all this excitement, I have onefinal piece of news. GA Council hasmade a detailed and thorough analy-sis of offers from several publishersto publish the Proceedings (seeReport from Council), and we willmove the PGA to Reed-Elsevier, attheir Oxford office, from the begin-ning of 2009. This is the fourth homefor the 'Proceedings' over the years -first it was published in-house by the Association, then it moved in 1971 toScottish Academic Press, then in1992 to the Geological SocietyPublishing House, and now we moveagain. As we negotiate the newarrangements, we will keep youinformed: our main aim will be to improve the journal and stabilisesubscriptions for members.

Report from Council

The last two Council Meetings havebeen dominated by discussion on thefuture of the Proceedings. A smallcommittee was appointed to look intothe future publication, development,and finances of the Proceedings. Thiscommittee considered a range ofpublishing houses and asked them tosubmit proposals for the futuredevelopment of the PGA. After con-sidering these proposals the commit-tee chose two publishers to present amore detailed outline of what theycould do for the PGA. The committeethen presented their proposals toCouncil who, after much discussionagreed that the publisher Elseviershould be the new publisher of thePGA from next year. The publisheroffers excellent production, the provi-sion of digitised back copies of thePGA for general availability on theweb and, most importantly, very widepromotion to libraries world-wide,thus much increasing the journal'svisibility. It also offers a considerablefinancial advantage to the presentsystem. Further to this decision, thecommittee formulated an agreementwith Elsevier, which after legal scruti-ny, was presented for Council toapprove. Council did approve it andhence Elsevier will be the new pub-lisher of the GA from next year, underan initial 5 year contract. It wasagreed that the life of Council shouldbe extended by a year so that thosemembers of Council who wereinvolved with the lengthy discussioncould monitor this change of publish-er. Since such an extension is againstthe Constituion, a Special GeneralMeeting will be organised to agreethis extension - see box page 2.

John CrockerGeneral Secretary

Curry Fund Report

At the last meeting of 2007, theCurry Fund Committee received sixnew applications. Of these, four wereawarded grants, one a loan and onewas deferred pending further infor-mation.

Scarborough Museums and GalleryServices were awarded a grant of£1070 for conservation of the 1834Thomas Hawkins plesiosaur cast.Once this is completed it will beprominently displayed in the RotundaMuseum which is due to be re-opened in May 2008 after a lengthy

restoration programme. The Hawkinscast is important in the history ofgeology, of the Rotunda Museum andto the study of plesiosaurs. The castwill be displayed alongside the"Speeton Pleasiosaur" whose conser-vation the Curry Fund has previouslysupported. These two splendid speci-mens will form a stunning feature inthe Rotunda Museum. StaffordshireRIGS received £2000 for the cost ofreprinting 23,000 of its very success-ful "Hamps and Manifold GeologicalTrail" leaflet. The map in the leafletwas also the winner of the 2007

British Cartography Society award,sponsored by Stanfords. The GAreceived two grants, one of £2583 forthe reprinting of its successful "Isle ofWight" Field Guide and £1000 for fur-ther development of its new web site.A loan of £1557.20 was awarded tothe Museu da Lourinhã for a FossilField Guide in the Lourinhã formationof the Upper Jurassic of Portugal. Adecision on the application from theSaffron Walden Museum for supportfor assessing and cataloguing itsgeology collections, was deferredpending further information.

By the time you read this report,Local Groups and Affiliated Societieswill have long since received lettersfrom the Organising Group for theFestival of Geology at UniversityCollege, London on 1st November,celebrating 150 glorious years of theGeologists' Association with detailsand booking forms. Small grants tohelp with preparing displays and/ortravel costs are available from theCurry Fund. Guidelines for Applicantsand application forms are availablefor download on the web sitewww.geologistsassociation.org.ukWe look forward to hearing from youat either of the next two Curry Fundmeetings on 14th March or 13th Juneand to seeing most of you at whatwill be THE geological event of 2008!

Susan BrownCurry Fund Secretary

Professor Cynthia Burek opening the trail

applauded by John Reynolds

GA magazine of the Geologists’ Association Vol. 7, No.1, 20084

LOOKING BACK OVER 150 YEARS;

A KIND OF HISTORYEric Robinson

University College, London

Friday April 4 2008

Geological Society, Burlington House

Piccadilly, W1V 0JU

at 6.00 p, tea at 5.30 pm

In Ulysses, James Joyce makes his principal characterlament, “History is a nightmare from which I am tryingto wake “. For our Association, there is no reason to hold

that view, rather we have many reasons to celebrateand even boast about our past. For a society of amateurgeologists to have survived this long is in itself remark-able; for the style in which the Association performed,there is every reason to indulge in some modest boast-ing, an approach which I intend to follow. Our begin-nings in 1858 still have a measure of uncertainty behindwhich may lie a characteristic trait of inventiveness andimprovisation which I hope remains with us. AnAssociation governed by a Council drawn from back-grounds often other than professional geology, attitudesand approaches to Geology have often been pragmaticand even novel. Fortunately we seem to have beenserved by Treasurers and Secretaries who have been upto the mark.

For the future, I hope that we can take lessonsfrom our history and sail on to our Bicentennary in 2058.

April Meeting

May Meeting - AGM & Presidential AddressExceptional preservation of

skin and feathers in birds

and dinosaurs from

Liaoning:Professor Mike Benton

Bristol UniversityFriday May 2 2008


Piccadilly, W1V 0JU


The world of palaeontology was elec-trified in the mid 1990s when the firstimages of birds and dinosaurs withfeathers came out of China. Sincethen, thousands of specimens havebeen excavated from numerous locali-ties in the Early Cretaceous JeholGroup (125 Ma) throughout theprovinces of Liaoning, Hebei and InnerMongolia in north-east China, andthese show that most of the advancedtheropod dinosaurs had feathers. This

confirms a long-held view that birdsevolved from dinosaurs, but also theunexpected fact that feathers are notunique to birds. If T. rex had feathers,what on earth were they for?Certainly not for flight! A researchteam from the Universities of Bristoland Dublin has been working with col-leagues in China to seek to under-

stand exactly what these oldest feath-ers were like, and how they func-tioned. Further, we are interested inhow such structures might be pre-served. In the talk, I will show a trav-elogue of all the key field localities inChina that we visited, as well as spec-tacular new images of the feathersand other exceptional preservation.

Natural concentration:

Mineralogy at the Natural

History Museum - more than

an Earth's treasuryDr Andy Fleet

Natural History Museum

London

Friday June 6 2008


Piccadilly, W1V 0JU


The collections of the MineralogyDepartment of the Natural HistoryMuseum began their 'life' as part of SirHans Sloane's collection that, in 1753after his death, formed the foundationof the British Museum. In the 19th cen-tury the natural history collections ofthe British Museum began to outgrowtheir Bloomsbury home and after muchdiscussion and argument were trans-

ferred to the pur-p o s e d - b u i l tNatural HistoryMuseum in SouthKensington in1881. TheMineral Gallery,still in a largelyunaltered state,has been home ofthe mineral col-lection and a'treasury' of theEarth ever since.The specimens ofthe collection,such as the

Latrobe gold nugget, all formed byprocesses of natural concentration anddifferentiation from 'primitive' solarsystem material such as that repre-sented in the Parnallee meteorite.Today the collections enable theseprocesses of 'natural concentration' tobe both researched and illustratedthrough exhibitions, electronic mediaand educational programmes. The col-lections develop largely as a result of

the work of Museum scientists activelycurating them and researching ques-tions relating to the early solar system,mineral processes at plate margins, oreformation and the role of minerals inpollutant transport (the talk will focuson this range of research). The result-ing collection contributes to theapproximately 70 million specimens ofthe Natural History Museum thattogether, and with the Museum's sci-entific expertise, form an infrastruc-ture for scientific research akin to anastronomical telescope array or a syn-chrotron.

June Meeting

Spectacular preservation of fossil bird(s) from the Early Cretaceous of Liaoning, China, showing

exquisite preservation of the claw sheaths and feathers, shown as a darkish fuzz over the wings

and between the legs. China.

The Latrobe gold nugget

found in Victoria, Australia

in 1835 (0.65 kg, height

10 cm)

The Parnallee meteorite which fell in India

in 1857


The Birth of the Geologists’ Association

The birth of our Association, like all births, was a messyand complicated affair. Not only was it of obscure and dis-puted parentage, but it was left abandoned as a foundlingon somebody else’s doorstep, and could have succumbedto sibling rivalry in its cradle.

Two ‘official’ histories of the Association were publishedduring the lifetimes of at least some of the founders, in1881 and 1909. These histories, with a few other titbitsfrom elsewhere in the ‘Proceedings’, tell in broad outlinehow the G.A. came into being in the closing months of1858.

It all started with a letter written by an otherwiseunknown W. J. Haywood to a now-extinct monthly maga-zine, ‘The Geologist’. In this Haywood suggested that asociety be set up by and for disadvantaged young men,supposedly like himself, cooperating one with another tofurther their interest in the then cutting-edge science ofgeology. The magazine’s editor, S. J. Mackie, published thisletter in August 1858, which immediately produced aninflux of letters from Mackie’s readers in support of theidea. Unfortunately things then started to go awry, as Haywood seemingly disappeared from the scene, leavingMackie stuck with his readers’ correspondence. With somejustice, Mackie subsequently claimed a parental status forhis magazine’s role at this time and later - “It was throughthis journal the Association had birth...” But Mackie byhimself wouldn’t have had the time, money and contactsto turn Haywood’s suggestion into something concrete.Fortunately suitable foster parents were found in theshape of Edward Cresy and, in particular, John Wakefield;in October “Mr. Wakefield, volunteering his services,received the letters for Mr. Heyward, and undertook thenecessary correspondence”. Wakefield was helped in thisby George Potter and Jeremiah Slade, who first met on 28October at the Islington Literary and Scientific Society, andthereafter at Wakefield’s home on 17 November, when itseems likely that invitations to a formal conference weresent out to interested parties. This was held during theevening of Monday 29 November, and of the forty or sopeople invited, seventeen turned up. A ProvisionalCommittee of eight members was agreed upon, withWakefield as the Honorary Secretary and William Hislop asTreasurer, a vital role he performed for some fifteen yearsuntil ill-health intervened. The Chairman, Joshua ToulminSmith, a barrister and an authority on fossil sponges, sub-sequently drafted a Prospectus which was printed and cir-culated to members of the Palaeontographical Society andto those people who had already signed up to the newAssociation. The Prospectus, dated 6 December 1858,called “all subscribers” to a meeting “to settle the Rules ofthe Association” on Friday 17 December, which is usuallyconsidered to be the G.A.’s date of birth. However, in laterlife Potter regarded the meeting at Wakefield’s home to beof such moment that he considered the 17 November, notthe 17 December, as the Association’s true date of birth,and that he was therefore the “last survivor of threefounders of the G.A.”. By the time he died in 1927, therewas, of course, nobody left to dispute his claim!

Be that as it may, at the 17 December meeting theProvisional Committee was replaced by the first GeneralCommittee, and the positions of Smith, Hislop andWakefield as President, Treasurer and Honorary Secretaryrespectively were confirmed. Early the next year, on 11January 1859, Smith delivered his Inaugural Address, andthe Association was in business.

The Founders as PeopleNow, 150 years on, is there anything left to discover?

Perhaps an ‘archaeological’ approach, digging in dustyarchives and in the long-forgotten ephemera of the earlyAssociation, could supplement the ‘official’ histories, andthrow some light on our founding fathers as individuals,on how they came together, and on what motivatedthem.

Of particular importance are the G.A.’s membershiplists, particularly the first one, of December 1859, whichincludes the names and addresses of most of thefounders. These, when linked with the information givenby official birth, marriage, death and census records,show what sort of people they were. It is perhaps best tobe generous and grant the title of ‘founder’ to everybodywho gave their time, and perhaps money, to the causefrom Haywood’s letter up to and including the GeneralCommittee of 17 December 1858, even including oneindividual (W. Armstead) who never actually joined theAssociation. The thirty people, all men, who are thus sohonoured, were then aged from about 20 to 69, averag-ing 37.9. A few appear to have been independentlywealthy, while most of the others had white-collar occu-pations of some kind, including doctors, lawyers, localgovernment officers and a clergyman, leaving about eightin trades of one kind or another. By 1858 twenty three ofthe founders had married, and almost all of these hadsizeable families to support. Only two of the foundersnever married at all. The founders all lived to a reason-able age, from 45 to 89, and with one notable exception(Mackie), where known, they left behind substantialassets valued at from £300 to £60,000, bearing in mindthat the Victorian pound sterling was made of gold, not

From ‘Practical Mechanics Journal’ February 1859

GA Magazine of the Geologists’ Association Vol. 7, No 1, 20086

brass. This all suggests that, by and large, thefounders were far removed from the solitary and disad-vantaged young enthusiast portrayed in the Haywood let-ter. It is even possible that the elusive Mr Haywood wasnot as he presented himself. The 1859 membership listcontains an entry for a William Haywood, who it turns outwas the civil engineer in charge of the sewerage andother public utilities in the square mile of the City ofLondon. He was certainly not a poor man, and if he hadwritten the letter to ‘The Geologist’, he had done so verymuch tongue-in-cheek. The only founders who mightpossibly have been regarded as disadvantaged in 1858were George Stephen Penson, an attorney’s clerk aged24-5, George Potter, a shoe salesman aged 21, andSamuel Mackie, an undischarged bankrupt supporting hiswife and family as a scientific journalist, aged 35.Although Potter and Mackie had been vitally importantearly on, perhaps inevitably, when the G.A. was up andrunning they were sidelined in favour of older, more sub-stantial figures. Two individuals seemingly came fromnowhere to become two of our first Vice-Presidents. One,John Le Cappelain, was a near-neighbour, and most like-ly, a friend of Toulmin Smith; he was aged about 45 andwas an actuary by profession. The other, CharlesWoodward, was the oldest of the founders at 69, was aFellow of the Royal Society, and a founder and principalpatron of the Islington Literary and Scientific Society,where Wakefield and his two helpers had first met inOctober 1858. Neither Vice-President seems to have had

any visible interest in geology as such, and nei-ther attended any of the four meetings of theProvisional Committee at which the G.A. wasorganised. However, their wills show that bothwere extremely rich, and both appear to havebeen of a philanthropic disposition. I suspectthat both gentlemen had been supplying theseed-corn money that the Association wouldhave needed in the weeks before the subscrip-tions started rolling in.

It should not be thought, however, that ourfounders were all paragons of Victorian virtueand domestic harmony. Two were called beforea Royal Commission investigating local govern-ment corruption, one of them as a prime sus-pect. Another founder simply disappeared,apparently leaving his wife and three children inignorance of his ultimate fate, while the wife ofyet another removed herself and her teenageson from the marital home when her husband,aged 58, installed his mistress, aged 21. Finally,one poor soul died, after a week, from “exhaus-tion from refusal of food, in the course of AcuteMania”.

The Founders as Joiners and OrganisersHow did the founders get to know one anoth-

er? In the absence of such aids to socialising asthe telephone and the internet, it is almostinevitable that their places of work and pre-existing academic societies of various kindswould have played a major part in their face-to-face networking. Many of our founders wereindefatigable joiners and organisers of other

societies. For example, while serving as our firstTreasurer, Hislop belonged to the Linnean,Microscopical and Royal Astronomical Societies,and was a Vice-President in both the QuekettMicroscopical Club and the British HorologicalInstitute, the latter of which, as a watchmaker,he had helped to set up in September 1858, vir-tually simultaneously with our own Association.

Two long-departed mid-Victorian organisations seem tohave been of particular importance. The Islington Literaryand Scientific Society acted as a valuable cultural focus foran important part of north London, and as well as CharlesWoodward and his money, may have brought us Slade,Hislop and another two of our founders. Rather moredown-to-earth was the Metropolitan Board of Works, thegreat-grandparent of the present Greater LondonAuthority, which in 1858, the year of the ‘Great Stink ofLondon’, was about to begin building the sewers thatunderpin the capital’s sanitation to this day; it gave us fourfounders and six early members, including the all-impor-tant Wakefield and his boss (and our 4th President)Edward Cresy.

Perhaps also relevant was the Working Men’s Collegewhich was founded in 1854 to bring educational opportu-nities to the Victorian labouring classes, and which happi-ly still survives. In 1858 Jeremiah Slade, who had justbecome an unpaid lecturer there in geology, botany andzoology, recruited one of its founders, Frederick Furnivall,to become one of our founders. Furnivall was to spend along and colourful life immersed in mediaeval and laterEnglish literature, but like quite a few other founders,including Wakefield, didn’t seem particularly interested ingeology in itself. At the other extreme, four of thefounders, including Mackie and Thomas Wiltshire, weremost certainly interested in geology, so much so that theyhad already been elected to the august (and expensive)

In their own hands, the Founders of the Geologists’ Association - James Carter, Hyde

Clarke, E.Cresy, John Davis, Henry Deane, F.J.Furnivall, John Grant, W. Hislop, Henry

T. K. Kempton, W. N. Lawson, J . Le Cappelain, Thomas Lovick, Samuel J. Mackie,

B.Marriott, George Stephen Penson,T.Adams Phillips,J.,Pickering, G.Potter,James

Legasick Shuter, Jeremiah Slade, J.Toulmin Smith, J.Wakefield, N.T.Wetherell, Thomas

Wiltshire and Charles Woodward. Others not present were William Henry Thomas

AlIen, W. Armstead, Charles Jeffrey Morgan, William Thompson Rickard and James

Ebenezer Saunders.


ranks of the Geological Society.All this taken together suggests that the G.A. was not

founded bottom-up as a coming-together of disadvan-taged young men, as suggested by Haywood, but insteadwas organised top-down as a philanthropic educationalproject by and for the comfortably-off. Under the circum-stances of the time this was probably the only way a soci-ety such as ours would have had any realistic chance oflong-term survival.

Teething TroublesThere were problems right from the start, as revealed

by an intriguing, if unnecessarily petrological, footnotetucked away in the 1881 ‘official’ history -”In the palaeo-zoic... period of the Association, at Cavendish Square[1859-63]... much cataclysmic action prevailed among itsmembers, schistose cleavage, or a splitting-off, beinglargely developed; but strong breccias were recemented,and many Members have continued throughout”.

The membership lists show that 134 (or 47%) of the1858-9 membership had left by 1864, among them sevenof the founders, including Slade, Le Cappelain, and twowho, in their day, had been very significant indeed, Mackieand Toulmin Smith.

Mackie’s discontent with the Association’s lack of direc-tion is obvious from comments he made in the August1862 issue of ‘The Geologist’ - “We wish the [G.A.]well...We do not think, however, it has yet settled down toits proper work... Let the Association take the Ordnancemaps, and construct a geological map of the Londonarea...Mr Clarke got very much laughed at, at the com-mencement of the Institution, for proposing an organizedsurvey of the whole British kingdom...” Mackie andClarke’s agenda would have had us competing not onlywith the Geological Society, but even with Her Majesty’sGeological Survey, and would have been absurdly over-ambitious under the circumstances.

Smith, some 3½ years earlier during his InauguralAddress, ‘The Finding of True Facts’, disclosed that theAssociation’s birth had not been welcomed in certainquarters, but despite this he too advocated an active‘quarry-face’ role for it “however jealous a self-constitut-ed coterie might be of intruders upon...their own domain”.Smith didn’t name names, but there can be little doubt asto which “coterie” he was referring. Then, out of the blue,only 28 days later on 8 February 1859, Smith resigned asPresident in favour of the Rev. Thomas Wiltshire, F.G.S. AsSmith had given no warning of this in the InauguralAddress, tongues may well have started to wag amongthe rank-and-file membership, one of whom later wrote tothe General Committee asking, unsuccessfully, to seeSmith’s resignation letter.

However peaceful or not the change at the top hadbeen, the new President introduced a sense of reality, andupon completing his first term in 1862 declared that “Itcould not be disguised that at the beginning there hadbeen a difference of opinion as to what the Associationought to be. Too many wished to make it the rival of theGeological Society. He [Wiltshire] had endeavoured... tomake it occupy its proper place: to make it...a Society oflearners”.

Of course, the Association has come a long way sincethen. It has grown and evolved into a robust and multi-faceted organisation of which both Wiltshire and Mackie,with their different hopes and dreams for it, would havebeen proud. This was achieved not by trying to competewith the Geological Society, but by co-existing and coop-erating, surely the secret of any association.

Eric Freeman

8 GA Magazine of the Geologists’ Association Vol. 7, No. 1, 2008

Rockwatch News

One of the most exciting events inthe Rockwatch calendar is the annualprize-giving, held at the Londonoffices of the competition sponsorAnglo American during the autumn.The prize winners, their siblings, par-ents and often grand parents andother family members have a wonder-ful day. On arrival, coffee and orangejuice is available which gives theguests an opportunity surreptitiouslyto eye up everyone else whilst alsohaving a chance to look at the superbmineral specimens on display. There isa talk by one of Anglo's geologists andthis year, Ross Gordon spoke on thejoys of an exploration geologist. Thencame the presentations by EdwardBickham, Executive Vice President,External Affairs, who flew home earlyfrom a trip abroad especially to pres-ent the Rockwatch prizes! This is arole he has played now for a numberof years and it is clearly as special tohim as it is to all of us at Rockwatch.After the presentations and obligatoryphotographs, guests and the Anglostaff who are involved with Rockwatchenjoy a marvellous lunch - a very spe-cial occasion for everyone. I'd like totake this opportunity to thank every-one at Anglo for their wonderful sup-port for Rockwatch and especially JodyWhite and Edward Bickham whoensure that Rockwatch is so welllooked after.

Our final event last year was a won-derful Family Volcano Day at theManchester University Museum.Visitors to the Rockwatch displaysmade their own Jurassic volcanoscenes, complete with maraudingdinosaurs, naturally! There were vol-cano workshops, objects from Pompeiifrom the Museum's collections and amarvellous erupting volcano withdemonstrations throughout the day.The GA Curry Fund awarded a grant to

the Museum to hire this volcano modelfor the event and it was very success-ful. The day was really busy with anon-stop supply of visitors of all ages.All the Rockwatch activities wereextremely popular with many familiesworking together and producing quitespectacular dioramas.

Our events programme for 2008 isalready filling up. For the first time wehave four residential courses; weeklong trips to Dorset and the YorkshireDinosaur Coast and weekend ones inthe Durham area and South Wales.This gives members lots of opportuni-ty to see at first hand some of thespectacular geology we have in thiscountry. Museum events in Cambridgeand Bristol, Science Week for schoolsat BGS in Keyworth ending with aFamily Day on the Saturday and a dayfield trip to the Weymouth area ofDorset in the February half-term areall events to look forward to duringthe early part of the year. More willfollow in the spring and summerevents programme.

It is wonderful that there are somany people willing to share theirknowledge and enthusiasm for geolo-gy with our young Rockwatchers and Iwould like to thank all of you for thetime you give so willingly. Many of ourformer members are now professionalgeologists working in companiesthroughout the world. Others are uni-versity students reading geology andthere are a number of current mem-bers who intend to follow a career ingeology. All of you out there who havehelped Rockwatch in so many wayshave encouraged these young peopleto develop their early interest in geol-ogy into an interesting and enjoyablecareer. Many thanks to you all.

Susan Brown

Chairman

Jane Robb receiving the Rockwriter 2007

award

Yzobel Wilkinson receiving the Rockstar 2007

award

Erupting volvano at Rockwatch Manchester

Family Day - the Curry Fund supported the

provision of the model

Children producing their spectacular dioramas


Straw, A. 2005 Glacial and Pre-Glacial Deposits atWelton-le-Wold Lincolnshire. Privately published. 39pp.

In the last fifty years, Allan Straw has almost certainlywritten more on the Quaternary geology of Lincolnshirethan anyone else. Throughout that time Welton-le-Woldhas been a key locality for his interpretation of MiddlePleistocene events in the region. His views have beencontroversial and his conclusions have sometimes beenset aside by others seeking to develop a wider regionalsynthesis for the Quaternary of Britain as a whole.

In this booklet Straw presents what he describes as ‘alargely retrospective account of the deposits at Welton-le-Wold’ - an account based on his field observations dur-ing the working development of the quarries therebetween 1954 and 1973, when working ceased.

The booklet is 39 pages in length. There is a plan of thelocality, two schematic sections across the quarries andsix pages of photographs which give a useful impressionof the deposits and of artefacts and fossil remains recov-ered from them.

Writing a review of this booklet, it is difficult to resistbeing drawn into the disputes that have surrounded theinterpretation of the deposits at Welton-le-Wold. But thereviewer’s first responsibility is to comment as objective-ly as possible on what is offered in the account. Much ofthe booklet is devoted to a description of the deposits - asequence of gravels and tills largely preserved in a shortremnant of a substantial palaeovalley. This is essentiallya field description that brings together information thathas previously been published elsewhere. This is every-thing we know about the deposits, their arrangement andtheir sedimentology. They have never, to any significantextent, been the subject of detailed laboratory analysis.There are for example no published analyses of the clastlithology of the gravels that form a major part of thesequence. Nonetheless this account and the photographsthat accompany it provide a completely convincing recordof the principal lithological units at Welton-le-Wold and oftheir stratigraphic arrangement as exposed in the quar-ries.

Handled less convincingly in the booklet is the interpre-tation of the deposits, which relates both to their envi-ronment of deposition and to their wider stratigraphic sig-nificance. Quite apart from any arguments about themerit of the interpretations, as a scientific account themain shortcoming is the fact that description and inter-pretation are not effectively separated. This is particular-ly true for an understanding of the depositional environ-ments of the gravel deposits. This shortcoming is notunrelated to a certain ambiguity in the overall purpose ofthis booklet. In his words on the back cover, Strawexplains his purpose:

Although an explanatory description of thedeposits was published in 1976 the author, as the only researcher familiar with the working quarry,deems it prudent that as full a factual statementas possible, albeit with his interpretation, shouldbe placed on record.

There lies the problem for this booklet. It is not just a fac-tual account of the Quaternary deposits at Welton-le-Wold, it is also a restatement of Straw’s controversialviews on the age of the deposits, in particular his viewthat the bulk of the sequence is the product of cold cli-mate conditions and glaciation during Marine IsotopeStage MIS 8, for which evidence of glaciation has neverbeen satisfactorily demonstrated anywhere else in Britain(Bowen 1999). This is not the place to rehearse the argu-ments but rather to note that the arguments are notrehearsed in this booklet. The reader is presented withStraw’s conclusions, but how or why he reached them isnot explained. Alternative interpretations of the depositsat Welton-le-Wold are not even mentioned, howeverbriefly. The references reflect this position. There aretwenty-four. Straw is the sole author of fifteen and a co-author on two others.For the GA reader, this is not a guide to a locality you canvisit and explore. This is one more broadside in a long-running engagement between Allan Straw and a scepticalQuaternary audience. Fascinating as such, but you reallyneed to know all the background to appreciate it fully.

Bowen, D.Q. 1999 A revised correlation of Quaternarydeposits in the British Isles. Geological Society of London,Special Report No. 23.

Chris Green

Book Review


Joggin’s Tree

A History of the Geologists’ Association Fieldwork Codes

As we come up to that important mile-stone of 150 years, the Association is enti-tled to reflect and boast of its unique con-tribution to the growth of Geology in pub-lic awareness through our activities.Indeed, more than just ”awareness”, wecan justly claim that it has been ouractions which have scored. Nowhere isthis more evident than in the difficult fieldof earth science conservation, where finewords are uttered but deeds often fail tofollow. A good example has to be ourCodes of Conduct.

What is now the Geological FieldworkCode began in a much simpler form in1972. Simpler and indeed flimsy, becauseit was produced with a real sense ofurgency following public outcry whichthreatened the very freedom for fieldworkwhich we had enjoyed up to that point intime. The problem arose because of somereally stupid graffiti chipped on to the faceof the famous glacial erratic perched onNorber Brow, in the much-visited CravenFault Belt of West Yorkshire, a focus for allschool parties chasing up the details ofglaciation geomorphology. It was also amonument for ramblers and Dalesmen.The steady flow of visitors was alreadysomething of a worry for local farmers forits accompaniment of careless climbingover drystone walls and field gates leftopen. What was unavoidable was theknowledge that it was a geological fieldparty from a university department whichhad been responsible for the graffiti.

At the time, we had in our membershipAlan Stubbs, a young officer of the NatureConservancy Council (NCC, later tobecome English Nature and, later still,Natural England) working under DrGeorge Black. From them came the sug-gestion that the greatest impact of aFieldwork Code might come if it were tobe produced by the Association, ratherthan the “‘professional” NCC, whose busi-ness it was to set down policy for thecountryside. Our President at the timewas Stanley Holmes, ex-District Geologistof the Geological Survey South East, andhe detailed a small working committee toproduce a code for behaviour which wouldcope with the mindless vandalism andcarelessness seen in the Norber incident.That committee consisted of Mike Durkin,Alan Stubbs and myself. The early draftwas rather heavy with the language ofministry documents, and, while it involveda paraphrase of the widely acceptedCountryside Code, those points all fol-lowed the unfriendly word “Don’ t. . . . . “.Not a good start. It was the wisdom ofMuriel Arber who turned those samepoints on their head, accentuating thepositives by leading with “Do. . .” or somedirect suggestion for action. Furtherrefinement came from the experience ofStanley Holmes and his years of editing

Survey memoirs and handbooks. The textof the simple green leaflet which resulted(and which successfully addressed suchincidents as the Lulworth disaster (seelater), vandalism in Peak Park, and excesshammering on Arran) did not really takelong to finalise, leaving us simply with theproblem of funding.

Cap in hand, we approached the obvi-ous agencies and societies who, in oneway or another, were involved in geologi-cal fieldwork. We obtained tacit support inmost cases, but no promise of funds.Happily, B P Exploration paid for the entirefirst printing of the green folder, whichlasted right through to the early 1980s.But, as stocks dwindled, two events over-took us and demanded attention:

First, the Health and Safety at WorkAct, directed mainly at workers in minesand quarries, came into operation in1975. The initial reaction of the Industrywas concern over site visits. Urged bytheir lawyers, the first reaction was to ruleout visits by parties and individuals. Inpreparation for a second edition of theCode. I corresponded with and visited thenewly-appointed Inspectorate at Millbank,and also sought the views of the Sand andGravel Association and the QuarryingFederation. The result was the introduc-tion of the advice on the wearing of hard-hats, “totector” boots, high visibilitytabards and, above all things, consultingwith management about possible hazardsand the movement of machinery. Thesepoints attended to and observed, we weresuffered as visitors, our Code providing apassport (which we offered to all othergeological Societies).

Secondly, there was an outbreak ofcore-sampling of rock surfaces by col-leagues who were exploring the informa-tion which could be obtained for palaeo-magnetic studies, of which more later.

Once again, BP Exploration kindlyagreed to finance the reprinting of theFieldwork Code, and we pressed on with atotal redraft. This took time, but the cor-ing problem (like the Norber incident)called for immediate action. As withNorber, the main culprits had to be geo-physicists, as they had betrayed them-selves by publishing results from areasthey had cored! As a result, another, quiteseparate, Coring Code was drafted, whichwe canvassed widely amongst our affiliatesocieties and the agencies.

In the nicest possible way, direct appealwas made, since one of the useful resultsof the Circular appearing every twomonths, was that we could post notice ofoffences (in 1982, drill holes hadappeared on the Whin Sill outcrop atCullernose Point on the Northumberlandcoast, on the Roman Wall, and on severaldykes in the Peak Park, Derbyshire). Bythen, sedimentologists were also joining

the coring habit, and a rather distressingoccurrence saw the Ludlow slumps ofRadnor Forest peppered with holes (whichtotally destroyed the visual impact andruined what would have been a photo-graphic record of classic structures).

It was in Circular 832 (July 1982), thatwe coined the term “Geotermite” for theoffenders, and pointed out that our origi-nal Code had already urged that nothingwas to be done to disfigure rock faces,and that no research-worker had the spe-cial right to “dig out” any site. Although atthat time, “disfiguring” had merely beenpainting on rock faces, this seemed mildcompared with drilling.

Time passed. In September 1986,Circular 857 carried an item “A PersistentBlight, the Geotermite” in which DenysSmith complained of coring of classic out-crops of the Permian, including SSSIs, inDurham and Micklefield, West Yorkshire.In Circular 860 (March 1987), it was sug-gested that “perhaps the Association willhave a useful role in helping formulateanother Code of Conduct aimed at con-trolling this persistent blight [unsightlycoring]”. By good fortune, in that samemonth, the Association was addressed byProfessor Jim Briden, then chief scientistat the Natural Environment ResearchCouncil, on “The Future Prospects forGeological Palaeomagnetism”. This pro-vided an opportunity to express our con-cerns about coring and to ask what sup-port we might expect from colleagues

First printing on thin green paper 1975


using the technique of core-sampling todetermine palaeo-positions of continents.To everyones satisfaction, he agreed thata voluntary code of practice should betried, but without recourse to naming andshaming. He suggested the choice of cor-ing from least-visible rock faces if possi-ble, and then plugging the holes with rockdebris or, at least, turf and soil. If this wasencouraging, still greater satisfactioncame with Circular 862 (July 1987), whenit was announced that the substance ofwhat we had published on the geotermiteproblem had been republished by theConservation Committee for Europe,Strasbourg, in ten languages. It had alsobeen picked up by the Bundesanstalt fürGeowissenschaften und Rohstoffe inHannover and the Bureau de RecherchesGéologiques et Minières in Orleans. Later,it appeared in the widely-read Geotimes inthe USA.

However, it took a further two yearsbefore we got to the point when we had afinal text for a Code, refined in words andgrammar by the ever-reliable MurielArber, and in Circular 878 (January 1990),it was boldly promised “very soon you willbe receiving with your G A literature, aglossy folder ‘Take Care when you Core’ “.At that time, the Association joined forceswith the Geological Society and the agen-cies to form a Conservation Committee,chaired by Professor John Knill. I was itssecretary, so in one way or another, theAssociation was well represented, and thehistory of trying to tackle the geotermiteproblem well rehearsed. Support for theCode was general, but funding proved theusual stumbling block. In fairness, manyof our colleagues and their societies werenot in a position to be able to touch funds,however well disposed they might be. Forthe Association, not for the first time, wewere able to turn to the Curry Fund, pub-lication of the Code being a legitimate useof the funds provided with Dennis Curry’sforesight. Thanks to Council, who hadbeen given the freedom to use the moneyfor just this kind of initiative, with nostrings attached, and the NatureConservancy Council who contributed tothe design and graphics for the new Code.A print run of 20,000 copies was pro-duced, to be distributed, like the firstCode, to Local Groups and Affiliates and,indeed, anyone who sought copies fromthe GA Office.

Unknowingly, there was an oversight inthe Coring Code which was soon pointedout to us. In seeking to make the Codegraphic, we had introduced to illustratescenes of fieldwork parties, shots taken ofcollege students in the field (in the Forestof Dean, as it happened) and seeming torepresent normal activities, but the photo-graphs used had been taken before theintroduction of the Health and Safety atWork Act 1975, so none of the party werewearing hard-hats or protective footwear!We brazened this oversight off in Circular

879 (April 1990), with paragraphs headed“coring Code and straining at gnats”, hop-ing that the main message would still berecognised. By November 1990, copies ofthe Coring Code had gone out to manygeophysicists and sedimentologists, fromwhom the response was good. So our ini-tiative, providing the first code for coringin the world, had succeeded.

Indeed, its success was such that by1991, stocks of both the original Code andthe Coring Code had run low, and Councildecided to authorise a reprinting. Thisallowed revisions to be made in the lightof twenty years of experience and feed-back. Conservation strategies had movedon, and the advantages of less wordystatements were appreciated.

At that time, our Guides had the advan-tage of draughtsmanship from ColinStuart, well-known to Trevor Greensmithand me, at University College London andhis beautifully clear maps enhanced manyGA Guides, and certainly my LondonWalks books of 1985. So it was decided toask Colin to try to illustrate the dangerousaspects of fieldwork in cartoon fashion,using matchstick-men being careless, ifnot positively dangerous to others. Wethought that the message would be clear,but to our surprise, we had complaintswhen the illustrated Code was publishedthat we were actually encouraging badpractice! Relying upon the cartoons, how-ever, enabled a trimming of the text whichthereby allowed the two-year-old TakeCare When You Core to be incorporatedinto the revised Geological FieldworkCode, thus ensuring that both messagesreached the individual, and no geophysi-

cist or sedimentologist would escape theexhortation. To drive home the enormityof drill patterns visually, Colin chose toillustrate the sarsen stones of Stonehengeas though they were cored, a line ofenquiry which has not yet reached “TimeTeam”. Once again, the funding of a largeprint run was provided by B P Exploration,who particularly deserve credit for theirassistance when others found reasons todecline.

Now we are approaching the 150thanniversary of the Association, a renewalof the Geological Fieldwork Code is beingconsidered by Council. Nothing could bemore appropriate for several reasons: OurCodes have been accepted widely, butnever acknowledged. They have beenmuch copied and paraphrased, oftenbeing passed-off as ”original”. While thisneed not concern us if the purpose ofpreparing the amateur geologist for thesafe use of the countryside is achieved,we can nevertheless once again take theinitiative as we have in the past.Cooperation is a satisfying experience, butit can lead to time-taking delays whileconstitutional issues are resolved. Choiceof wording and emphasis can be furthercauses of delay. Funding, as we havefound, is always a headache and not oneof our possible partners has the equivalentof the Curry Fund available to them. I sug-gest that a reprint of the Code should, thistime, be solely our own project. There ismuch to be said for retaining features ofthe previous versions. Their merit lies intheir directness, the graphic cartoon for-mat, and brevity. In spite of all the hazardassessment requirements of fieldwork inthe 21st century, a listing of all the possi-ble pitfalls would make the Code a ten-page document similar in size to the oneproduced in the 1970s by the then-Institute of Geology. Few people got pastits first two pages! Taking a lead over thereprint would allow the prominent use ofour historic logo (perhaps with the originalcrossed hammers erased for collectingprobity) and the clear identification of thework as the Geologists’ Association’sGeological Fieldwork Code. Fieldwork hasalways been the sphere of the Associationseeking to serve the interests of the ama-teur geologist.

In 1907 we celebrated our half-centuryby publishing details of field excursions inthe volumes Geology in the Field. It wouldbe an impossible task to attempt a coun-try-wide up-date. The Guides whichmarked our l00th year did, and still do, asmuch. Safe access, and a code for behav-iour which makes us welcome visitors toworking quarries and the open country-side, would be no mean contribution tocontinuing fieldwork.

Eric Robinson

The current version

GA Magazine of the Geologists’Association Vol. 7, No. 1, 200812

Geology Courses for AS and A2 Students at Ecton,

a project supported by the Curry FundWith the assistance of a grant from the Curry Fund, the

Ecton Hill Field Studies Association (EHFSA) has prepareda number of workshops for AS and A2 Geology courses.These are offered to schools which bring groups of stu-dents for the day to Ecton Hill, in the North Staffordshirepart of the Peak District.

Ecton was an important copper mine, with rich depositsof minerals, not only of copper, but also lead, zinc andother associated minerals. The deposits were unusual, asthey occurred in the form of a series of vertical pipes. Thepipes can be viewed during an underground visit andmuch evidence for the former workings can be observedon a walk over the hill, taking in the worked out pipes atsurface and the waste tips.

The first trial course at Ecton took place in June, whensome of the activities were experienced by a group ofstudents from Walton High School, in Staffordshire.

All the courses include an underground visit, wheredetailed structures of the folding and faulting of theCarboniferous Limestone can be observed.

If the mineralogy of the ore deposit is being investigated,students collect mineral specimens from one of the spoilheaps on Ecton Hill

One of the major exercises is a lengthy investigation ofthe Structural Geology of Ecton Hill. Measurements aretaken, both underground and on a well-exposed area offolded rocks on the roadside nearby (known as Apes Tor).

A further exercise investigates the Engineering Geologyat Ecton, leading to an estimation of the likely stand-uptime of the unsupported limestone in the mine.

Details of these courses, dates offered, and booking pro-cedures can be found on the web site www.ectonhillf-sa.org.uk

Renewal of activities at Ecton, after a lapse of severalyears, has been made possible by the Ecton MineEducational Trust. Details of sponsors contributing finan-cially to the Trust are given on the web site.

Hand lens assisted identification of minerals

Underground at Ecton showing calamine staining on the rock face

Dip measurement on the folded rocks at Ecton

Students enjoying their underground visit

Hunting for mineral specimens on a waste tip Measuring rock compressibility, using a Schmidt hammer

13GA Magazine of the Geologists’ Association Vol. 7, No. 1, 2008

The Aurora collection

If you were unfortunate enough to miss the recent exhi-bition on Diamonds at the Natural History Museum,London, due to its early closure for security alarms, youcan still see one of the 'gems' (excuse the pun) of the exhi-bition - the Aurora Collection.

This collection of naturally coloured diamonds can befound in the ‘Vault’* at the end of the mineral gallery at theNatural History Museum, London.

The Aurora Collection of coloured diamonds is one of thefinest and most comprehensive collections of coloured dia-monds in the world. It was started in 1980 when AlanBronstein, an American diamond consultant, fell under thespell of a 'sun drenched', intensely yellow diamond. Overthe next 25 years, he and his partner Harry Rodman builtup a stunning collection to present the full spectrum of thegem's colours in nature. Their quest continues: they arestill collecting.

The collection of 296 diamonds, weighing a total of 267carats. exhibited in the Vault, are displayed alternatelyunder flourescent lighting, where their colours can be

clearly seen, including red, green, blue, purple, pink,orange, violet, yellow, brown, olive, grey, black and whitediamonds, and under ultra violet light where many of thesediamonds glow with colours which may be dramatically dif-ferent from their normal colours.

Harry Rodman said, "I am inspired by the varieties ofcolours, which remind me of the aurora borealis, whichsuddenly light up the northern sky, and somehow I want-ed to hold onto that feeling".see:h t t p : / / w w w . n h m . a c . u k / a b o u t -us/news/2006/november/news_9996.html

The colour of diamonds.

The colour of diamonds is a result of irregularities in thecrystal structure. These can be due to impurities or tostructural defects which affect how light is absorbed or

reflected. In addition diamonds can appear to have differ-ent colours in different lighting conditions.

Coloured Diamonds.

Although diamonds are usually considered as brilliantlyclear gems, some have an intense natural colour. Although'white' diamonds have been the most desirable variety,since the 1980s, demand for coloured diamonds has grownso that now they are among the most desirable and valu-able gems. The rarest are red, green, orange, blue, purpleand vivid pink.

Cause of colour

Yellow_ Caused by traces of nitrogen. At 5-10 ppm, the diamond is yellow. At 50-100ppm it is golden, often called 'canary'.

Grey/Black - Sometimes due to defects inthe stone, but most typically to inclusions thatreduce its transparency. With dense inclu-sions, the diamond will appear grey or black.

Pink - Occurs mainly due to structural defor-mities created under pressure. Pinks can existin pink, orange or brown tones. More saturat-ed still, red is one of the most rare variations.

Green - Naturally green diamonds are veryrare. One of the causes is exposure to radia-tion in the Earth's crust - most on the markethave been coloured by artificial exposure inthe laboratory.

Blue - Caused by tiny amounts of boron.1ppm will give the stone a pale tinge, 10ppmwill make it dark blue. Diamonds containingboron conduct electricity.

* The Vault is a newly opened gallery at the NHM, contain-ing fantastic specimens of precious minerals, beautifullydisplayed. See the web site for more information:

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/v is i t-us/gal ler ies/green-zone/vault/index.html

John Crocker

The Aurora collection under

flourescent illumination

Under ultra-violet light


Bath Geological Society regional meeting

As part of the GA's move to support meetings outside

of London, Bath Geological Society (BGS) is holding a

joint lecture with the GA:

Living with earthquakes: know your faults.

By Professor Jackson of Cambridge University

Abstract:This has already been a shocking century for natural dis-asters, with many tens of thousands of people killed inearthquakes in Gujurat (2001), Iran (2003), Sumatra(2004) and Pakistan (2005). Moreover, in the last fewdecades several devastating earthquakes have apparent-ly targeted population centres in otherwise sparselyinhabited regions, particularly in Asia. A close examina-tion of this situation reveals that ancient settlements areoften located for reasons to do with water supply, access,strategic defence or controlling positions on trade routes,and that these considerations are, in turn often controlledby natural geological phenomena, particularly features ofthe landscape that are created by earthquakes. Whatwere originally small villages grow into towns, thencities, and now mega-cities of with several million people.But their growth has, in general, not been accompaniedby any reduction in earthquake hazard. It is this closerelation between where people live and earthquakes that

leads to the apparent bulls-eye targeting of cities byearthquakes. As a result, we should expect many moredisasters this century, some of which will be far worse,in terms of mortality, than those we have already seen.At the same time, earthquakes in the developed worldhave largely become stories about economic loss, ratherthan loss of life. An earthquake of moderate-size can kill40,000 in Iran (at Bam in 2003) but only a handful inCalifornia. The question of what to do with the hugepopulations concentrated in earthquake-prone mega-cities of the developing world is one of the most press-ing of our time, and has no easy solution.

Due to fire regulations the venue is restricted to around120 people for the talk. This number is normally is wayabove our usual attendance (~70) but the attraction ofProf Jackson should increase the attendance. We areoffering a ticket to each society member (our role is lessthan 80 ) and then offer the balance for sale (~£3).Obviously first refusal will be given to GA members butthey wil have to register with Sarah in the GA office toconfirm their place and pay their £3 for a ticket on thedoor.A ticket is necessary for this talk. For more infor-

mation contact the society. E-mail address: [email protected]

Bath Geological Society

As part of our celebrations of GA150, we are delighted toannounce major new funding and support for earth sci-ences events around the country. The local groups havealways organised stimulating series of excursions, lec-tures, and events, and we hope to encourage more ofthese in the future. There are two initiatives: Local heroesand Regional festivals.

LOCAL HEROES

The Geological Society of London and the Geologists'Association has planned a 2-year series of events aroundthe UK to celebrate the men and women who have madeour science. Last year, with the lead from the GeologicalSociety, 22 events were held, from a one-day conferencein Edinburgh to celebrate the work of James Hutton andArthur Holmes to fieldtrips in the North Pennines in hon-our of Kingsley Dunham, and the Lyme Regis FossilFestival in honour of Mary Anning and others.

The GA takes the 'local heroes' initiative forward in 2008,and we have a number of events organised, and invitemore. Details of events already organised are givenbelow. If you have further ideas, please contact Roger le Voir, The Old Mill, Fourmile, Ottery St. Mary,Devon, EX11 1 LS or by email on [email protected]

REGIONAL FESTIVALS

If you want to organise a regional festival, let us knowand the GA will try to help with advice and funds. Basedon experience in co-organising festivals in Cardiff,Liverpool, Scarborough, Brighton, and other venues, theGA office can provide advice and tips on how to makeyour festival go with a swing. More importantly, the GAmay be able to provide cash.

GA Council agreed, as one of its measures to celebrateGA150, to invite local groups, or consortia, to bid for upto £2000 per event. The money might pay for the hire ofa hall, expenses for some speakers, printing and publici-ty, or other purposes. The money comes from the JAPECFund, administered by the GA Council, and with the twokey purposes of 'promote the study of geology amongyoung people and among the local groups and affiliates ofthe Association'.

The money is available now, and we will make decisionsat the monthly GA Council meetings. Just write to us withyour proposal! Contact Roger le Voir, The Old Mill,Fourmile, Ottery St. Mary, Devon, EX11 1 LS or by emailon [email protected] advice and furtherdetails.

GA COUNCIL ANNOUNCES MAJOR INITIATIVES FOR LOCAL

GROUPS THROUGHOUT THE UK - CELEBRATING GA150



Your Planet Earth - An Outreach Initiative for GA150

Rocks for kids

The Geologists’ Association is proud to launch ‘YourPlanet Earth’, a service to educators in the UK and over-seas. Across the country, hundreds of people go out toschools to talk about dinosaurs, volcanoes, mineralresources, climate change, and many other topics in theearth sciences. And kids love these talks – maybebecause of the novelty of the subject matter, or perhapsbecause they are bored with their regular teachers!

Eighteen months ago, the GA Council decided to leadGA150, the 150th anniversary of the foundation of theGeologists’ Association in 1858, our sesquicentenary, witha major educational initiative. A key role of theAssociation is to interest people in geology, and especial-ly to show children the fun and importance of rocks, min-erals, and fossils. Our long association with Rockwatch,the geology club for kids, is one such activity<http://www.rockwatch.org.uk/>.

Today, we launch another, a resource for students,teachers, and others who want to present talks on keyearth sciences themes, called Your Planet Earth<http://www.earth4567.com/>. Note the web address:4567 is the current best estimate of the age of the Earth,in millions of years.

Aims

‘Your Planet Earth’ is an integrated campaign thatoffers school children interesting talks on topics fromdinosaurs to volcanoes, posters that captivate and inform,and a portal that provides links to teaching material andinformation on the jobs and careers that relate to theEarth, its resources and stewardship.The key aims of the Your Planet Earth programme are

to:Promote informed debate among children and theirparents.Use the Earth and environmental sciences as a means to demonstrate the application of maths and basic sciences to real problems.Make teachers aware of existing organisations (e.g.ESEU) that provide support to improve teaching andlearning in science, particularly within Earth and environmental science.

Provide accurate and current information on geosciencecareers.

The programme is funded so far by Shell, and its spon-sors are the Geologists’ Association, the GeologicalSociety of London, and the Earth Science Education Unit.The project is a part of the United Nations Year of PlanetEarth 2008.

The talks

The website is just the beginning. In its initial form,we offer five talks, aimed at 14-15-year olds, onVolcanoes, Dinosaurs, Natural hazards, Plate tectonics,and Climate change. These talks were put together by DrJess Trofimovs, a volcanologist, at the University of Bristol(now at the University of Southampton), and they areavailable for anyone to use as they are, or to edit in anyway.

The talks are standard Powerpoint talks, designed tolast for 45 to 50 minutes. Each is divided into three seg-

The home page of ‘Your Planet Earth’, at http//www.earth4567.com

The first slide of the training module, designed to be delivered by any

instructor to train students and others to give effective talks in schools.

Dinosaurs problem: A snapshot from one of the problem examples. We

provide scripts for each talk, as well as problem examples that may be

included in the talk, to get the kids thinking and working, or these may

be run after the talk, in order to construct an afternoon’s activity.


ments – an introduction, with striking observations, andtwo additional themes. The two pauses in each talk allowthe presenter to insert discussion topics. For some of thetalks, we offer simple calculations or puzzles that the chil-dren can think about and discuss in groups, before thetalk resumes.

We have made sure the talks are copyright-free, sothey can be used freely by anyone, in any form. The pho-tographs have all come from public sources, or from indi-viduals and organisations that are happy to share theirimages freely. Most of the diagrams have been preparedspecially for the talks, so we simply donate them to theworld. This means that educators and others are free toedit the talks, personalise them with their own logos oradditions, or even translate them into another language.

The talks were carefully quality-controlled. After Jesshad prepared each talk, it was read through by a sub-group of the GA Council, notably Dr Danielle Schreve ofRoyal Holloway, University of London, a keen speaker inschools with interests in Quaternary geology and fossilmammals, and Professor Chris King of Keele University,Director of the Earth Science Education Unit. Together,Jess and her reviewers made sure the talks were scien-tifically accurate and would work with the target agegroup, namely 14- and 15-year-olds.

We have contacted the heads of all geology depart-ments in universities and colleges, to encourage them touse the talks. Many departments run ‘science ambassa-dor’ schemes, where final-year students and postgradu-ates sign up to go into schools. Others have slightly lessformal arrangements, but staff and students in all uni-versities commonly go into schools to give talks. Wehave offered the YPE talks as a basis for these locally-based activities throughout the country.

In addition, there is a training module. If an Outreach/Engagement Coordinator wants to train a group of stu-dents to give effective talks in schools, we offer a shortPowerpoint talk, with exercises, that can be used fortraining. This training module is based on the combinedexperience of people who have delivered geology talks inschools for many years. It reminds students of the needto prepare, to be engaging, and to pitch the talk appro-priately. There’s nothing worse than a poorly presentedtalk: the children are keyed up and excited about the vis-iting speaker, and then they can be badly let down if it isnot well done. Universities and colleges can help theirstudents acquire valuable communication skills throughsuch a scheme.

The next steps

The five talks on the website and the training moduleare just the beginning. Our grant from Shell will coverthe development of further talks through the earlymonths of 2008. In addition, we will translate each talkinto a form suitable for 8-9-year-olds (at the momentthey are pitched at 14-15-year-olds). As each majoraddition is made, we will contact interested parties.

We will then develop a careers section on the YPEwebsite, using existing resources, and adding personalstories – young people who have completed degrees ingeology and related topics, and who have gone on tointeresting careers in the public and private sector. Thesepersonal stories will encourage school kids to see the fas-cination of earth sciences as a career for themselves, andthey will stress the need for the kids to stick with sciencesubjects to A-level.

A further step, providing we can secure additional fund-ing, will be to send out posters to as many schools in theUK as we can. The posters will illustrate exciting and

Four slides from one of the talks, about volcanoes. These show the

vivid illustrations, both original diagrams and copyright-free photographs.

Important points are made throughout about the science and about the

human impacts.


interesting themes such as geological time, origin of life,dinosaurs, plate tectonics, how a volcano works, geologyand landscape, climate change, geohazards, finding oil,finding diamonds. These all relate to key-stage specifica-tions in Geography, Chemistry, and other science GCSEsyllabuses. They will present factual information and, inthe case of controversial topics, a balanced presentationof the evidence.

The posters will be designed to demand attention fromteachers, with arresting digital artwork that tells thewhole story, and with quiz questions and startling facts toattract children. The posters will contain a postcard-sizedinset box with a web link and a different careers story.

After 2008, and these developmental steps, we will seekongoing funding to keep updating the selection of talks.We will hope to respond to suggestions about additionalthemes, and these might range quite widely over the areaof geology and the earth sciences. We will work withESEU to make sure we contact the appropriate cohorts ofinterested persons: the schools that want to book talks,and the providers of enthusiastic talk-presenters.

We are so lucky in this endeavour that the earth sci-ences offer so many fascinating topics, and that thesethemes are well developed in TV programmes, even ifsometimes rather luridly. But these TV programmes turnchildren onto volcanoes, the weather, dinosaurs, the plan-ets, the history of life, field work in exotic parts of the

world, and many other such themes. The employers ofgeologists are crying out for young recruits now, and thegovernment recognises the disturbing trend in schoolsaway from the physical sciences. These are all excellentreasons to build on the huge amount of schools engage-ment that is currently happening. If you have been putoff giving a talk in a school because of the effort requiredto prepare a talk – then look no further thanhttp://www.earth4567.com!

Mike Benton

President of the Geologists’

Association (2006-8)

Children of all ages are thrilled by presentations about dinosaurs and

volcanoes.

Practical experiments and demonstrations by enthusiastic young stu-

dents are always a great hit.

The Centenary Dinner

On the 50th and 100th anniver-sary of the GA a Grand Dinnerwas held and we are plannningto hold a black tie/ lounge suitdinner to celebrate our 150thanniversary. Currently venuesand prices are being investigat-edf and more details will beavailable in the June issue of themagazine.

Contact Sarah in the office toregister your interest for a placeat this prestigious event . Eitheremail her on: [email protected] or telephone her on:020 7434 9298.

GA150 Dinner on Friday October 31 2008:


Letter to the Editor

New Brunswick Stromatolites

The colourful presentation of the rocks and minerals of theMaritime Provinces of Canada, shown in the last issue of GAMagazine, brought back many memories. I spent many happydays in the 1960s working in the region, mapping copper miner-alisation, plotting facies types and bedding attitudes in theJoggins section, and wished there had been time to sort out thesediment paths of the Carboniferous red-beds of the HopewellFormation, pictured on the front cover. The "flowerpot" form of many of the Hopewell rocky outcrops

is due to the very high Fundy tides saturating the lower parts.During the winter, freeze-thaw action aggressively erodes thebase of the cliffs, resulting in the characteristic undercutting andthe "flowerpot" shape.

Most of all, I was pleased to see the stromatolites of thePrecambrian Green Head Group from near Saint John, on thesouth coast of New Brunswick. In the 1850s similar algal lime-stones near Ottawa were originally subject to controversy whensome were found apparently in igneous rocks, but Sir William

Logan, then Director of the Geological Survey in Moremained convinced that they were evidence of PrecaIn 1967, at the time of Canada’s Centennial of Co

it was my privilege to be asked for a suitable bou-sent the Province of New Brunswick at CharlottetownEdward Island. This was where the Confederation ofDominion of Canada was agreed in 1864 and celebrate1867.It did not take me long to decide that a boulder o

limestone would be most suitable, and I chose one fwoods near Saint John, clearly showing the stromatomarkings. This now rests in the Centennial BoulderCharlottetown, among nine more for the other Canadiprovinces. The boulder was informally named "the o-itant of Canada".Reading Dr Bennett’s detailed account, it sounds

a superb field excursion. A pity you didn’t go dowat Pugwash, though!

Deryck Laming

First of all I must thank one of our Members for the dona-tion of an antiquarian book, the sale of which has broughtin funds for the Association. Duplicate geological mapsdonated some time ago are now being offered through GAEnterprises at our monthly meeting and again money isbeing raised through their sale.

Now to return to the present with two current publicationsof the BGS:

Davies, J.R. at al. 2004. Geology of the country aroundFlint. Memoir of the British Geological Survey, sheet 108(England and Wales). ISBN 085 272 487X £40.00.

This covers an area roughly from Ruthin and part of theVale of Clwyd in the South west to Ellesmere Port in thenorth-east with a lovely picture of the heather clad slopes ofMoel Fammau on the front. A nostalgic view for me as myclass climbed this hill on our first geography field trip agedabout twelve. This memoir follows the standard BGS formatwith clear diagrams and photographs with good use ofcolour. The area was economically important covering theDenbighshire coalfield and the north-east Wales orefieldmainly for lead, silver and zinc, and even a little gold. Withmy other interest in garden history I was fascinated to learnthat calcareous tufa from the Wheeler Valley has been usedin the construction of features at Kew Gardens.

Cooper, A.H. et al. 2004. The Skiddaw Group of the EnglishLake District. Memoir of the British Geological Survey.ISBN 085272 484 5. £35.00

Here we have a thematic memoir covering parts of1:50000 sheets 22 Maryport, 23 Cockermouth, 24 Penrith,28 Whitehaven, 29 Keswick, 30 Appleby, 31 Brough and 48Ulverston. An introduction includes the history of geologi-cal investigations, followed by chapters on biostratigraphy,lithostratigraphy, depositional environments, structure,metamorphism, regional correlation, information sourcesand an light page bibliography. Appendices list localities,analyses, and include a fossil inventory.

All are supported by clear photographs and diagrams.There is a whole page of photos devoted to Acritarchs fromthe Skiddaw Group which I admit I had never heard of untilour trip to the Isle of Man some time ago where they areextremely rare. There we have the geological background toan area of outstanding scenery recently nominated as WorldHeritage Site, the mountainous heart of which is under-pinned by these Lower Palaeozoic rocks. Aren't we lucky.

Elaine Bimpson

Letter to the Editor

From the Librarian

Saturday 1st November at University College London 10.30 to 4.30This is your chance to join in the GA's 150th birthday party.

Come and help to make it a party to remember! We have talks; competitions; raffle; food; displays; min-erals, fossils, maps and books to buy and a packed Discovery Room to challenge and enthuse you!

The web site and the magazine will keep you up-to-date over the next few months. The Curry Fund canoffer small grants to help with groups' displays; apply through the normal channels. The September

issue of the GA Magazine will include a flyer for you to complete and return with your offers of help andfood contributions.

GA 150 Festival of Geology


Fossil insight in embryology at the

dawn of animal evolution

Dr Phil Donoghue explained how fos-sil embryos had been recognised onlyquite recently, and needed equipmentwith extreme capabilities to investigatetheir structures. The confinement ofthese fossil discoveries, so far, to smallranges of both geography and time - inthe late Ediacaran and early Cambrianof China and Siberia - was thought toindicate their first appearance, but it isnow believed that they had alreadyenjoyed a long history by then.

In 1994, Rudi Raff had asserted thatthe only way to understand their lifecycle would be to run the Cambrianagain - this time with embryologistspresent! In 1997 microscopic ballswere discovered in China, whichproved to be enrolled worm-like crea-tures with bilateral symmetry. In thefollowing year their earliest appear-ance was pushed back into the Pre-Cambrian

Donoghue had first encountered thefossil embryos while he was working onConodonts. He described subsequentlytransporting 12 tonnes of rock from anestablished Chinese location, whichafter dissolving out the calcium car-

bonate yielded around 300 of the tinyphosphatic fossil embryos.

The first approach to the determina-tion of their structure involved ultra -thin sectioning of the rock, and study-ing these sections on the cut surface,but this gave a very inadequate pictureof their internal structure. Even the lat-est medical CAT scanners lacked suffi-cient resolution, but a higher definitionwas afforded by a synchrotron, theSwiss Light Source established nearZurich. This provided ultra high resolu-tion micro-tomography, with which theorganisms were x-rayed from manydifferent angles, so that non-invasivesections could be created, using specialsoftware. Dr Donoghue blew our audi-ence's minds with some spectacularanimated demonstrations of thesecomputer models.

This method was also useful forinvestigating very small non-embryofossils. It became evident that not onlywere these organisms limited in spaceand time, but they were dominated byone form, Markuelia. This spectacularorganism had several rings of teethsited around its mouth, and its exactaffiliation among three different cate-gories had proved the subject of livelydebate: this latest work proved that itbelonged to none of them, but occu-

pied a position of its own, among thepenis worms and mud dragons.

Another spectacular illustrationdemonstrated twin-celled animalswhich commonly showed an internalstructure of yolk. These were some ofthe oldest and most primitive animalremains so far discovered.

In summary, Donoghue showed thatit was not necessary to re-run theCambrian after all, because Cambrianembryology had come to us! He con-cluded that the relative abundance ofMarkuelia could well be explained by atime period of peak build-up of phos-phates, combined with the organismdeveloping cuticle while still anembryo. Its chances of preservationcould be particularly enhanced if theconditions were anoxic.

Tony Iles

Report of GA Lecture 4 January 2008 - Dr. Phil Donoghue, of Bristol University

Report of GA Lecture 1 February 2008 - by Prof. Simon Conway Morris

"What happens when we re-run the

tape of Life?"

Simon Conway Morris explained thathe had built this talk on the work of oth-ers, and the fact that he had left the "?"off the Title on his opening slide, indi-cated his confidence in his reasoning.He started from the premise that evolu-tion is central to all aspects of Biology,to seek how we had developed cognitivepowers. We have not yet detected anyother earth-like planets - but thereought to be others, which anotherdecade might well bring to light.

Carbon and water, and perhaps DNA,are probably universal elements in allpossible life forms. He observed thatevolution had proceeded extremelyslowly in the Pre-Cambrian, but that thelater acceleration was probably encour-aged by events such as the Cambrian“explosion” as well as the various par-tial extinctions - such as the demise ofthe dinosaurs - by permitting a wholerange of organisms to radiate. He wenton to consider the process of evolution-ary convergence - the development of anumber of both forms and mechanismsin life forms, which we can now seehave been repeated - often at least upto a half-dozen times, in quite differentorganisms.

The specialized morphology of thewoodpecker had, surprisingly, beenrepeated by a number of unrelated and

widely separated but usually less gailycaparisoned species. He cited thebizarre "flying cow" (a vegetable-digesting bird known as the hoatzin) asrepresenting an evolutionary opportuni-ty separately but extremely similarlyexploited on different continents.Placentals and Marsupials yielded a richassembly of near-identical creaturesoccupying similar niches.

All carbon-based life forms, he said,must involve carbonic anhydrase, andcommon molecular biology will drivesimilar behaviour. He described a per-haps sobering experiment whichshowed that fruit flies could becomeinebriated in the same way as humans.

The Camera Eye, formerly such aplank in religious arguments, can beseen to have been developed at leastseven times (distributed acrossannelids, cephalopods, vertebrates andeven jelly-fish), while the more limitingcompound eye has nonetheless beencreated on at least four occasions.

He put in a word for the birds - nowrecognized to be great toolmakers, ableto modify their tools according tochanging requirements, and now recog-nised as smarter than our close rela-tives the chimps.

Nearer home, he suggested that theNeanderthals might really have beenanother separate development, ratherthan Runners-Up, as the natural historywritten by the ultimate winners lay

claim. This led on to the status of theone-metre tall "hobbit" from the islandof Flores in the Indonesian archipeligodating to about 12,000 years ago,which had a brain structured like ours,though no larger than that of a chimp.

Behavioural convergence has beennoted in the specific example of anoctopus feeding, in which its bonelessarm simulates the shoulder, elbow andwrist of a human, when conveying foodto its mouth. A more general exampleincludes activities such as singing,which may have only a few ways ofdoing it, over Whales, Birds andHumans. Maybe, he speculated, therewas really a universal music?

What if - he wondered - we are livingin a tiny island of knowledge, in anocean of ignorance? Prof. Morris con-cluded that a fundamental aspect ofevolutionary convergence was thatmost of the building blocks had evolveda long time before the animals did.

Tony Iles

ss

21GA Magazine of the Geologists’ Association Vol. 7, No. 1, 2008

GEOSUFFOLK GOES TO CHURCH

Adding to the existing family of seven, GeoSuffolk have recently published three newleaflets covering aspects of geology in Suffolk. Written by Bob Markham and Roger Dixon,they are designed for the non-specialist and distributed through local museums, libraries,Tourist Information Centres and other outlets. Financial support has been provided byNatural England.

“GeoSuffolk goes to church ...” is the strapline for two of the leaflets, which descibesome of the building stones of churches in South Suffolk and Coastal Suffolk (also con-tributing to the Suffolk GeoCoast Project), and indicate some of the common, as well asless common geo-features that may be seen by visitors. These vary from various marblescollected from temple ruins in Rome making the reredos at Great Waldingfield church, toSaxon-style cobbles of Red Crag in the fabric of Ufford church; a travertine arch in Polsteadchurch and imported metamorphic and igneous rocks in Dunwich and Hemley churches. Itis hoped that, in time, similar church leaflets will be published for other parts of Suffolk.

The third leaflet, “Flint in GeoSuffolk”, illustrates and explains some of the strange orpatterned flints housed in the Ipswich Museum, examples of which may easily be found byfield walkers. They include fossils, such as sponges and sea urchins, textures, such as frostpitting and iron-staining, and worked knapped flint.

It is hoped that the leaflets will not only stimulate more local interest in Suffolk’s geo-heritage, but also be of interest to visitors to the area. Copies may be downloaded (freeof charge!) by logging on to the GeoSuffolk website: www.geosuffolk.co.uk

Roger Dixon


Exploring the Landscape of Charnwood Forest and

Mountsorrel. A BGS publication, pp52. Price £12 to

include the 1:25000 scale walkers' map. ISBN 978-

085272570-2.

This neat, comprehensive pack of book and walkers' mapwas produced to commemorate a century of discoveriessince publication of the first BGS maps. The map and bookcome encased in a useful waterproof wallet.

The book begins with the obligatory safety warnings!Then there's a quick trawl through some basic geologysetting out how the area fared through 600 million yearsof geological time, to set the walks in context. The book iswell illustrated in colour throughout. The map is excellentwith its simplified geological key, accompanying photo-graphs, explanatory cartoons and cross-sections and willbe is great help to the non-specialist.

There are11 walks withappropr ia tedirections andin format ionon degree ofdifficulty, forexample, andgood photo-graphs, anno-tated wherenecessary toexplain geo-logical fea-t u r e s .T e c h n i c a lterms have

been avoided where possible. Some, unavoidable, havebeen explained in the text and others in the glossary atthe back of the book.

My one disappointment with the book is that it is "writ-ten for the non-specialist, to encourage an interest in theevolution of the landscape and its geological history" (myitalics) and yet misses a wonderful opportunity to give realinsight into a fascinating piece of geological history of thearea that occurred within our lifetime! It was longbelieved that the Pre-Cambrian rocks of Charnwood weredevoid of fossils, but local schoolboy, Roger Mason, waseither unaware of this received wisdom, or may have beendetermined to prove it wrong. I'm not sure. But, Roger didindeed discover markings on these rocks that puzzled himand he reported his discovery to Leicester Museum,whereupon Trevor Ford went to see for himself, and therest is, indeed, history! The fossil was named Charniamasoni in honour of that schoolboy discovery some fortyor more years ago. What an encouragement this littlestory could have been to users of this book. As a keenchampion of Rockwatch, the national geology club for chil-dren, I am ever mindful of how important such stories areto newcomers to geology of whatever age. Like any sci-ence, our understanding and knowledge of geology is con-stantly changing as new discoveries are made. This exam-ple shows how anyone who is sufficiently observant andcurious can help to progress our science.

But that little quibble apart, this pack is a good buy andwill make any walks in Charnwood Forest far more inter-esting than visiting the area without it.

Susan Brown

How we used to do it!Book Review.

GA magazine of the Geologists’ Association Vol. 7, No. 1, 2008 23

Third Prize - ‘Serpentinite, Coverlack

Cove, Cornwall’ by Jenny Forest

PHOTOCOMPETITION 2007

The Winning entry “Dyke complex ophiolite Cyprus by Linda McArdell

Second Prize - ‘Pillow lava at

Boatmans Harbour,Omaru,NZ,

approximately 34 Myrs old. Showing

limestone sea floor baked between the

pillows which have mineral inclusioons

and black quenched glass rims

by Maureen Robertson

Flier produced in 1858 announcing the proposed

formation of the Geologists’ Association

Documents

GEOLOGISTS’ ASSOCIATION 150 Volume 7 No. 1 March 2008...November 1st-2nd, after a very suc-cessful visit to Liverpool in 2007. To celebrate GA150, we plan a Gala Dinner on the Friday