Winter Programme Abstracts 2024-25

Dinosaur Bones and Badlands
Professor Phil Manning (University of Manchester)

Dinosaurs in some cases were awkwardly large. This led to some incredible adaptations to overcome the challenge of vast size, but makes them particularly difficult to excavate and study!
Some of the largest dinosaurs were the sauropods, growing up to 37 metres in length, if we are to believe some of the skeletons in museums, which are often based on partial/fragmentary remains.
This talk will take you on an excavation to the Morrison Formation of Wyoming (USA) that has produced several moderate sized (20+ metres long) sauropod dinosaurs, that were excavated over a period of five years.

Wednesday October 9th

Gold exploration and development in the United Kingdom
Dr Tim Colman

Gold has only recently been the focus of active exploration since the abandonment of the fixed price of US$35 /oz. in 1972, and it’s dramatic rise, since then, to a current $2500 / oz..
The talk describes the various styles of gold mineralisation throughout Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and developments in their exploration and exploitation over the past 50 years.
Gold exploration and mining is not for the faint hearted!

Wednesday November 13th

Earl Ferrers’ Lead Mine, Dimminsdale: History, Geology and Minerals
Dr Frank Ince

The Dimminsdale SSSI and Nature Reserve spans the Leicestershire-Derbyshire border, and is the location of the Earl Ferrers’ Lead Mine and Limestone Quarry (Staunton Harold), and some of the Harpur-Crewe Limestone quarries (Ticknall). The lead mine was worked from the late 1700s to the middle 1800s. Since the late 1700s, the mine has been a source of interesting mineral specimens that have found their way into many museum collections, both in the UK and elsewhere in the world. Of most interest are the galena and calcite specimens; although, chalcopyrite, bitumen, and sphalerite specimens are also impressive. This illustrated talk summarises the history and geology of the lead mine and quarries, and describes the mineral species that occur in Dimminsdale SSSI.

Wednesday December 11th

The Herefordshire Lagerstätte: Soft-bodied Virtual Fossils from a Silurian Volcanic Ash
Professor David J. Siveter (School of Geography, Geology & the Environment, University of Leicester)

Our understanding of the history of life on Earth relies heavily on the fossil record, and especially on rare cases of exceptional preservation, where soft parts of animals, and entire soft-bodied animals are preserved.
Such exceptionally preserved fossils provide an unparalleled view of animal palaeobiology, and the true nature of animal biodiversity.
On-going research has recovered spectacular fossils from Silurian rocks (~430 million years) of Herefordshire in the Welsh Borderland. Representing one of the rare Silurian exceptionally-preserved fossil deposits, this biota is of global importance.
It contains representatives of many major groups of animals, including molluscs, echinoderms, brachiopods, polychaetes, and, most especially, a wide range of arthropods.
The animals that are preserved are primarily epibenthic, but infaunal and nektobenthic forms are also represented.
The fossils are preserved as three-dimensional calcite void-fills, in carbonate nodules, and are impossible to extract by standard methods.
The specimens are studied using tomographic techniques to produce high fidelity three-dimensional virtual fossils that yield a wealth of palaeobiological information. These fossils are crucial in helping to fill a gap in our knowledge of the history of life, and to resolve controversies about the relationships, and evolution, of animals that are alive today.

Wednesday January 22nd

The Anthropocene and its deep time geological context
Professor Jan Zalasiewicz (University of Leicester)

Human civilisation has grown around the stable shorelines and climate, and amid the diverse biosphere of, the last ten millenia or so of the Holocene Epoch: the latest of many interglacial phases of the Quaternary Ice Age, and the one that the created the world we live in.
The growth of human civilisation has now put that stability into question. With the explosion in both human numbers and energy use since the Industrial Revolution has come sharp and large-scale changes to landscape, biosphere and climate. These rapid and large-scale changes have led to the suggestion that we are now living through the beginning of a new informal, de facto epoch, the Anthropocene: an interval of geological time dominated by overwhelming human impacts. The term was proposed just two decades ago by Paul Crutzen, the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist, and has since been widely used – and sharply debated.
Whether the Anthropocene will ultimately be formally accepted as a time term or not, it is, in reality, changing the geology of our planet, bringing in changes that are significant in a deep time perspective. These include physical changes most strikingly represented by the explosive growth of the ‘urban stratum’, the refashioning of sand, clay and limestone into our buildings, foundations and transport systems. Biological changes include the ongoing mass extinction event and the effect of invasive species, while human-made ‘anthroturbation’ is as extraordinary as anything in the fossil record. Chemical changes include the reshaping of the Earth’s natural carbon, phosphorus and nitrogen cycles, with their associated climate and biological impacts. The combined change is of a scale to leave a signal, in strata now forming, that will persist for many millions of years, but that have already taken the planet outside of the baseline conditions of the Holocene Epoch, and in several respects out of those of the Quaternary Ice Ages as a whole. Indeed, some of the planetary changes, such as the rapid growth of the technosphere, are wholly new within Earth’s 4.5 billion-year history.

Wednesday March 12th

Bologna Stone: A Curious Tale of Persistent Photoluminescence
Dr Frank Ince

A story of alchemy and strange luminescence in the 16th-17th centuries, related to the geology and minerals found near Bologna. This subject has a fascinating explanation, and is associated with the recent development of a range of innovative materials that exhibit persistent photoluminescence.