Jon Trevelyan (UK) This is something of a departure for me, as this book is really about biodiversity rather than geology. However, you won’t be surprised to learn that this book certainly does involve geology, as its context is locations from large caves to small gaps in ground. And given that, for example, bio-stratigraphy involves evolution and extinction, this book really covers both in the raw – and these are all things that geologist and palaeontologists are involved with all the time. However, it is quite a difficult academic book, but is well worth persevering with, as it covers a top ..read more

Rosalind Jones On the Hebridean island of Mull, on a day just before 1850, when potato famine and clearances brought misery to the Highlands and Islands, a man (perhaps collecting shellfish to stave off starvation) ventured down into a wind-swept gully on the Ross of Mull. Known as Slochd an Uruisge, on the headland of Ardtun near Bunessan, the gully opened onto a rocky cove at the mouth of Loch Scridain, with a tall sea stack made from columns of basalt (Fig. 1). Fig. 1. The topmost lava flow in the gully, with the highest leaf bed just below. © Chris Jones. It is a barren inhospitable place ..read more

John A Cooper (UK) The legacy of Gideon Mantell’s fossil collection, sold to the British Museum in 1833, would have been so much more significant to Brighton had he been successful in establishing a permanent Sussex scientific institute to house it. In his article, Gideon Mantel and the dinosaur relic, Rob Hope referred to his visit to the Booth Museum of Natural History during which he came across some dinosaur fossils, which could perhaps, he wondered, have belonged to Mantell. Far from it. Gideon Mantell (Fig. 1)was very guarded about his fossil sites. Virtually everything he found came fro ..read more

Fiona Henderson and Evelyn Krull (Australia) Biochar has the potential to sequester carbon, improve soil health and increase crop yield. Even its production can be classed as beneficial, as it is a by-product of a process that burns waste materials to produce bio-fuel. However, questions remain. Although biochar offers an effective way of offsetting greenhouse gas emissions, while helping to improve soil health and aid in waste management, a number of uncertainties are prompting scientists to dig deeper. Biochar – what is it? Biochar is a waste product. When natural organic materials (for exam ..read more

Stephen Lautenschlager (Germany) The Lower Jurassic Posidonia Shale Formation of Southern Germany belongs to one of the most famous fossil lagerstätten in the world. Its sediments – finely laminated marly claystones – were deposited in a shallow, inland (epicontinental) sea, the Tethys Ocean, under tropical conditions. The dark grey colour of these bituminous shales is a result of the high amount of organic matter and kerogens, as well as disseminated pyrite. This indicates stagnant and anoxic (that is, oxygen deficient) conditions, at least near the sediment surface, during the time of their ..read more

Rob Hope (France) A break from work, and also from reading about the history of palaeontology, enabled me to get away for a while. And a chance visit to the south of England found me driving through the lovely Sussex town of Lewes. Held up by a red light, I suddenly realised – didn’t Gideon Algernon Mantell once live here? I parked the car and set off to visit this charming town. In particular, I wanted to find the house where Mantell had actually worked and lived. When I eventually found it, there was a large blue plaque on the wall confirming it to be the home of the ‘discoverer of the Iguan ..read more

Dick Mol (Netherlands) and Ralf-Dietrich Kahlke (Germany) The remains of four mammoth bulls have been discovered in southern Spain. They lived about 30 to 40 thousand years ago near Padul, a small city in today’s Granada. These are Europe’s most southerly skeletal remains of Mammuthus primigenius (Fig. 1) and were unearthed in a moor on the 37°N latitude. This is considerably further south of the inhospitable habitat that one usually imagines for mammoths and for the characteristically dry and cold climate that prevailed during the ice ages in northern Eurasia. Fig. 1. Mammuthus primigenius. P ..read more

Deborah Painter (USA) The breezes from the estuarine Pamlico Sound, which reach the tiny coastal town of Aurora, North Carolina in the USA along a meandering tributary, sometimes carry the evocative and not unpleasant ambiance of salt, mixed with decomposed estuarine life, such as fish, clams, crabs and other “shellfish”. According to the 2020 United States Census, this town is home to 455 persons. It’s also home to the Aurora Fossil Museum (Fig. 1) and the annual Fossil Festival. Fig. 1. Thousands of participants arrive in the small town of Aurora, North Carolina to tour the Aurora Fossil Mus ..read more

Henk Oosterink (the Netherlands) Ichnofossils are the non-body remains of organisms. This group of fossils includes burrows, borings, tracks and any other trace formed by the life activity of organisms. They are very important in determining the ecology of extinct organism – although it is not always possible to link a single ichnofossil to the organism that made it. They are also useful in palaeoenvironmental analysis and solving other sedimentary problems. As a result of finds of, for example, reptile bones, the Middle Triassic quarry of Winterswijk (Anisian) is famous for its ichnofossils o ..read more

Stephen K Donovan (the Netherlands) and John WM Jagt (the Netherlands) A fossil is a mine of information about just one specimen of one species and many such specimens represent extinct species. Consequently, no observations of the living organism are possible – everything we know about that species will have to be gleaned from fossils. Morphology (the form or shape of an organism or part of it) is obviously a starting point – that is, what are the features of the specimen? Describing a specimen may be laborious, but it provides a factual basis for all later determinations and speculation. And ..read more