Geological Society of Glasgow

Dippy on Tour: a natural history adventure
2019-04-11 10:00 - 17:00, 2019-04-10 10:00 - 17:00, 2019-04-09 10:00 - 17:00, 2019-04-08 10:00 - 17:00, 2019-04-07 10:00 - 17:00, 2019-04-06 10:00 - 17:00, 2019-04-05 10:00 - 17:00, 2019-04-04 10:00 - 17:00 (Europe/London) and 20 more dates | Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Argyle Street, Glasgow, Scotland, G3 8AG, United Kingdom
Dippy, the Natural History Museum’s iconic Diplodocus dinosaur skeleton, is coming to Glasgow!
As part of a road trip across the UK, Dippy is venturing out of London for the first time since 1905. He will visit Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum from 22 January – 6 May 2019. And he’s on a mission – to inspire five million natural history adventures, encouraging families to explore the incredible natural history collections and biodiversity in Glasgow.
More information can be found here. Admission to the exibition is free.
As part of the exhibition there will be a “Societies’ Day” at the Kelvingrove Museum on Saturday 16 February. The Geological Society of Glasgow and the Strathclyde Geoconservation Group will have stalls at this event, which , at increasing awareness of groups involved in earth science outreach. If you are interested in helping out on the day then please see any Council member.

Should we bring dinosaurs back to life?
2019-03-16 14:00 - 16:00 | Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Argyle Street, Glasgow, Scotland, G3 8AG, United Kingdom
Have you ever thought what it would be like to bring a dinosaur back to life? Would it be fair to bring back animals into an environment for which it may have no immunity? Would there be the right dietary balance for the animals? Could they survive other than in a controlled environment like a zoo? What would happen if they broke free? Why not ask our panel of dinosaur experts these questions and any more you can think of? In partnership with PalAlba.
Suitable for age 7 plus. Admission is free.

Reconstructing the Variscan foreland basin in Southern England (lecture)
2019-03-14 19:30 - 21:30 | Lecture Theatre, Gregory Building, c/o School of Geographical & Earth Sciences, Glasgow, Glasgow City, G12 8QQ, United Kingdom
Dr Bernard Besly, Besly Earth Science Ltd
A full reconstruction of the Variscan orogeny in southern Britain has yet to be achieved. This mountain building episode remains enigmatic, partly because much of the evidence is covered by younger sedimentary successions, and partly because much evidence was removed by very extensive uplift and denudation in the ±40-million-year time gap between the latest preserved Carboniferous sediments and the resumption of deposition in the late Permian.
One of the unsolved elements of the puzzle concerns the extent and nature of subsidence related to foreland loading in southern England. In this talk the nature and extent of late Carboniferous foreland subsidence is evaluated with reference to coal and oil exploration results from successions concealed beneath the Mesozoic in Oxfordshire and Berkshire, which allow demonstration of the timing and extent of foreland basin development in the penultimate stages of Variscan deformation.
Background reading:

Besly, B.M. & Kelling, G. (eds) (1988) Sedimentation in a synorogenic basin complex: the Upper Carboniferous of northwest Europe. Blackie, Glasgow.
Corfield, S. M., Gawthorpe, R. L., Gage, M., Fraser A. J. & Besly, B. M. (1996) Inversion tectonics of the Variscan foreland of the British Isles. Journal of the Geological Society, 153, 17-32.
Peace, G.R. & Besly, B.M. (1997) End-Carboniferous fold-thrust structures, Oxfordshire, UK: implications for the structural evolution of the late Variscan foreland of south-central England. Journal of the Geological Society, 154, 225-237.

Bernard is an independent petroleum geologist and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Keele. His career has embraced periods as a lecturer at Keele and exploration geologist at Shell. Since 2001, working as a freelance, he has undertaken many sedimentological and stratigraphic projects in clastic successions from all depositional environments, ranging in age from Proterozoic to Pliocene and having a particular focus on continental deposits in humid tropical settings. From his PhD project onwards his research has been concerned with basin evolution in the British Carboniferous, with emphasis on the late Westphalian and Stephanian molasse basins associated with the Variscan orogeny.
