Geological Society of Glasgow

Burnmouth
2025-07-19 08:30 - 18:30 (Europe/London) | Glasgow City
Leader: Katie Strang
The rocks exposed along the foreshore at Burnmouth in the Scottish Borders are early Carboniferous in age and belong to the Ballagan Formation. They were deposited in a low-lying vegetated coastal wetland around 350 million years ago, when Scotland as we know it was a very different place! During this time we were situated at low latitudes close to the equator and experienced a hot and humid climate. The area was subject to vast droughts and flooding, sea levels fluctuated and sandy river channels meandered across the land. It was in this setting that we also saw the first tetrapods (four-limbed animals with backbones) making their way on to the land. Originally these rocks were laid down on a relatively flat surface and they stayed this way until a period of significant tectonic activity and continental collision known as the Varsican orogeny, which happened around 200 million years ago. These intense tectonic forces caused the rocks at Burnmouth to be uplifted, tilted and faulted, eventually resulting in the striking near vertical orientation we will see on the shore today!
Minibus leaving Glasgow 8.30am – returning around 6.30pm
£25.00 per person for members (£35.00 non-members)
Level 1: Multiaccess – “All users including people with reduced mobility.”
Level 2: Easy – All levels of fitness and family groups including children and the elderly
Level 3: Moderate – “People with a moderate level of fitness.”
Level 4: Strenuous – “People accustomed to walking rough trails and with a high level of fitness.”
This excursion was cancelled because poor weather was forecast.

BOOK

Girvan (joint EGS trip)
2025-08-02 08:30 - 18:30 | Glasgow City
Leaders: Neil Clark, Gary Hoare and Katie Strang
A look at the rocks and fossils of the Girvan southern foreshore that have been studied for well over a century. Elizabeth Gray, the famous Scottish 19th century fossil collector and facilitator of research grew up here. Her discoveries led to our current understanding of the divisions of the early Palaeozoic. Other well-known researchers include Sir Alwyn Williams, Charles Lapworth, Keith Ingham and many more.
The visit starts with a look at the Cascade Folds of Ardwell Bay and a beach pebble hunt to see the variety of pebbles associated with the Ordovician rocks of this area.
The Whitehouse Shore is where Elizabeth Gray quarried trilobites, brachiopods, graptolites and bryozoa. The red mudstones here also contain fossil trilobites that were being worked on by Keith Ingham. Many species new to science were excavated from here by Keith but few were published on before he died. We might find trilobites of our own here! These localities are SSSI (Special Sites of Scientific Interest), but hammering is restricted to loose material.
The final stop is to examine the conglomerates on the beach at Ainslie Manor. The first one contains a lot of white brecciated quartz and dolomitised limestone and another is more varied with large cobbles of basalt, quartzite, chert, sandstone and jasper. These were deposited close to a fault that was active during the deposition of the conglomerates. After that it is hoped that we can have a fish supper at a local establishment in Girvan.
Bus leaving Waterloo Place, Edinburgh at 8.10am
Bus collecting GSG members at Molema Building 9.30am arriving in Girvan around 10.30am
Return journey departs Girvan 5.30pm
Level 1: Multiaccess – “All users including people with reduced mobility.”
Level 2: Easy – All levels of fitness and family groups including children and the elderly
Level 3: Moderate – “People with a moderate level of fitness.” An amount of walking over beach boulders etc
Level 4: Strenuous – “People accustomed to walking rough trails and with a high level of fitness.”

BOOK

Geo-natter
2025-08-06 13:30 - 15:00, 2025-09-03 13:30 - 15:00, 2025-10-01 13:30 - 15:00, 2025-11-05 13:30 - 15:00, 2025-12-17 13:30 - 15:00 | Kelvin Hall, 1445 Argyle Street, Glasgow, G3 8AW, United Kingdom
These informal meetings are the perfect opportunity to meet like-minded rock enthusiasts and chat about all things geological and palaeontological!
A chance to look at rocks and fossils, get your own specimens identified, ask questions about geology and find out what’s happening locally. Tea and coffee provided.

Scottish Geology Festival
2025-09-01 22:30 - 2025-10-12 16:00 | Online and various venues
Scotland’s iconic landscapes and rugged coastlines are the product of more than 3000 million years of evolution. The rocks beneath our feet have sculpted our country’s culture, heritage and industry, creating this special place we call home.
The Scottish Geology Festival is an opportunity to uncover the stories hidden within Scotland’s rocks through guided walks, online talks, beach pebble events, geological exhibitions and more. The theme for this year’s festival is Volcanoes in our Neighbourhood.
Further details, including a full list of events, can be found on the Scottish Geology Trust website.

Urban geology of the University of Glasgow
2025-09-02 18:00 - 19:30 | Kelvin Hall, 1445 Argyle Street, Glasgow, G3 8AW, United Kingdom
Join Dr Katie Strang for a guided walk to explore the urban geology around the University of Glasgow’s Gilmorehill Campus. This circular walk will start and finish outside Kelvin Hall, and we’ll examine the geology of the building stones and materials that have been used around the University Campus. From carboniferous sandstone to jurassic limestone, and gorgeous pink granites to 400 million year old fossil fish in the pavements, we’ll see an awesome variety of rocks which span hundreds of millions of years of Earth’s history.
Meeting point: outside Kelvin Hall Open Collections on 1445 Argyle Street (where it meets Bunhouse Road and Partick Bridge), Glasgow, G3 8AW
The event is free, but booking essential. You can book on the Eventbrite website.
This event is part of the Scottish Geology Festival.

Glenelg - Attadale Inlier residential trip
2025-09-04 00:00 - 2025-09-08 23:59 | Glasgow City
Leader: Professor Simon Cuthbert
This five-day excursion visits part of the northwest Highlands opposite the Isle of Skye that is well known for its dramatic scenery and human stories, encompassing the dramatic fjord of Loch Duich and Lochalsh, Eilean Donan Castle, the hidden gem of Glenelg and Sandaig Bay. Exposed in these hills and shores, emerging from under the Wester Ross Supergroup (the “Moines”), is an enigmatic complex of ancient gneisses – the Glenelg-Attadale Inlier (GAI), the largest of the so-called “Lewisianoid” basement Inliers of the Northern Highlands Terrane. The rocks resemble the Lewisian Complex further north, but enclose a beautiful garnet-pyroxene rock-type – eclogite – that formed at extreme pressure when this continental crust was subducted during continental collisions. This is the only example in the British Isles of well-preserved eclogite and is unusually old for such rocks – early to mid-Proterozoic – and were formed long before they were caught up in the Caledonian orogeny and thrust westwards along the Moine Thrust system. This area is where some of the great figures of Scottish geology have worked and we can admire their insights and originality.
Thursday: We will meet in Glenelg in the afternoon of the first day, with the option of exploring the hillside above the village and / or visiting the fascinating Brochs at Gleann Beag.
Friday: On the second day we will climb about 300m up into the hills north of Glenelg to see gneisses, marbles and c. 1200 myr old eclogites with (hopefully!) spectacular views to Skye and the peaks north and south.
Saturday: On day 3 we drive over the high Bealach Ratagain with superb views of the Kintail mountains and a chance to see the late Caledonian granites of the Ratagan pluton, then swing northwest along the south shore of Loch Duich see high-pressure gneisses that show, perhaps surprisingly, how continental crust may be subducted. We will explore structures and timing in eclogites and climb the hillside to see a very unusual iron-rich metamorphic rock known as “eulysite” – one for the mineral fanatics! Then we will visit the spectacularly located Eileen Donan Castle and nearby garnet granulites of the GAI, then take in another great view from Carr Brae high above the loch.
Sunday: On day 4 we will walk down to beautiful Sandaig Bay, Gavin Maxwell’s “Ring of Bright Water” to see much older, c. 1700 myr. eclogite bodies similar in age to the Rhinns complex on Islay and the Laxfordian of the main Lewisian outcrop. We will also see the contact of the “Lewisianoid” gneisses with the Wester Ross Supergroup schists and a mylonite shear zone related to the Caledonian Moine Thrust.
Monday: On the final day, before returning home, there is the option of stopping in the dramatic glacial trough of Glen Shiel to see the Sgurr Beag Slide marking the top of the Moine Nappe and Glenfinnan Group migmatitic gneiss in the Loch Ness Supergroup.
The region we will visit has seen some interesting new interpretations recently, but overall tells the story of three episodes of supercontinent assembly including the enormous Grenville Orogeny, possibly the greatest mountain-building in Earth’s history. The excursion will explore the evidence, but should reward you regardless of whether you are a metamorphic fanatic or just love beautiful rocks and scenery! If you are a student studying geosciences you might wish to join to gain some extra experience of high-grade metamorphic rocks and structures.
*Reaching some of the sites will require good mobility, stamina and physical fitness.
Travel to the field area and during the trip will be in participants’ own vehicles; please share if you can.
Hotel accommodation has been pre-booked at the Glenelg Inn, and Seaview Cottage both in Glenelg village.
Costs:
4 nights bed and breakfast at the ‘Glenelg Inn’
3 sharing a room £274.00 pp
2 sharing a room £320.00 pp
Double room £520.00 single occupancy or £640.00 per couple.
OR
4 nights Self Catering at ‘Seaview’ cottage £206.00 per room. (Only 4 available)
**Each option is Plus £55 pp towards leaders costs. (Only returned if trip is cancelled at least 4 weeks before departure)
*Lunches and evening meals are not provided, packed lunch can be supplied at around £15 each and evening food can be purchased in the hotel. Members will be responsible for paying their own meals and drinks directly to the hotel. These do need to be booked in advance.
A useful introduction to the area can be found in two articles by Craig Storey: Scottish Journal of Geology 44, 1–16 and 17–34 (2008).
* PLEASE PAY ONLY THE DEPOSIT AMOUNT AT THIS TIME TO CONFIRM YOUR SPACE AND WE WILL COLLECT ACCOMMODATION COSTS AFTER PLACES HAVE BEEN CONFIRMED **DEPOSIT DUE BY 31st MAY 2025**

BOOK

Rock Doctors
2025-09-13 12:00 - 16:00 | Hunterian Museum, University Avenue, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, United Kingdom
Come along to the annual Rock Doctors event and join the fun.

Get your rocks/fossils identified by an expert.
Make your own ammonite.
Take part in a dinosaur quiz.
Make a fossil rubbing.
See the famous Bearsden Shark.
Come early and take home a real fossil!

The event is free and there is no need to book; just come along and bring the kids and grandkids with you for a great fun day out.
This event is part of the Scottish Geology Festival.

Gilmour Hill and the building of the Gilbert Scott Building, with topical snippets from the Hunterian collections
2025-10-09 19:00 - 21:00 | Lecture Theatre, Kelvin Hall, 1445 Argyle Street, Glasgow, G3 8AW, United Kingdom
Join Dr Katie Strang, Curator of Mineralogy and Petrology at The Hunterian, to discover the 330-million-year history of the University of Glasgow’s Gilbert Scott Building. Scotland has one of the richest legacies of traditional buildings and stone structures of any country in the world, and the rocks beneath our feet are intrinsically linked to our sense of place and identity. This talk will explore the local geology and how these resources have been exploited for building materials throughout history, and ultimately, how they have shaped our built heritage.
Katie is a geologist with a degree and MRes from the University of Glasgow, and a PhD from Durham University. Since finishing her studies, she has worked in the museum and heritage sector and has research interests in Scotland’s palaeontology, industrial heritage, and the mineralogy of lime and related historic materials. She is the Curator of Mineralogy and Petrology at The Hunterian, University of Glasgow and the project geologist for the Eco-museum of Scottish Mining Landscapes. She also dedicates most of her free time to volunteering and is currently a Trustee of the Scottish Geology Trust, where she has been involved with directing the annual Scottish Geology Festival over the last 4 years.

Book

Rouken Glen Park geology walk
2025-10-25 11:00 - 12:30 | Glasgow City
Leaders: Margaret Greene and Dr Iain Allison
Join us for a leisurely guided geology walk around Rouken Glen Park, which will follow the route in our leaflet. The walk should last around 1.5 hours.
Meeting point: 11 am at the pond in the park
Parking is available on Davieland Road or at the garden centre on Rouken Glen Road, but please be aware that parking at the garden centre will entail a slightly longer walk to the pond.
There will be some uneven paths and slopes and a set of stairs; moderate difficulty.
Toilets are available at the cafe by the pond or in the garden centre.
This event is part of the Scottish Geology Festival.
The event is free but booking is required.
Please note that this event, which was originally planned for 4 October, has been postponed because of the storm (Amy) forecast for 4 October.

Book

The early evolution of the Dalradian
2025-11-13 19:00 - 21:00 | Lecture Theatre, Kelvin Hall, 1445 Argyle Street, Glasgow, G3 8AW, United Kingdom
David Webster

Mass extinctions: are we all doomed?
2025-12-11 19:30 - 21:00 | Lecture Theatre, Kelvin Hall, 1445 Argyle Street, Glasgow, G3 8AW, United Kingdom
Dr David Bond, University of Hull
The lecture will be preceded by the society’s AGM.
It is likely that Planet Earth faces an impending extinction crisis if humans cannot curb their excesses and given that the fossil carbon pool (i.e. that in geological storage) contains 10,000 x the carbon in the entire biosphere, the end of our CO2 glut seems distant. Some say the modern extinction has already begun, because species are disappearing at an alarming rate as a result of various anthropogenic pressures. How can we, as the supposed agents of this environmental and ecological catastrophe, know what will happen? Predicting the future is difficult, but fortunately, the fossil record provides many clues from the past.
Precedent for the modern lies in the five major mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic (the most recent of which famously wiped out the non-flying dinosaurs 66 million years ago). Life on Earth has faced countless more near misses. What causes these disasters? Is today really like the past? Is the sixth mass extinction inevitable? We will explore these questions, and inevitably fail to answer them, through a case study of the End Permian Mass Extinction (EPME). As many as 96% of species were wiped out on “the day the Earth nearly died”. But why? And could it happen again?
David Bond works on mass extinctions. Over the past twenty years he has been lucky enough to travel to >30 countries to collect rocks and fossils that help him and his collaborators understand what drove some of the greatest biotic catastrophes of the past ~444 million years. In the past few years he has been working on three crises that occurred between the Middle Permian (~262 Ma) and end Triassic (~201 Ma) – an interval of extremes of climate, extinction and evolution. His focus has been the Boreal Realm of northern high latitudes and he has spent a lot of time in the Canadian and Russian Arctic and Svalbard. In a bid to do fieldwork somewhere warmer he is a Co-Investigator on a large NERC-funded project gathering data on evolution, extinction and environmental change through the entire Devonian Period in northern Spain.
Prior to moving to Hull he worked at the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromsø, and before that, down the M62 in Leeds. As well as collecting rocks from interesting places, like many a geologist he likes cricket and beer and has qualifications in both!

Book

From collision magmatism to a geothermal future in the Northern Highlands
2026-01-08 19:00 - 21:00 | Lecture Theatre, Kelvin Hall, 1445 Argyle Street, Glasgow, G3 8AW, United Kingdom
Silurian to Devonian intrusions and volcanic rocks are a key component of the landscape of the Northern and Grampian Highlands of Scotland. Whilst these bodies relate in some way to Caledonian and Acadian orogenesis, a combination of data gaps and wider uncertainty about the nature of collision events on the Laurentian margin have made geologically consistent plate tectonic models elusive. This talk introduces a mix of geochronology, petrogenesis, and various concepts largely ignored in the Scottish literature: slab dynamics, lithospheric stability, and lower crustal magma storage. New U-Pb zircon data lead to the proposal that magmatism from ~450 – 395 Ma is linked successively to long-lived compression in a continental arc, slab roll-back, lithospheric delamination, crustal melting, and finally the far-field effects of Acadian collision related to a newly-proposed suture beneath the English Midlands. There are immediate implications for deep geothermal energy, as the timing and distribution of high heat granites differs markedly from terrane to terrane. The talk will also touch on how teams from Glasgow, Aberdeen, Portsmouth, Leicester and the British Geological Survey are looking to make better use of the zircon record of magmatic processes to solve pure and applied problems in the Highlands.

Dr Iain Neill, University of Glasgow
As a ‘jack of all trades’ I generate field, petrographic, geochemical and geochronological data largely from igneous, metamorphic and faulted rocks. I synthesise these and other diverse datasets to solve geological problems of relevance to society, including energy generation, resource exploration, and infrastructure development. Though my interests are global, I have a particular focus on the future of the Highlands of Scotland where was born.
I began my research career at Cardiff University as a NERC-funded PhD student, re-evaluating the origin and tectonic evolution of the Caribbean Plate. At the University of Durham, as a NERC-funded PDRA, I used fieldwork and whole-rock geochemistry to refine our models of how mantle-derived magmatism operates during continental collision, which introduced me to the geology of Iran and Armenia and to the integration of analogue data with geodynamic models.
After two years as a University Teacher at Glasgow (2014-2016), I maintained my regional research interests and started broadening their application into areas of economic or societal importance. These include 1) fundamental connections between magma genesis, plate tectonics and the generation of geological resources, 2) hazards posed by tectonic and volcanic activity in collision settings, 3) low and high temperature geothermal energy sources, 4) the impact of the basement of the Caribbean Plate on modern subduction and 5) the use of Scotland’s bedrock in resource generation, infrastructure, and rural development.
On a human level I am keen to work with those interested in economics, politics, and rural development, on the impact that geology may have in Scotland’s future. In particular, if you are from or work in the Highlands of Scotland and have an interest in rocks, give me a shout!

Book

Discovering mammals in the time of dinosaurs (T.N. George Medallist lecture)
2026-02-12 19:00 | Lecture Theatre, Kelvin Hall, 1445 Argyle Street, Glasgow, G3 8AW, United Kingdom
Elsa Panciroli, National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh

Book

Astrobiology and the Torridonian
2026-03-12 19:00 - 21:00 | Lecture Theatre, Kelvin Hall, 1445 Argyle Street, Glasgow, G3 8AW, United Kingdom
Keyron Hickman Lewis, GSG Grant Awardee, Birkbeck College, London

Book

Sedimentary systems in the Paleocene lava fields of the Inner Hebrides
2026-04-09 19:00 - 21:00 | Kelvin Hall, 1445 Argyle Street, Glasgow, G3 8AW, United Kingdom
The spectacular remnants of Paleocene lava fields in the Inner Hebrides are dominated by thick sequences of simple (sheet-like) flows and more complex compound flows. Interbedded with these lavas are sedimentary units, deposited within canyons, broad river channels, lakes and mires. In some cases, sufficient time intervals between eruptions allowed trees to develop on the volcanic landscape, now preserved as moulds and casts, together with slabs of bark and rafts of leaves. Elsewhere, magma interacted with sediment in a dynamic manner, producing a variety of distinctive lithologies, including peperites and hyaloclastites. Understanding the architecture of these volcanic and sedimentary systems allows us to get a glimpse into the dynamic development of these lava fields.
This talk will comprise a pictorial trip through the volcanic sequences of the Inner Hebrides, looking at examples of volcanic-sedimentary systems from Skye, Canna, Sanday, Rum, Eigg and Mull. There will be no mention of rock chemistry or isotope signatures – just field views from Brian’s collection of the past forty years!

Since retiring from a university research and teaching ‘career’ Brian has set up a website which he hopes captures the fabulous geology of the islands of Skye and Raasay (www.skyegeology.com). His swan song is an update of the 2005 BGS memoir The Palaeogene volcanic districts of Scotland which he co-authored with his good friend and mentor Henry Emeleus, to be published online in 2026, and which makes full use of his photograph collection.
Beyond his university work, he also produced revisions of the BGS maps of Skye and was involved with the discovery of the Rosebank and Cambo oil fields.
Brian says, “To be honest, I had a ‘career’ that allowed me to indulge myself in my passion for field-based geology. Not really ‘work’……..”
