Geological Society of Glasgow

Geo-natter
2022-12-07 13:30 - 15:00, 2022-11-30 13:30 - 15:00, 2022-11-16 13:30 - 15:00, 2022-11-02 13:30 - 15:00, 2022-10-19 13:30 - 15:00, 2022-10-05 13:30 - 15:00, 2022-09-28 13:30 - 15:00, 2022-09-07 13:30 - 15:00 (Europe/London) and 1 more date | Kelvin Hall, 1445 Argyle Street, Glasgow, G3 8AW, United Kingdom
A chance to chat informally about geology, show off your rocks and fossils, ask questions about geology, find out what’s happening and perhaps even arrange to take part in future events

Walking with giants: on the banks of a 130-million-year-old river (lecture)
2022-11-10 19:30 - 21:30 (Europe/London) | Lecture Room 407, Boyd Orr Building, University Avenue, Glasgow, G12 8QW, United Kingdom
Megan Jacobs, University of Portsmouth
The Early Cretaceous (Barremian) Wessex Formation, of the Isle of Wight, UK, is one of the best places in Europe to find dinosaurs. This island is full of brightly coloured sandstones and floodplain clays that regularly yield fossil remains ranging from fish and crocodiles to huge dinosaurs and giant pterosaurs. Take an exciting look back in time at the Wessex Formation and its ancient floodplains and forests. Learn about the geology, meandering rivers, complex soils, and the high diversity of animals from insects to pterosaurs, as well as what we have even recently learned from dinosaur stomach stones.
Megan is a visiting researcher at the University of Portsmouth, with her research focusing on Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous vertebrates, including ichthyosaurs, pterosaurs and dinosaurs.
This will be a remote talk. The speaker will be ‘on-screen’ in the lecture theatre and attendees can interact with the speaker from the lecture theatre. We will be recording the talk for later viewing but in order to maximise in-person attendence and minimise the technology issues we are not offering live online access to the talk.

Fossil Grove Open Day
2022-10-16 12:00 - 16:00 (Europe/London) | Fossil Grove, 51 Victorial Park Drive South, Glasgow, G14 9QR, United Kingdom
This event will consist of tours of the Fossil House and the quarry and activities for children. It is part of the Scottish Geology Festival.

Lithium in Cornwall: the foundation for a responsible UK battery supply chain (lecture)
2022-10-13 19:30 - 21:30 (Europe/London) | Lecture Room 407, Boyd Orr Building, University Avenue, Glasgow, G12 8QW, United Kingdom
Dr Rebecca Paisley, Exploration Geochemist, Cornish Lithium
Cornish Lithium is an innovative, eco-technology company focused on mineral exploration and development for the environmentally sustainable extraction of lithium in the historic mining district of Cornwall, UK. The company has secured agreements with the owners of mineral rights over a large area of the county and is using modern technology to re-evaluate the region for lithium and other technology metals which are essential components of modern life. A secure domestic supply of such metals is considered vital to the industrial strategy of the UK as it moves towards a zero-carbon future.
Rebecca is the Lead Geochemist for Cornish Lithium., She holds a PhD in Earth & Planetary Sciences from McGill University, Canada, and a master’s degree in Earth Sciences from the University of Oxford, UK. She specialises in using geochemical data to constrain sub-surfaces processes in a variety of geological environments. Rebecca joined Cornish Lithium to assist with developing the geochemical side of their exploration efforts, and currently designs and implements the geothermal waters sampling strategies for their drill programs. She also manages Cornish Lithium’s direct lithium extraction (DLE) work package, evaluating different technologies and their abilities to process Cornish geothermal fluids.
This will be a remote talk. The speaker will be ‘on-screen’ in the lecture theatre and attendees can interact with the speaker from the lecture theatre. We will be recording the talk for later viewing but in order to maximise in-person attendence and minimise the technology issues we are not offering live online access to the talk.

Scotland's fossils (lecture)
2022-10-06 18:30 - 20:30 (Europe/London) | Dynamic Earth, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8AS, United Kingdom
This is a public lecture organised by the Edinburgh Geological Society.
The lecture will explore the amazing variety of fossils in Scotland, covering hundreds of millions of years of evolution from the corals and sharks of the Carboniferous to the dinosaurs and pterosaurs of Skye. An expert panel of palaeontologists will guide you through the history of life recorded in Scotland’s sedimentary rocks with time to ask questions and look at specimens.
The lecture celebrates the first UNESCO International Geodiversity Day: a worldwide celebration, bringing people together on 6th October each year, to promote all the many aspects of geodiversity.
Contributors:
Dr Katie Strang, Scottish Geology Trust
Paige dePolo, University of Edinburgh
Natalia Jagielska, University of Edinburgh
Chair:
Dr Neil Clark, The Hunterian
Booking essential – tickets £5, free for EGS Members, students and young people.
Ticets can be booked at www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/egs-public-lecture-scotlands-fossils-tickets-407856067477.

Fossil Grove Open Day
2022-09-18 12:00 (Europe/London) | Fossil Grove, 51 Victorial Park Drive South, Glasgow, G14 9QR, United Kingdom
This event will consist of tours of the Fossil House and the quarry and activities for children. It is part of the Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival.

Snowdonia
2022-09-09 09:00 - 2022-09-12 17:00 (Europe/London)
Leader: Simon Cuthbert
Field days: Friday/ Saturday/ Sunday/ Monday
The landscape of Snowdonia National Park, “Parc Cenedlaethol Eryri” in Welsh (Eryri means place of the eagles) is dramatic and varied, with mountains, craggy peaks, precipices and cascading waterfalls. Snowdon – Yr Wyddfa – is the highest peak at 3,560ft. The geology includes sedimentary, volcanic and intrusive rocks of late Proterozoic to Silurian age. The rugged mountain scenery is dominated by the Ordovician volcanics, including spectacular pyroclastic rocks from giant ash-flow eruptions seen in the extensive ignimbrites. All these are related to the subduction of the Iapetus Ocean crust and formed as part of the back arc basin in a volcanic arc system. These, and the famous Cambrian slates that “roofed the world”, were intensely faulted, folded and subjected to low-grade metamorphism during the Caledonian Orogeny. The region was uplifted as the North Atlantic opened during the Cenozoic while the current mountainous landscape and its cwms (corries) have resulted from repeated late Cenozoic glaciations, as recognised by Charles Darwin during his travels in the area. The trip will focus on the Ordovician volcanics and will examine the large-scale Caledonian folding, all set in Eryri’s wonderful glacier-carved mountain scenery. We may also manage a trip on the Snowdonia Mountain railway!
Accommodation will be B&B; transport by shared car, or by train (Glasgow to Betws-y-Coed), then hire of a local coach/minibus. We will travel to Snowdonia on Thursday 8 September and travel home on Tuesday 13 September.
There are still places available on this excursion.
If you are interested, please contact the residential excursions secretary, Maggie Donnelly, at restrips@gsocg.org.

Fossil Grove Open Day
2022-08-21 12:00 - 16:00, 2022-07-17 12:00 - 16:00, 2022-06-19 12:00 - 16:00, 2022-04-17 12:00 - 16:00 (Europe/London) | Fossil Grove, 51 Victorial Park Drive South, Glasgow, G14 9QR, United Kingdom
This event will consist of tours of the Fossil House and the quarry and activities for children.

Elie-St Monans-Pittenweem
2022-08-20 09:00 - 20:00 (Europe/London)
Leader: Dr Brian Bell
This excursion will involve the examination of Carboniferous fluvial, deltaic and shallow marine strata pierced by Carboniferous vents (diatremes) and the interplay between volcanism and sedimentation.
Usual field gear: good boots, waterproofs and a walking pole.

Leaving Molema Building at 9:00, returning at 20:00, travelling by coach; stopping for a bar snack on the way home

Onich Shore
2022-08-13 09:00 - 20:00 (Europe/London)
Leaders: Dr Iain Allison & Jim Blair
Onich Shore is a classic east-west cross-section through folded Dalradian metasediments, part of the Appin Syncline, including Appin Phyllite, Limestone and Quartzite, and with Ballachulish Slates, plus some minor basic dykes and intrusive bodies. With easy parking and access at the petrol station in North Ballachulish, it is claimed to be the most visited section of the Grampian Terrane. The shore is mainly of shingle, with some short rocky sections; hence walking boots or wellies are recommended. The Dubh Ghlac (Onich Dry Gorge) lies a further 1,000 metres to the west of the section and a series of other localities are scattered around Loch Leven to the east (some of these localities are of quick and easy access, others less so).
A key reference is “The Dalradian rocks of the central Grampian Highlands of Scotland”,
J.E. Treagus, P.W. Tanner, P.R. Thomas, R.A. Scott and D. Stephenson, Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, 124, 2013 (page 167).
Leaving Molema Building at 9:00, returning at 20:00, travelling by coach; stopping for a bar snack on way home

South Queensferry
2022-07-16 09:00 - 19:00 (Europe/London)
Leader: Dr Richard Smith
Joint excursion with the Edinburgh Geological Society
The excursion starts on the promenade to set the scene and view the 3 bridges now spanning the Firth of Forth. Then we examine the accessible exposures along the shore to the east of South Queensferry which include the Lower Carboniferous West Lothian Oil-Shale Formation dipping generally westwards above the older Gullane Formation (both Strathclyde Group). The West Lothian oil-shales comprise cycles of thin marine or freshwater limestones followed by lagoonal oil-shales then mudstones, siltstones and sandstones where deltaic systems fed into a wide lagoon (Lake Cadell) which existed in this area about 335 Ma, open to the north-east but bounded to the south-east by the Southern Uplands. To the east the Gullane Formation, comprising sandstone and mudstone but generally lacking oil-shale, was intruded during Upper Carboniferous times by two prominent sills, the Mons Hill teschenitic sill and the Hound Point quartz-dolerite sill. These rocks were folded and faulted during the subsequent Variscan Orogeny. The surface bedrock has gradually been eroded by the elements, including within the last two million years, the Pleistocene glaciations. Subsequent late glacial and postglacial deposits cover much of the bedrock away from the shoreline.
Following the excursion, we will have high tea with our EGS colleagues.
Travelling by private car. Meet at 10:30 at Hawes Pier, South Queensferry; NT 135783. Parking is available by the promenade to the west.
There is no charge for the excursion, but members are expected to meet the cost of their high tea.
The numbers on this joint excursion are limited to 10 from each society. Therefore early booking is advisable if you wish to make sure of a place.

East Kirkton & Petershill Quarries
2022-07-02 09:00 - 18:00 (Europe/London)
Leader: Gary Hoare
East Kirkton is an unusual deposit because it favoured the fossilisation of land animals rather than those that lived in the water. It has been the scene of some of the most exciting discoveries in Scottish paleontology, which Gary will tell us about.
Petershill Limestone was originally quarried for lime in the 18th century until the quarries were converted to reservoirs in the 19th century, before finally being drained in the 1980s. The site is an SSSI for its species-rich grassland, scrub and wetland, as well as for the geology. The limestone contains a rich fauna including the colonial coral Siphonodendron and the large brachiopod Gigantoproductus.
Leaving Molema Building at 9:00, returning at 18:00, travelling by coach

Charleston Lime Quarry
2022-06-11 09:00 - 18:00 (Europe/London)
Leader: Dr Katie Strang
We will be examining outcrops of the Blackhall Limestone and disused quarries. The quarries on the Elgin Estate are no longer operational but provide an excellent opportunity to look at outcrops of the Early Carboniferous Visean Limestone. There will also be a chance to look for fossils in some of the old spoil heaps. The walk is about 10 minutes from the Charlestown Lime Centre and is mostly flat, although can become quite waterlogged – wellies or walking boots advised! Time permitting, we will also go and look at the magnificent old lime kilns on the foreshore.
Leaving Molema Building at 9:00, returning at 18:00, travelling by coach

Members' Night
2022-05-12 19:30 - 21:30 (Europe/London) | Room 639, James McCune Smith Learning Hub, University Avenue, Glasgow, G12 8QW, United Kingdom
The last evening meeting of the session will consist of a series of short presentations by society members.
Matthew Statis. Accessing the sedimentary record of ocean acidification prior to the K/Pg mass extinction
Simon Cuthbert. The beast of Linn Park: Arthropleura trail by the White Cart Water
Members of the Strathclyde Geoconservation Group. Glasgow area geological exposures: reconnaissance trips to Campsie Glen, River Kelvin and Overtoun
Members of the Fossil Grove Trust. Fossil Grove renovation project
We intend recording the talks but not doing a “live” Zoom. it would be good if as many members as possible could attend the meeting.

Ardnamurchan
2022-05-06 12:00 - 2022-05-09 12:00 UTC
Leader: Con Gillen
Field days: Friday (afternoon)/ Saturday/ Sunday/ Monday (morning)
This trip was originally planned to take place in 2020, but was cancelled because of Covid-19. Priority will be given to those members who had expressed interest in the original excursion.
The Ardnamurchan peninsula, which includes the most westerly point of the Scottish mainland, is composed mainly of the remains of an early Palaeogene volcano with three centres of activity. Part of the North Atlantic Igneous Province which includes Mull, Rum and Skye, it was erupted into Moine metasedimentary rocks and overlain by a sequence of thin sedimentary rocks. Ardnamurchan displays classic geology on a colossal scale, with features such as mixed magma, ash flows, ring dykes, cone sheets and examples of “airfall” rocks formed from lava ejected from the heart of the volcano – it is regarded as almost a “textbook volcano”. A drive across the peninsula is a journey through its magma chamber. Its overall structure is difficult to perceive on the ground but from space the picture is much clearer – rings of once molten magma can be seen to define a series of almost perfect circles. These are the lower parts of the volcano after the superstructure has been planed off by erosion, in this case, effectively, by the last Ice Age. We plan to visit significant localities of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks and there may also be the opportunity to sail to Tobermory (whales!) for those who wish to do less climbing!
Accommodation will be B & B in Kilchoan etc.; transport will be in shared cars.
This excursion is now fully booked.

Landslides, glaciation and the evolution of mountain landscapes during the Quaternary (lecture)
2022-04-14 19:30 - 21:30 (Europe/London) | Room 639, James McCune Smith Learning Hub, University Avenue, Glasgow, G12 8QW, United Kingdom
Professor Colin Ballantyne, University of St Andrews
A persistent view amongst geologists is that landscape evolution in mid-latitude mountains during the Quaternary (2.6 Ma to the present) was dominated by glacial erosion. Using examples from Scotland, this presentation shows that areas of high ground have experienced very limited glacial erosion, and that classic glacial landforms such as glacial troughs, corries and arêtes continued to evolve during successive interglacial periods through rockfall and rock-slope failure. The present mountain landscapes of Scotland and other tectonically stable mid-latitude mountains therefore represent a synergistic relationship between glacial and interglacial (paraglacial) processes operating over very long timescales.
Further Reading
Ballantyne, C.K., Sandeman, G.F., Stone, J.O. and Wilson, P. 2014. Rock-slope failure following Late Pleistocene deglaciation on tectonically stable mountainous terrain. Quaternary Science Reviews, 86, 144-157.
Colin completed a PhD at Edinburgh University on the periglacial geomorphology of mountains in NW Scotland before taking up a lectureship at the University of St Andrews in 1980. He was appointed Professor of Physical Geography at St Andrews in 1994. His research has been recognised in a number of awards, including the Warwick Award (1986) and Wiley Award (1999) of the British Society for Geomorphology (formerly BGRG), the President’s Medal (1990) and Newbigin Prize (1991) of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, the Saltire Society Scottish Science Award (1996) and the Clough Medal (2010) of the Edinburgh Geological Society, the premier Scottish award in Earth Sciences. He was elected FRSE and FRSA in 1996 and received the degree of DSc from the University of St Andrews in 2000. He is a visiting professor at UNIS (Svalbard) and former Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
Colin has recently published a very accessible book on ‘Scotland’s Mountain Landscapes’. This would make a great gift for folk interested in Scottish mountains and how they were shaped. He will bring some copies along for purchase at a bargain price of £20 (RRP £28).
This lecture will be held as a live event in the James McCune Smith Learning Hub.

Big boulders of Scotland (lecture)
2022-03-10 19:30 - 21:30 (Europe/London) | Lecture Theatre 203, Boyd Orr Building, University Avenue, Glasgow, G12 8QW, United Kingdom
Noel Williams, Lochaber Geopark
In April 1871 The Royal Society of Edinburgh appointed a committee to “make inquiry about boulders in Scotland”. The Committee on Boulders had two main aims:
1. To identify where boulders of interest were situated.
2. To indicate which boulders were deemed especially worthy of preservation.
The idea of setting up this committee was inspired by large surveys which had been set up in 1867 to record erratic boulders and “enormous heaps of gravel” in Switzerland and the Jura region of France.
David Milne Home was encouraged by Professor Favre of Geneva to organise a similar survey in Scotland. In order to set up such a widespread survey Milne Home made contact with church ministers, head teachers and landowners across Scotland. The Committee on Boulders collected data over 13 years (1871–84) and published 10 reports.
We will retrace the steps of Professor Heddle and local headmaster Colin Livingstone who recorded the position of large erratic boulders, as well as glacial striations, during lengthy outings on the hills in the Lochaber district around Fort William.
Noel has written and edited guide books that have inspired thousands of mountain walkers and climbers. His great knowledge of the mountains, shown in his books, guides and magazine articles, has been garnered through painstaking research and thousands of hours exploring the hills, from being author of Scrambles in Lochaber in 1985 to being editor of Highland Scrambles South for the SMC in 2017. His interest in geology has also reached print, and he was co-author of Ben Nevis and Glen Nevis (NCC 1989) and Exploring the Landscape of Ben Nevis & Glen Nevis (Nevis Partnership 2016). He has also contributed photos to a number of different guides.
Noel was a member of Lochaber Mountain Rescue team for many years and for a while was deputy leader. He was involved in some big lowers on the North Face of Ben Nevis, including the first night-time lower on the Orion Face. He retired from the team in 2011. He has also been a member of the Scottish Mountaineering Club (SMC) since 1982, where he took on roles of Vice President from 1997 to 1999 and President from 2014 to 2016. He was also editor of the SMC Journal from 2008 to 2014.
As one of the founding members of Lochaber Geopark (2003/4) Noel is Chairman/Director of the charity. He has also been a director of the Nevis Partnership for many years. The charity guides policies and actions to safeguard, manage and where appropriate enhance the environmental qualities and opportunities for visitor enjoyment and appreciation of the Nevis area.
Noel taught for 10 years at Lochaber High School where he was involved in running the school mountaineering club. Several of his pupils went on to become members of Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team. He later taught at Kinlochleven High School until his retirement in 2005.
Although he claims to be not much of a runner, Noel Williams has completed 21 Ben Nevis Races, as well as Tranter’s Round and six marathons. He has also completed quite a few new routes on the sea cliffs of Skye.
This lecture will be held as a live event in the Boyd Orr Building but we also hope to provide online Zoom coverage. We hope that members can come to the talk in person as we don’t want the speaker to be talking to a sparse lecture theatre!
The talk will be in Lecture Room 203 on the ground floor, which is straight in front of you across the foyer as you enter the building. The lecture room is very big and therefore we do not need to have a booking process. Please space yourselves out appropriately and respect the university’s requirement to wear a mask inside the building at all times.
Socialising afterwards in the lecture room and foyer unfortunately will not be posible. Therefore we are suggesting that at the end of the Q&A we go directly to the Oran Mor at the top of Byres Road where we can get refreshments and sit at tables.
Society members for whom we have email addresses will be sent an invitation to the Zoom meeting a few days before the event. If you are a member but are not on our email list, or a non-member who would like to join the Zoom meeting, please email the society’s meetings secretary to request an invitation.

Below the bonnie banks – investigating Loch Lomond’s subaqueous Quaternary landscape (lecture)
2022-02-10 19:30 - 21:30 (Europe/London) | Online event
Dr Andrew Finlayson, British Geological Survey, Edinburgh
Andrew’s talk will focus on new work from Loch Lomond and some of the stories coming from the multibeam bathymetric and shallow seismic surveys.
Further Reading
Finlayson, A., Fabel, D., Bradwell, T. and Sugden, D. 2014. Growth and decay of a marine terminating sector of the last British Irish Ice Sheet. Quaternary Science Reviews, 83, 28-45.
Finlayson, A. 2020. Glacial conditioning and paraglacial sediment reworking in Glen Croe (the Rest and be Thankful), western Scotland. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, 131, 138–154.
Andrew graduated in 2001 from the University of St. Andrews in 2001 and undertook an MSc at Royal Holloway, University of London. Subsequently he did a PhD at the University of Edinburgh and joined BGS in 2005.
This lecture will be held as a Zoom meeting. Society members for whom we have email addresses will be sent an invitation a few days before the event. If you are a member but are not on our email list, or a non-member who would like to join the meeting, please email the society’s meetings secretary to request an invitation.

Deformed dirt: the deformation caused by glaciers and ice sheets (lecture)
2022-01-13 19:30 - 21:30 (Europe/London) | Online event
Dr Emrys Phillips, British Geological Survey, Edinburgh
High resolution seismic data from the Dogger Bank in the central southern North Sea has revealed that the Dogger Bank Formation records a complex history of sedimentation and penecontemporaneous, large-scale, ice-marginal to proglacial glacitectonic deformation. The internal structure of the Dogger Bank thrust-moraine complexes can be directly related to ice sheet dynamics, recording the former positions of a highly dynamic, oscillating Weichselian ice sheet margin as it retreated northwards at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum.
Further Reading
Phillips, E. et al. 2018. Large-scale glacitectonic deformation in response to active ice sheet retreat across Dogger Bank (southern central North Sea) during the Last Glacial Maximum. Quaternary Science Reviews, 179, 24-47.
Emrys graduated in 1984 from Manchester University and undertook an MSc there on high T/P metamorphism in the Lewisian. Subsequently he did a PhD at Cardiff on the Monian rocks of Anglesey and then joined BGS in 1990. He is currently Co-leader of Theme 1: Landscape Form, Use and Change: a Dynamic Earth, Scottish Alliance for Geoscience, Environment and Society (SAGES). He has been a an Editor of the Scottish Journal of Geology and is a past-President of the Westmorland Geological Society.
This lecture will be held as a Zoom meeting. Society members for whom we have email addresses will be sent an invitation a few days before the event. If you are a member but are not on our email list, or a non-member who would like to join the meeting, please email the society’s meetings secretary to request an invitation.
