The Triassic of Warwickshire – Joe Mazgajcyk & Kieren Quigley

Get ready to embark on a thrilling journey back in time with this presentation on the Triassic Strata of Warwickshire. Discover the diverse strata of the Triassic Period in Warwickshire, the environments they were deposited in, and the processes that formed them.  Details to follow

Dawn of the Modern World: Life, Death and Rain in the late Triassic – Mike Simms

In November 1987 two young geologists stumbled upon evidence that the prevailing aridityof the Late Triassic was interrupted, for about a million years, by an interval of greatlyincreased rainfall that appeared synchronous with mass extinction and diversificationevents in both marine and terrestrial environments. This key episode in the evolution oftaxa from dinosaurs to dinoflagellates, coccoliths …

Read more

Bones and Badlands – Phil Manning

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 …

Read more

Gondwana Landscapes: Geology on a Plate – Brian Ellis

Using examples from Australia (mainly South Australia) the talk willexamine existing landscapes which are directly inherited from Gondwana.It will consider the role of their location on the Australian Plate in theconservation of those landscapes and the significance of the dating of thebreakup of Gondwana to the evolution of the geology of Australia. Thetalk will reflect …

Read more

Lecture: The birds and rocks of Flamborough Head – Paul Hildreth

Flamborough Head is England’s most northerly outcrop of the Late Cretaceous Chalk Group and is home to the highest chalk sea cliffs and the only mainland gannet colony in the UK. In recognition of these latter claims, the RSPB has established the very popular and successful Bempton Cliffs reserve which sees around half a million …

Read more

Evening Lecture: Stromatolites: Making Mountains out of Microbes – Prof Ian Fairchild

For most of Earth history the only macroscopic evidence of life are the intricately layered rocks called stromatolites. Like trace fossils they record an interaction between organisms and sedimentary processes. The key players are the cyanobacteria, formerly known as blue-green algae, which played a vital role in oxygenating the Earth through their photosynthesis. Build-up of …

Read more