December 26, 2022

My ’22 Top Ten – 6. The Family Tree

In July, I went to Clayton St John Primary School in Bradford, to run a Yorkshire Fossils class. This was part of my Stratum Young project, supported by the Geoscience Communications Fund of the Yorkshire Geological Society, and it was lovely to go in and work with the children to discuss, describe and draw the fossils they can find in...

Categories #StratumYoung/Outreach/Teaching

December 24, 2022

My ’22 Top Ten – 7. Creatures of Curiosity

I don’t really need to re-write the post I put up in August, but one of my highlights of the summer was being palaeontological consultant and fossil roadshow host for Rosie Barrett‘s Creatures of Curiosity exhibition at Nunnington Hall. Rosie tells me that more than 20,500 people visited the exhibition. I made a video, which is rubbish, but gives you...

Categories Outreach

December 23, 2022

My ’22 Top Ten – 8. Yorkshire Fossil Festival

At some point I should probably write a proper blogpost about how marvellous the 2022 Yorkshire Fossil Festival, which I organized in Scarborough over the weekend of September 16th to 18th, was. Now is not that point. Instead, I will refer you to the image above; the fact that we won an award for excellence in geological education from the...

Categories Outreach

December 22, 2022

My ’22 Top Ten – 9. Jurassic Whitby

The 2023 Yorkshire Fossil Festival is coming to Whitby over the weekend of June 10th and 11th, so it seems fitting that most of my research is focussed on the geological history of the Whitby area. In October, we published a new subsurface record of the Pliensbachian-Toarcian, Lower Jurassic, of Yorkshire in the Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society. Nine...

Categories Outreach/Research

December 21, 2022

My ’22 Top Ten – 10. Castleford coal creatures

I’ve been looking back over the year of 2022, deciding what my favourite fossily and earthy things were. I’ve ended up with ten highlights, so I’m going to work through them backwards, chronologically. Number 10 is the discovery I made last month that Henry Moore’s school in Castleford sits on a layer of fossilized sea creatures from Ukraine. After I...

Categories Outreach

November 29, 2022

The Ukrainian water-god of the Castleford coal

I popped into Henry Moore’s alma mater last week, to talk to the Year 9 geography students about palaeontology and Geoscience for the Future. In preparing my talk, I was curious to know what rocks were beneath the school. On consulting the British Geological Survey map, I was unsurprised to learn that the bedrock was Carboniferous. This was Castleford, a...

Categories #StratumYoung/Outreach/Teaching

October 29, 2022

Mile-deep mine-shaft shows Jurassic Whitby was stormy and stinky

A borehole drilled nearly a mile down into the rocks beneath Whitby, North Yorkshire, has provided scientists with an amazing new record of ancient climate change. It shows that – 182 million years ago – the Jurassic seas of North Yorkshire were stormy, stinky, and very unpleasant for sea-life.

Categories Media/Research

August 21, 2022

Creatures of Curiosity

This summer’s man-made heatwave has provided us with the hottest temperatures seen in Britain for more than 120,000 years, returning North Yorkshire to a time when hippos wallowed in its rivers, elephants grazed its grasslands, and hyaena clans made their homes in its limestone caves. I will be exploring this revelation – and how it began with the discovery of...

Categories Outreach/Teaching

August 8, 2022

The Yorkshire Fossil-Finder’s Guide

Fossils are the preserved remains of ancient life, and show how life on Earth has changed over time. Fossils can be found by anyone, of any age or experience, and fossil-finding can bring enormous pleasure. The scientific study of fossils is called palaeontology, and all people, of all ages and experience, can contribute to this science. Many parts of Yorkshire,...

Categories Outreach/Teaching

July 22, 2022

Yorkshire Fossils Week 2022

With absolutely no county authority, and with no approval from Alan Bennett, Betty Boothroyd, or Judi Dench, I have declared the first week of August to be Yorkshire Fossils Week! If you want to join me in celebrating Yorkshire fossils, here’s the list of activities I’m involved with, or that I know about, so far: Monday August 1st (Yorkshire Day)...

Categories Outreach/Teaching