Programme of Summer Field Meetings, 2009 continues:

Saturday - Sunday 20th - 21st June: Twp Day Field Excursion centred on Dent, N. Yorks.: The geology of the southwest corner of the Askrigg Block

Leaders: Chris Thomas (British Geological Survey), Nigel Woodcock (Cambridge University).

Saturday 20^th June, 09.30h. (return by 17.30h.) Meet: at Barkin Beck Bridge, lower Barbondale [~SD 655 826]. Note that parking space is on grass on common land and may be restricted as this is a popular spot. Please share vehicles as much as possible.  Note: We will cover about 6 or 7 km during the day with minor ascent. However, the ground is rough and will be wet in places. Please bear this in mind.

Sunday 21^st June. 09.30h. (return by 16.30h.). Meet: Junction between Masongill Fell Lane and Tow Scar Road [SD 676 763]. Take the lanes from the A65, through Masongill, c. 2.5 miles NW of Ingleton. There is a reasonable amount of parking, but again, it would help if the number of cars can be limited. Note: We will cover c. 5 – 7 km with some ascent and walking over some rough ground.

 Geology: The southwest corner of the Askrigg Block is of considerable geological interest. The area includes the intersection of the Dent and Craven Faults, the transition from the platform to basin in the Carboniferous rocks, the Lower Palaeozoic inliers, newly recognised features in Quaternary landforms and deposit and the largest cave system in the UK. The BGS and colleagues from Cambridge University (Dr Nigel Woodcock & Dr Barrie Rickards), has recently remapped the area as part of the resurvey of the currently unavailable Kirkby Lonsdale geological sheet. The excursion will, over the two days, examine various aspects of the geology, focussing on the structure adjacent to the Dent and Craven faults and its interpretation, the stratigraphy and sedimentology of the Silurian and Carboniferous rocks, and elements of the Quaternary geology.

Geological maps: BGS England & Wales Provisional Sheet 50 Hawes (1:50 000 scale) covers the eastern-most part of the area. As BGS England & Wales Sheet 49 Kirkby Lonsdale (1:50 000 scale) is being revised and not currently in print, summary maps containing the recent BGS mapping will be used.

 Clothing and Safety: Footwear must be strong and waterproof, with well-cleated soles. Hopefully the weather will be good, but please come prepared for inclement conditions. Lunches will be al fresco so bring a oacked lunch and drinks!

Sunday 12th July: Field Excursion: Northumberland Coast Carbonoferous sedimentary environments and climate

Leaders:  David Millward and Bob Gatliff (British Geological Survey)

Meet:  Sunday 12^th July 2009, 10.00 am return by 5.00 pm (latest), at Promenade at Spittal, south of Berwick upon Tweed. From the A1, take the A167 into Berwick and follow the signs for Spittal; there is parking at the south end of Main Street [NU 0094 5102].

Field Guide:  Northumbrian Rocks and Landscape, published by the YGS (main part of excursion 3).

Geology: We will examine the very well exposed coastal section within the Asbian and Brigantian Yoredale Group, south of Berwick upon Tweed, from Spittal to Saltpan Rocks. The cyclic succession of limestone, claystone, siltstone and sandstone represents repeated marine transgressive events and progradation of deltas. Periods of interdistributary bay filling led to the colonisation of sediment surfaces by plants, and palaeosol development. The wealth of lithofacies and sediment structures visible on the water-worn surfaces will provide the opportunity to discuss the range of sedimentary environments and climate during this period in the geological evolution of northern England. The effects of late Carboniferous deformation in the region will be seen at Saltpan Rocks.

Clothing and safety:   Stout footwear and waterproof clothing are essential. Great care will need to be taken along parts of the foreshore which are extremely slippery. The tide will be falling during the morning which will enable us to get around the headlands safely; there are a number of safe exits to the cliff-top path along which we will return. Total walking distance during the day is about 5 km. Please bring a packed lunch and drinks as we will be out for the day.

Contact details: if you have any queries please contact Dave Millward on 0131 6500429 or dmill@bgs.ac.uk

The Yorkshire Geological Society's Autumn 2009 Meetings

Saturday 26th September: Meeting: Coal Geology, at the National Mining Museum, Wakefield (with possibility of underground visit)

Saturday 24th October: Joint Meeting with the Hull Geological Society at the University of Hull: "The Last Glacial Maximum", organised by
Mike Rogerson and Paul Hildreth. Speakers include Dick Mol (Natural History Museum Rotterdam) and Ian Heppenstall (Hull Geological
Society).  (Please note new date)

Sunday 25th October: Possible East Yorkshire Quaternary Field Excursion linked to the Saturday 24th Indoor Meeting (Please note new date)

Saturday 28th November: AGM and Presidential Address by Prof. Paul Wignall on Mass Extinctions    

New publishing arrangements for the Proceedings from 2010

The Yorkshire Geological Society has signed a new contract with the Geological Society Publishing House (GSPH), which will put in place new publishing arrangements for the Proceedings for a seven year period from 2010.  The new contract will give the Proceedings an online presence as part of the Geological Society of London’s Lyell Collection, and this will include the entire archive back to volume 1 (1837) in searchable format.

The new contract brings with it benefits for the Society, its members, the Proceedings and authors.  Under the terms of the new contract, the business arrangement between the Yorkshire Geological Society and the GSPH will change completely.  Without going into details, the main benefit for the Society is that the cost of producing the Proceedings will be reduced very significantly.  This in itself will benefit members because a much larger proportion of the Society’s income from subscriptions will be available to support new activities and new initiatives, but there are also more tangible benefits for members that will follow from the new arrangements.  In addition to receiving print copies of the Proceedings, members of the Society will have free online access to current and all archival content of the Proceedings in full text form, and will be able to purchase Geological Society of London publications at a discount price.  The full text archive of the Proceedings will be in searchable PDF format, and end-paper references will include hyperlinks that will enable users to access source material, subject to certain conditions.  Online future content will be in both PDF and HTML format.  For the Proceedings, an online presence will increase its visibility to the geological community at large, a benefit that is equally important for authors.  Authors will also benefit from all the advantages offered by electronic publication, including linking and indexing through GeoRef, ISI, CrossRef and Google, and citation alerts.

The new contract is the result of negotiations with the Geological Society of London over the past two years, and colleagues on YGS Council and at the GSPH have worked hard to make it possible.  I would like to thank them all for their help and advice over that period.  We all look forward to continuing our relationship with the GSPH and to opening a new and exciting chapter in the Proceedings’ long and distinguished history.

Stewart Molyneux
Principal Editor
Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society

CONTENTS:

S. K. Donovan, D. N. Lewis and C. J. Veltkamp: The cladid crinoid Gissocrinus Angelin from Wenlock Edge, Shropshire (Silurian)

SUMMARY: Complete fossil crinoids are well known from the Much Wenlock Limestone Formation (Silurian, Wenlock, Homerian), but are only common in the Dudley area of the West Midlands. Elsewhere, Wenlock crinoids are preserved as disarticulated ossicles. For example, only about six nominal crinoids are known from the type area of the Much Wenlock Limestone Formation on Wenlock Edge. Herein, we document abundant remains of the cladid crinoid Gissocrinus spp. from near Much Wenlock, Shropshire, based on common brachial and rare radial ossicles. Brachials are mainly thin and quadrate with a U-shaped adoral groove. There are six nominal species of Gissocrinus in the Wenlock of the British Isles; probability suggests that this sample contains elements of more than one species.

S. K. Donovan and D. N. Lewis: A conundrum from the Llandovery (Lower Silurian) of Devil's Dingle, Shropshire

SUMMARY: A root-like structure from the Llandovery (Telychian) of Devil’s Dingle, Shropshire, may be an invertebrate attachment structure or a trace fossil close to Chondrites isp. von Sternberg, although the possibility that it is a Recent plant root trace is also considered. The specimen is preserved as an external mould in a medium-grained sandstone bed, oriented perpendicular to bedding on a joint surface. The structure has a central shaft that is inflated at branching points; lateral branches are directed sub-horizontally at shallower depths and at progressively greater angles to the horizontal in deeper parts of the structure. Multiple branches are regularly distributed down the shaft. With insufficient definitive features to determine whether it is a body or, more probably, a trace fossil, the specimen is named, conservatively, as Chondrites? sp., although a Recent botanical origin is not discounted.

A. Pentecost and Zhang Zhao-Hui: Microfossils and geochemistry of some modern, Holocene and Pleistocene travertines from North Yorkshire and Derbyshire

SUMMARY: The geochemistry of some modern, Holocene (4–4.5 ka) and Pleistocene (>100 ka) travertines from the UK is described. Four facies were recognized: one bryophyte, two algal and one clastic. In the Holocene travertine, from Gordale, Yorkshire, concentrations of Fe, Mn, Sr, Zn and the travertine porosity showed significant differences between facies that were related to the content of acid-insoluble residues and differences in meteoric diagenesis. The modern, active travertines, also from Gordale, similarly showed significant geochemical differences between facies types. All geochemical determinands in the modern travertines were higher by a factor of about two compared with the Holocene travertine. This is believed to be due to increased catchment erosion over the past few centuries and travertine deposits may therefore provide information on rates of soil erosion. The stable isotopic compositions of the travertine averaged –5.9‰ for d¹⁸O and –9.6‰ for d¹³C, but there were no significant differences between the facies.

Seventeen diatom taxa were found in the Holocene deposits but numbers were low when compared with the modern deposits, which were higher by a factor of about 1000. Dissolution of diatoms after burial would be sufficient to account for all of the authigenic quartz observed in these deposits. Four classes of organic matter were identified in the Holocene and Pleistocene samples: filaments, perforated plates, spores and amorphous forms. Their abundance differed little between facies. Some of the filamentous structures were probably post-depositional fungal hyphae utilizing carbon resources within the deposits.

I. C. Starmer: The concentration of folding and faulting in the Chalk at Staple Newk (Scale Nab), near Flamborough, East Yorkshire

SUMMARY: At Staple Newk [TA 205 737], intensive folding and thrusting of the Chalk were restricted to a 200 m long section. The ENE–WSW folding and NNW–SSE thrusting resulted from dextral transpressive reactivation of the underlying ENE–WSW Bempton Fault. Detachment folding in the Welton Chalk Formation produced a monocline with a vertical limb that locked and was then cut by a thrust. This parallel style of folding contrasted with that in the overlying, more thinly bedded Burnham Chalk Formation, where tight and disharmonic, angular folding developed between the vertical limb and the north-north-west propagating thrust. When the tight, angular folding locked, south-south-eastward back-thrusts combined with the main thrust, but both diminished and died out upwards. Later, low-angle extensional faulting was followed by steep normal faulting.

Folding and thrusting also developed in the Chalk at Selwicks Bay, 6 km to the south-east. Here, four deformation phases (‘D1–D4’) can be separated and the later phases can be correlated with those that affected Staple Newk. At both localities, folding and thrusting were produced by a ‘D3’ N–S contraction which was more than cancelled later by ‘D4’ N–S extension, causing low angle extensional faulting and subsequent steep normal faulting.

Within the Howardian Hills-Flamborough Fault Belt, contractional features (folds and thrusts) and subsequent low-angle extensional faults were local developments and were replaced en echelon by similar structures. The later, steep normal faults produced the more-continuous E–W fault pattern.

J. D. Radley: Gryphaea beds (upper Scunthorpe Mudstone Formation; Lower Jurassic) at Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, north-east England

SUMMARY: The upper part of the Scunthorpe Mudstone Formation (Sinemurian, Lower Jurassic) beneath the Frodingham Ironstone at Scunthorpe, north-east England, comprises richly fossiliferous mudrocks and limestones. These strata were recently exposed in temporary sections north of Scunthorpe and yielded large numbers of gryphaeid oysters and other invertebrate fossils.

Many of the oysters are extensively bioeroded and disarticulated, and locally constitute coarse-grained bioclastic limestones. These features indicate establishment of a periodically agitated, shallow-water, photic setting, presaging deposition of the ooidal Frodingham Ironstone during the culmination of mid-Sinemurian shallowing.

B. R. Gearey: Lateglacial vegetation change in East Yorkshire: a radiocarbon dated pollen sequence from Routh Quarry, Beverley

SUMMARY: Pollen and radiocarbon analyses of Lateglacial Interstadial deposits from Routh Quarry, East Yorkshire, indicate the growth of open, herb-rich grassland vegetation during the early part of the Interstadial. The subsequent expansion of birch and juniper scrubland appears to have been accompanied by a brief period of landscape stability prior to a contraction in both taxa, probably as a result of a climatic cooling. A series of fluctuations in the representation of birch during the later part of the Interstadial may likewise be related to periods of climatic cooling identified in other proxy records from Britain and Europe.

Successional processes at the site resulted in the growth of a brown moss fen, which in turn led to changes in the representation of certain pollen taxa, possibly connected to taphonomic factors resulting from changes in pollen source area as much as actual vegetation change. The transition to the Loch Lomond Stadial is not clearly resolved palynologically, but appears to have led to the destabilization of local soils and the deposition of a clay-silt layer over the fen deposits.

G. Warrington: Palynology of the Permian succession in the Hilton Borehole, Vale of Eden, Cumbria, UK

SUMMARY: Palynomorphs have been recovered from a 108.28 m sequence, comprising the upper 4.32 m of the Penrith Sandstone, and the lower 103.96 m of the succeeding Eden Shales from the Hilton Plant Beds to the Belah Dolomite inclusive, cored in the 234.54 m-deep Hilton Borehole. This is currently the longest palynological record from a continuous section of Permian rocks in Britain. The palynomorphs are predominantly miospores though remains regarded as algal in origin also occur, mainly in the Hilton Plant Beds and the Belah Dolomite. The miospores are principally bisaccate pollen but some monosaccate pollen and a few pteridophytic spores are also present. The pollen Crucisaccites cf. variosulcatus and possibly the spore Proprisporites pococki are reported for the first time from Britain. The palynomorph assemblages from the Penrith Sandstone Formation are similar to those from the Hilton Plant Beds, supporting the view that a passage exists between these formations, and that their boundary is diachronous. The miospores indicate an age within the range Mid- to Late Permian but the magnetostratigraphy of correlative successions constrains this to the latest Mid- and Late Permian, and other palaeontological evidence favours an early Late Permian age.

Library Matters

 Professor Jane Francis has kindly donated a large number of Special Reports of the British Antarctic Survey to the Society’s Library.  The President and Council are very pleased to accept this useful addition to our Library and thank Professor Francis on the Society’s behalf.

 The Society’s Library is housed in the Brotherton Library of the University of Leeds.  Members are reminded that they are entitled to access this and other collections in the Brotherton Library.  In order to do this a ‘Letter of Introduction’ must first be obtained from the General Secretary, Dr Trevor Morse .  Contact details for the General Secretary are given towards the back of the Circular.  When writing to him please quote your membership number as given on Circular envelopes. 

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From the Summer 2008 Field Meetings of the Yorkshire Geological Society....

Denys Smith Commemorative Field Meeting, Knaresborough, 1st June 2008	Denys Smith Commemorative Field Meeting, Knaresborough, 1st June 2008	Denys Smith Commemorative Field Meeting, Knaresborough, 1st June 2008
Denys Smith Commemorative Field Meeting, Knaresborough, 1st June 2008:  Anthony Cooper, Field Meeting Leader	Denys Smith Commemorative Field Meeting, Knaresborough, 1st June 2008	Lake District Field Meeting, 27th July 2008:  examining an exposure in the Scafell Caldera succession

Some British Geological Survey Memoirs for Yorkshire to download

In a major new development for the Society, the British Geological Survey (BGS) had made available to the Society's website full facsimile copies (in PDF format, including all illustrations) of some earlier Geological Survey Memoirs, listed below. These are now available for downloading for personal, academic, educational, non-commercial research and other non-commercial use, from the Yorkshire Geological Society website http://www.yorksgeolsoc.org.uk/ only. All users must agree to the BGS terms and conditions before downloading each Memoir.

Yorkshire Rocks and Landscape – the popular YGS Field Guide, Third Edition, is now available

Yorkshire, famed for its scenic beauty and its rich industrial heritage, contains some of the most interesting geology and scenery in England , from the moors to the coast, including the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors national parks. The influence of the geology on the landscape and on the industrial development in the region is profound.  

A major Yorkshire Geological Society Publication!

Carboniferous Hydrocarbon Geology: the southern North Sea and surrounding onshore areas

edited by

John Collinson, David Evans, Doug Holliday & Neil Jones, 2005

Click here for full details and samples
of the full colour illustrations!

Price now reduced to £10 plus £5 p. & p. Cheques should be made payable to Yorkshire Geological Society. Please send your order form to: Dr J H Powell, British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham, NG12 5GG

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Important Notice to Members and others:
Short Communications: Proceedings and Circular/Web Site

Rapid publication of short papers is common amongst journals, particularly those published weekly, monthly or bi-monthly, as a way of disseminating information quickly on topical or contentious issues, exceptional new discoveries or major developments.   Given its publication schedule, the adoption of such a publication strategy is not appropriate for the Proceedings.  Nevertheless, as a way of encouraging the membership to make more use of the Proceedings, and for that matter the Society’s other vehicles for publication, the Circular and web site, Council would welcome more short communications. Short communications submitted to the Proceedings might include anything for which it would be worth having a permanent published record, for example descriptions of new and/or temporary exposures.  Those intended for the Circular or web site could include more topical or newsworthy items, including brief reports of field meetings, new fossil/mineral occurrences, photographs of interesting geological features with a brief description or the work of RIGS groups. Short communications to the Proceedings should not exceed two published pages, approximately 2,000 words (or equivalents including figures) and will be subject to the normal review and editorial procedures, although a Summary will not be necessary. Please send your contributions in the usual manner to the Editors (see ‘Instructions to Authors’ in the PYGS as a general guideline).

For the A5 format of the Circular (and web site), contributions should be 300-400 words, but can include colour photographs and figures; these will also be subject to editorial review. These items should be sent to the Circular Editor in the first instance (see back page of the Circular for details).

Stewart Molyneux, Principal Editor PYGS
Keith Park, YGS Circular Editor
Patrick Boylan, YGS Web Editor

New edition 2004 with minor revisions: price £9.99 plus £2.00 postage and packing Click here for further details

LANCASHIRE GROUP OF THE GEOLOGISTS’ ASSOCIATION: Secretary: Jennifer Rhodes, e-mail: sjrhodes@hotmail.com