Driving west across the edge of the English Peak District is a good way to see how geology shapes landscape. Tracing the routes that cross it – feeling their shapes with a finger on a map or with your body as the car swings round bends – hints at how they are shaped by the landscape beneath,… Continue reading Paths across the Cheshire Peak
Category: sediments
Deep time and dead things in the wall
Here in Cadiz, I’m surrounded by death and I don’t mind at all. It’s the geologist in me thinking this – in every other way this is a lovely life-affirming holiday. It’s just that every surface seems to be filled with the remains of long-dead animals. The floor and one wall of the hotel room… Continue reading Deep time and dead things in the wall
New Scottish Oil field discovered (470 million years too late)
Scottish oil is topical. Most of Britain’s oil and gas deposits sit under the seabed around Scotland but the revenues are shared with the whole of the United Kingdom. If Scotland decides to become an independent state (there’s a vote in 2014) then that wealth will be all theirs. So I was very interested to read… Continue reading New Scottish Oil field discovered (470 million years too late)
The Great Ordovician meteor shower
Between Mars and Jupiter, 470 million years ago, there was a massive collision between two 100km-sized chunks of rock – this solar system’s biggest bang of the last billion years. It created a massive cloud of smaller fragments. Some of these landed on the earth, falling at a rate at least a hundred times greater… Continue reading The Great Ordovician meteor shower