A chance to reflect Over the last year, I have been lucky enough to spend more than two months in the field examining a variety of outcrops representing terrestrial, glacial and marine depositional settings. To protect Alberta’s fossil heritage, the law demands that all sites where excavation will be undertaken must be assessed for their paleontological potential. Should it prove likely that signi ...[Read More]
There are not many scientific publications that tackle the issue of subjectivity in geological studies and its impact. In one of them, Baddeley et al. (2004), they state it clearly in some sentences: “the judgements of experts can be biased by their use of heuristics to guide the formation of their opinions” or “accepted or prior opinions of existing experts certainly affect the judgement of other ...[Read More]
This blog summarizes two recent articles about dust in the Paleozoic. Planet Earth is presently undergoing a profound climatic turnover. Improved understanding of both the mechanisms contributing to the present climate change and its consequences for the biosphere, including human society, will not only provide the knowledge required to cope with its effects, but may also shed light on the forces ...[Read More]
Smoky Summer It has been a difficult summer in Alberta, with smoke from forest fires in British Columbia blanketing much of the southern part of the Province. However, this has not stopped me getting out into the field on a variety of projects and hikes, including a virtual field trip looking at the Cardium Formation and several in person trips to the beautiful Sheep River Provincial Park and surr ...[Read More]
In Part 1 we differentiated between (1) shallow-marine tide-related currents from (2) purely gravitational sediment-laden currents. We could add that the former are periodic, as they are controlled by the effect of the Moon and Sun gravitational fields on the oceanic water as the Earth revolves, while the latter are sort of ‘spontaneous’ currents driven by the Earth gravitation field on sedi ...[Read More]
Cyclostratigraphers aim to read and understand the effect of climate-driven orbital changes in the geological record through time. In doing so, they start from an important prerequisite: An imprint of insolation variations caused by Earth’s orbital eccentricity, obliquity and/or precession (Milankovitch forcing) can be preserved in the geological rock record. The new www.cyclostratigraphy.org webs ...[Read More]
This contribution adds to earlier articles on impact of global change on sedimentology and on the changing role of sedimentologists in a society moving towards a carbon-free energy future (e.g. Simmons and Davies, 2020, SSP BLOG). Sedimentology is a child of the Age of Petroleum. And, the success story of petroleum is closely linked to the equally successful story of gasoline-powered mobility. Let ...[Read More]
I have always sought to grasp the widest spatial and temporal context in which we find ourselves. So, after completing a physics degree at Cambridge University, I focused on cosmology and did a PhD on the structure of clusters of galaxies at Oxford University. I then joined the Science Museum, London, where I discovered the challenges and rewards of conveying science to the public. In 1984, The ...[Read More]
Belemnites are a group of now extinct marine coleoids cephalopods that lived during the Mesozoic (240 Mya – 65 Mya). Unlike modern squids, belemnites had a hard internal skeleon made of calcium carbonate called a rostrum. Like many fossil groups, belemnites have been associated with numerous myths and legends in folklore. Belemnites take their name from the Greek word belemnon meaning dart or jave ...[Read More]
It has been a busy few months here in Calgary. Obviously, fieldwork slows in the winter due to the amount of snow on the ground (and temperatures down to -40 degrees with wind chill factored in) but there are lots of other activities on the go. One of the joys of being a consultant is having the flexibility to take on a wide variety of small projects. Virtual Presentations I have found that giving ...[Read More]