A Registered Charity No. 220014 September 2020 / Circular 630 YORKSHIRE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY President: Paul Hildreth VIRTUAL GEOLOGY SEPTEMBER TO NOVEMBER 2020 VERY IMPORTANT – COVID-19 EMERGENCY: PLEASE KEEP CHECKING THE YGS WEBSITE FOR THE LATEST PROGRAMME AND OTHER INFORMATION https://yorksgeolsoc.org.uk NON MEMBERS WELCOME: FREE OF CHARGE CONTENTS Latest News from Council 3 Andy Howard President’s Word, May 2020 and August 2020 5 Paul Hildreth New Editor-in-Chief for the Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society 8 Yorkshire Geology Month 2020 9 YGM Cancelled but Hull Geological Society’s YGM Cemetery Walk Mike Horne Virtual Field Trips 11 Real Geology: a review of YGS resources Patrick Boylan Golfing with Dinosaurs: A Lockdown Geology Story 12 Andy Howard Review 15 Introductory Guide to the Geology of the Great Whin Sill and Hadrian’s Wall, by Caitlin Leverett Andy Howard Pathological Ammonites in the Peter Robinson Collection 18 Richard Maddra Getting close up during Lockdown 20 Paul Hildreth Book Review 23 An excursion guide to the geomorphology of the Howgill Fells by Adrian Harvey Michael Roberts 2 https://yorksgeolsoc.org.uk YGS 2020 LATEST NEWS FROM COUNCIL: COVID-19 CONTINUES Andy Howard, General Secretary Covid-19 continues to severely curtail the activities of societies like YGS, though there are some encouraging signs that outdoor geological walks for small parties are being restarted by businesses and charities in line with social distancing and Covid-Secure guidelines. We can give some indications on our current intentions, but anything we arrange may be subject to postponement, cancellation or change at very short notice. In the case of local lockdowns, this can be less than 24 hours. KEEPING YOU INFORMED We will provide regular updates on Society events in our Circulars, on our website News and Events pages, and by regular email newsletters every 2-3 weeks. We shall circulate digital (pdf) editions of the Circular and newsletters to all members who have provided us with an up-to- date email address (you can unsubscribe from email newsletters at any time). ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 2020 Council is currently carrying out a risk assessment for our planned AGM and President’s Day on 5th December, and we are in contact with the venue (Weetwood Hall Leeds) with regard to Covid-Secure hosting arrangements. If it’s necessary to proceed with an ‘online’ AGM we will most likely de-couple it from the President’s Address, Medal Presentations and Dinner and hold those events in 2021. We will confirm our intentions in the next Circular 631, due November. Regardless of format, we will follow last year’s precedent of circulating our draft Annual Report and Accounts in advance of the AGM, and taking them as read at the event. INDOOR MEETINGS The Government’s roadmap target remains at 1st October for permitting indoor public meetings and live performances with more than 30 participants. Guidance was relaxed on 15th August to allow business meetings of up to 30 people in Covid-Secure venues. Due to the ongoing uncertainty and our reliance on availability of Covid-Secure public venues, we regret that we cannot give a firm date for resuming indoor meetings at the present time, but Council continues to keep the situation and opportunities under review. FIELD TRIPS A small task force of Council members is drawing up plans for a series of mini-field trips in the autumn, strictly following social distancing guidelines. Subject to a favourable risk assessment by wider Council we will post information and registration details of these trips on our Events webpage and notify members of up-and-coming opportunities by email. ONLINE LECTURE AND WEBINARS Our first online lecture ‘Analogous Mudstone Successions from the Yorkshire Coast and the USA’ by Professor Kevin Taylor was held on 8th July. It was a very successful event enjoyed by 78 participants on Zoom and YouTube. News of further online events will be posted on our https://yorksgeolsoc.org.uk YGS 2020 3 LATEST NEWS FROM COUNCIL: COVID-19 CONTINUES Andy Howard, General Secretary Events webpage and notified in our email newsletters. Some of our corresponding societies are also holding online lectures too, a selection of events that are freely open to YGS members will be posted on our new Community Events webpage and noted in our email newsletters. VIRTUAL FIELD TRIPS In our last Circular, Mike Bowman introduced our plans for building a portfolio of Virtual Field Trips (VFTs) and we are pleased to report that these are progressing well, with several examples uploaded onto our new VFT webpage. At the time of writing these include a four- part narrated video guide to the Geology of Flamborough Head by our President Paul Hildreth, and Google Earth Guides to the Geology and Poetry of Widdop Moor and Staithes to Port Mulgrave compiled by General Secretary Andy Howard. More guides are in various stages of preparation. GEOLOGY ONLINE We have compiled a new webpage listing some of our favourite ‘rainy day’ online geological resources, including online lectures, geological videos, virtual field trips and online field guides, geology courses, online 3D geological models and even some tongue-in-cheek ‘geology’ from film and TV. Just go to our new Geology Online webpage to enjoy. YGS GEOLOGY BLOGS Covid-19 may be making it hard for us to meet up in the field, but many of you will still be enjoying fieldwork alone or in small groups. Why not share your exploits or burning science questions in a ‘Blog’ for our web pages? These can be very informal and chatty, with no need to push back the boundaries of science. Blogs can simply be sent to us in a MS word or similar word processor file, with some good quality images, and we can then upload onto our YGS Blogs web page – just go to that page for some examples. You can send any Blogs to our Web Editor at [email protected] GRANTS – FEARNSIDES AWARD Our Fearnsides Award provides grants up to £500 for conference travel, fieldwork or small earth science projects. Applications remain open until 30th September, visit our Grants webpage for information and application forms. WEBSITE LINKS YGS News: https://www.yorksgeolsoc.org.uk/news YGS Events: https://www.yorksgeolsoc.org.uk/events Community Events: https://www.yorksgeolsoc.org.uk/community-events Virtual Field Trips: https://www.yorksgeolsoc.org.uk/virtualfieldtrips Geology Online: https://www.yorksgeolsoc.org.uk/geology-online YGS Blogs: https://www.yorksgeolsoc.org.uk/ygs-blog YGS Grants: https://www.yorksgeolsoc.org.uk/grants 4 https://yorksgeolsoc.org.uk YGS 2020 PRESIDENT’S WORDS Paul Hildreth, President MAY 2020 As I write this, May is coming to a close and we are still unclear about when we are likely to be able to hold our ‘normal’ type of indoor and outdoor meetings nor to commit to anything more than a provisional skeleton programme. The month of May is of course by tradition Yorkshire Geology Month (YGM) with its wealth of activities and talks aimed at the general public as well as experienced geologists. I am pleased to learn that YGM went ahead this year despite social-distancing (candidate for word of the year?), self-isolation and lockdowns. The intrepid Mike Horne of the Hull Geological Society, and a founding member of the YGM initiative, made sure that at least one activity took place. In the spirit of the start of my article in Circular 629, he and his wife Annie visited Hull Cemetery on a field-trip-for-two and made sure that ‘the show went on’. Yesterday, Thursday 28th May, would have been my 67th day of voluntary self-isolation, leaving the house and garden only for my daily walk or cycle ride around the residential area of Brigg. However I decided to take advantage of the good weather and the government’s relaxation of rules about movement to spend an afternoon on Flamborough Head. After raiding my wife’s purse for change for use at the Humber Bridge toll and for the car park at Selwick’s Bay I set off on the 1.5 hour journey. All of the change came back with me; the bridge toll booths are unmanned (but you have to pay on-line) and charges at the lighthouse car park have been suspended. Thrilled with this latter bonus I prepared for my Selwick’s Bay investigations: hard hat, boots, hi-viz waistcoat, notebook and pencil, hammer (for scale on photographs), water bottle and sandwiches and descended the many steps down to the beach. It was not long before I had drawn in several youngsters, and one or two less-shy adults, who wanted to know what I was doing. Thankfully, they kept their recommended distance and I was able to tell them about the ‘crystal cave’ (a wave-cut notch with walls and roof lined with calcite crystals), show them a cave that it’s possible to pass through, assure them that I wasn’t working for the government and identify marine life that I could hear later had transformed from sea anemone to ‘sea enemy’. My own ‘investigations’ proved fruitful. Inspired by the pilot videos set up by Andy Howard and Mike Bowman’s article in Circular 629, I have been working to produce a virtual geology field trip around Flamborough Head and needed to revisit Selwick’s Bay to check out one or two details of stratigraphy and take some relevant photographs. All in all it turned out to be a wonderful day and I arrived home refreshed and with an overwhelming feeling of https://yorksgeolsoc.org.uk YGS 2020 5 PRESIDENT’S WORD Paul Hildreth, President Selwick’s Bay, Flamborough (Paul Hildreth) both satisfaction and freedom; it certainly provided much-appreciated variety from my 66-day ‘around Brigg’ perambulations.