Cambridgeshire Geological Society

Professor Mike Searle - Colliding Continents
2026-04-13 19:00 - 21:00 (Europe/London) | St Andrew’s Centre, School Hill, Histon, CB24 9JE
Eight field seasons mapping around the Everest – Makalu massifs in Nepal and south Tibet has resulted in a detailed geological map (scale: 1:100,000). Combining macro- and micro-scale structural mapping with thermobarometry and U-Pb geochronology has unravelled a comprehensive 4-dimensional history of the tectonic evolution of the Himalaya. The 25th April 2015 Gorkha earthquake resulted in 150 km long rupture across Nepal, up to 5 meters of horizontal slip, 1.5 meters of uplift of the peaks north of Kathmandu, large-scale tilting of the Nepal Himalaya, and huge destruction across the mountain regions of Nepal. This talk will briefly summarise the causes and consequences of the earthquake and our charity work rebuilding a village above the epicentre, and constructing a new school and hospital. Recent road, rail, and dam construction in Nepal and especially in south Tibet have the potential to cause huge environmental damage, and this talk will cover some of these ecological problems.

Professor Neil Davies - Carboniferous Park - Giant Millipedes and other new fossil discoveries from the Northumberland Basin
2026-03-09 19:00 - 21:00
The Northumberland Basin developed as a depression in the lithosphere during the Palaeozoic Caledonian and Variscan orogenies. It extends from near Eyemouth in the north to near Newcastle in the south and contains an extensive archive of Carboniferous strata, previously geologically famous for features such as the Whin Sill and Coal Measures. Recent work on the sedimentary strata in the basin has revealed several high resolution windows into the Carboniferous world, and a review of these will be the focus of this talk.
Features to be discussed include the discovery of the largest fossil arthropod in Earth history, Arthropleura, from a fallen block in the cliffs near Howick. This giant millipede-like organism sheds light on arthropod gigantism on Carboniferous Earth, and the surrounding sedimentary rocks enable a high-resolution picture of its habitat to be painted. The talk will also discuss the discovery of a flooded forest floor from Lindisfarne, newly located trackways of early amphibians from Northumberland National Park, and discuss the exceptional tidal sedimentary record of Cocklawburn, where strata record a day-by-day record of tropical shallow seas and the animals that lived there.

Mike Tuke - Determining the shape, size and internal structure of the Earth
2026-02-09 19:00 - 21:00
A talk to demonstrate

how 2000 years ago the Greeks knew the Earth was a sphere and could calculate its circumference;
how the speed of rotation affexts the direction of wind and ocean currents and why the ice ages altered the spin;
How to measure the density of some rocks and compare with the density of the whole Earth;
What that information, along with data about earthquakes tells us about the internal composition of the Earth;

Dr John Cook - The Oil Industry; Getting Rid of Carbon Dioxide
2025-12-08 19:00 - 21:00
One of the proposed routes for mitigating the impact of greenhouse gases on the climate is to collect carbon dioxide (CO2), from the atmosphere or at source, and put it somewhere safe (usually underground). This is sometimes called CCS – carbon capture and storage (or sequestration), or CCUS – carbon capture, utilization and storage. It’s a controversial topic – many people would like simply to stop producing CO2, others that we should adapt to a new climate. It’s also a key component of the UK’s Net Zero target.
I’ll talk about the various facets of CC(U)S, including the quantities involved, where the CO2 might be put, with an emphasis on geological aspects, and what the downsides and hazards might be.

Dr Robin Catchpole - Are We Star Dust or Nuclear Waste?
2025-11-10 19:00 - 21:00
Everything around us, apart from hydrogen and helium, was made inside stars. The Earth and Sun contain elements made in generations of stars that were born and died before the birth of our Sun and planets. The story of the birth and death of stars is also the story of the battle of matter against the force of gravity. In this talk we will see where elements were made and show how gravity always wins, as stars die, with either a whimper or a bang.
Robin works as an astronomer at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, having retired as Senior Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich in July 2004. He joined the Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO) from Bryanston School in 1962. After obtaining a BSc at University College London, he was posted to the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope, S Africa (now known as the South African Astronomical Observatory) and spent the next 24 years, working first at the Radcliffe Observatory in Pretoria and then at the SAAO in Cape Town.
Following his doctorate at the University of Cape Town on The Properties of the SC Stars and the Chemical Composition of UY Cen, under the supervision of Prof. Brian Warner, in 1991 he returned to the RGO in Cambridge, until it closed in 1998, when he moved to Greenwich as Senior Astronomer. He has authored and co-authored over 120 research papers and articles and used a number of telescopes around the world including the Hubble Space Telescope. Research interests include the composition of stars, exploding stars, the structure of our Galaxy and galaxies with black holes at their centres. His current research interest is in the structure of the Bulge of our Milky Way Galaxy, as shown by Mira variables.

Franziska Norman - The Mass Grave in the Coal Mine; The Iguanodons of Bernissart
2025-10-06 19:00 - 21:00
In 1878, some Belgian coal miners discovered the first nearly complete dinosaur skeletons ever found: a group of 30 Iguanodons. This talk will show how far the real appearance of these animals differed from previous reconstructions based on only a handful of bones and teeth, and how research has given us some detailed insights into how they lived in their Cretaceous environment.
Franziska has been a member of CGS for many years; she has just finished h Engineering Geology and is looking for a suitable post in the field

Peter Fletcher - iPhone LiDAR Technology – A Geological Tool?
2025-09-08 19:00 - 21:00
We are probably aware of the contribution of large scale Lidar surveys to understanding the landscape around us, by organisations using aircraft or drone borne commercial Lidar and 3d mapping systems, but you may not be aware that this technology is to hand for smaller scale modelling in your iPhone Pro (and some other) mobile phones, together with free 3D mapping apps! Peter takes us through the amazing technology that makes this possible, suggests some practical uses and explains the sources of some of the minerals involved.

Dr Mike Tuke - Isostasy; The Ups and Downs of the Earth's Crust
2025-06-09 19:00 - 21:00
Isostasy explains why there are raised beaches and fossil cliffs, why mountains like icebergs have roots, the shape of rift valleys, the height of Everest, and many other aspects of the landscape.
Mike’s talk will have lots of demonstrations to help us visualise how all this happens

Professor Phil Gibbard - Unravelling the Glacial History of Eastern England
2025-05-12 19:00 - 21:00
The glacial history of our region has a complexity that is yet to be fully unrav- elled, but significant discoveries have been made in recent years that throw light on the glacial, periglacial and interglacial periods that have transformed our landscape. Phil is a Quaternary geologist, and this talk will describe how the dramatic changes in palaeoenvironments over the last 500,000 years or more, have been revealed by a study of our regional geology.
Phil is a Quaternary geologist whose interests include Pleistocene/Neogene geology, sedimentation and stratigraphy, using multi-disciplinary methods to establish changing palaeogeography and palaeoenvironments

Paul Fellows - Shooting Stars and Space Rocks
2025-04-14 19:00 - 21:00
Comets and Meteors can be an impressive sight in the night sky, but the study of them has told us a huge amount about the origins of the Solar System and the Planets including Earth.
Paul will show where these space rocks and dirty snowballs come from and the story that they reveal including the implications for life on Earth and beyond.

Dr Ursula Lawrence - The Construction of Crossrail
2025-03-10 19:00 - 21:00
The presentation summarises the Crossrail project before explaining the main construction methods for the tunnels and stations. The Cretaceous to Holocene geology encountered along the route is presented including both the impact the geology has on the engineering and how recent in- frastructure investigations have developed our knowledge of the geology of London. The discussion on the geology has been extended to compare and contrast the London geology with the Gault more familiar to those in Cambridgeshire

Members Talks
2025-01-13 19:00 - 21:00
Dominic Davey gave a talk on Septarian Nodules
Penny Coggill gave a talk on International Commission on Geo-Heritage Sites
Peter Fletcher gave a talk on Carbonatites in Assynt

Dr Steve Boreham - The Geodiversity Landscapes of Cambridgeshire
2024-12-09 19:00 - 21:00
Dr Steve Boreham (BSc PhD) worked for the University of Cambridge for more than 30 years and has a special interest in Southern England, East Anglia, Fenland and the Cambridge District. He is a key member of the CGS Geosites team and in this talk he will describe the geodiversity of the county and its associated landscapes.
The CGS Geosites team has recently developed a landscape approach to describing the geology of Cambridgeshire and the geological (and geomorphological) features to be found here. This sets the geology in a context familiar to most people and also links it with local ecology and the key role that it has played in the economic development of the county, from limestone, chalk and clay to gravel, sand and peat. Our aim is to provide a comprehensive description of local earth heritage and to promote its geoconservation.

Dr Will McMahon - The Oldest Fossilized Trees Ever Found
2024-11-11 19:00 - 21:00
The evolution of trees and forests through the Devonian Period fundamentally changed the Earth’s land biosphere, as well as impacting physical environments and geomorphology by stabilizing sediments and interacting with flowing air and water. In this talk I will describe a recently discovered forest landscape within the Middle Devonian (Eifelian) Hangman Sandstone Formation of Somerset and Devon. New fieldwork has shown that this unit contains the earliest fossil evidence for trees in the British record, as well as the oldest known evidence globally for the relative position of standing trees: in common parlance, a fossil forest.
These findings provide evidence that the Eifelian Stage of the Devonian (393.3-387.7 Ma) marks the onset of tree-driven changes to physical environments that would forever change Earth’s non-marine landscapes and biosphere.

DR Nigel Woodcock - The History of Building Stone Use in South Cambridgeshire Churches
2024-10-14 19:00 - 21:00
A geological survey of about 120 medieval churches in south Cambridgeshire reveals a dominant theme of local fieldstone rubble walls with dressings of local Cretaceous Clunch and imported Jurassic Barnack limestone; the richer the church the greater the volume of costly Barnack. The Cretaceous Ely Sandstone forms rubble walls only near the city. Victorian renovations to the medieval fabric of south Cambs churches used a much wider range of stone from the Lincolnshire Limestone Formation and further afield, made possible by new canal, then rail, networks. St Laurence at Foxton, for example, has fieldstone rubble walls, partly rendered, with medieval dressings of Barnack and Clunch, much repaired with Bath stone in the nineteenth century.

Dr. Haydon Bailey - Stratigraphy and Sedimentology of Northern European Chalks
2024-09-09 19:00 - 21:00
