Fossils and Mud - A Jurassic Adventure
Having spent over 25 years wallowing around in mud, Neville Hollingworth introduced some of the finer aspects of the Middle Jurassic of North Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire. There currently are some excellent exposures of the Oxford Clay exposed on the floors and sides of drainage ditches in gravel pits within the Upper Thames valley. Apart from the stratigraphy, the outcrops are abundantly fossiliferous and this has provided an unrivalled opportunity to collect lots of fossils, some of which are not found on equivalent coastal exposures.
This lecture was a pictorial tour of some quite unusual sites, digging techniques, notable characters and chance discoveries that made the national news.
Watch the Video
Speaker
Neville Hollingworth
University of Birmingham
Neville studied geology at Newcastle University followed by a PhD at the University of Durham. He was a Research Fellow at the Open University and then pursued a career in Programme Management. For the past 15 years Neville has worked in various roles within the UK’s Scientific Research Councils. His primary interests are in Earth Sciences,in particular palaeobiology, palaeoenvironments and climate change. He has published a variety of papers primarily in palaeobiology and stratigraphy, as well as various field guides to world famous fossiliferous sequences. Neville is an acknowledged authority on British Jurassic Stratigraphy and associated marine biotas, and is a keen field geologist. Neville currently conducts collaborative research with colleagues at the University of Birmingham where he is an Honorary Research Associate.
Find out about the Year of Mud, and other themed events in 2015