Telegram announcing the discovery of 'Swanscombe Man'

BGS image ID: P827762

This telegram from June 1935 announced the discovery of the first skull fragment of what would become known as 'Swanscombe Man'. It was sent by dental surgeon and amateur palaeontologist Alvan Theophilus Marston (1889-1971) to Henry Dewey (1876-1965) at the Geological Survey.  

 

In March 1936 Marston found another piece of the same skull and in July 1955 archaeologist John Wymer found a third fragment. It is now generally believed that 'Swanscombe Man' is actually a woman.

Andrew L Morrison

Garnets from the BGS collections

BGS image ID: P704670

SILEX granatus. Garnet. Plate no. 44. From: Sowerby, James. 1802-1817. British Mineralogy: Or Coloured figures intended to elucidate the mineralogy of Great Britain. Plate from vol: 1. page no.92. Modern name: Garnet.

BGS image ID: P521247

Rock specimen of garnet pegmatite. Loch Garve, Garve, Rosshire, Scotland. The photograph is a detail of the surface of a garnet pegmatite sample, characterized by ruby-red spherical garnets of varying sizes, within a matrix of pale quartz and white mica. British Geological Survey Petrology Collection sample number EMC589. Garnets of this colour are generally rich in iron and manganese, termed 'almandine' garnets. The pegmatites in the Garve area have been dated using radiometric dating techniques, which indicate they are Precambrian in age.

BGS image ID: P524411

Photomicrograph of garnet-mica schist. Light: XPL, Magnification x 2. Glen Roy half a mile north-east of Stone and east of Beinn a' Monicag, Invernessshire. The image is a photomicrograph taken under crossed-polarizing lenses of a thin section of garnet mica-schist. British Geological Survey Petrology Collection sample number S 82420. Light: XPL, Magnification x 2. Light: XPL, Magnification x 2. The sample comes from the Monadhliath Mountains of the Grampian Highlands of Scotland. It is a semipelitic rock (a metamorphosed siltstone or impure sandstone) of Precambrian age which has become completely recrystallized with the development of an assemblage of metamorphic minerals. As the original sedimentary rocks become deeply buried in the Earth's crust they undergo a series of profound changes which, under the effects of elevated temperature and pressure, result in the breakdown of the original sedimentary minerals and the growth of new metamorphic minerals. This specimen is from the Leven Schist Formation, Appin Group, Dalradian Supergroup (Precambrian) from Glen Roy, half a mile north-east of Stone and east of Beinn a' Monicag. This formation consists of laminated, pale grey, pelitic schists which are locally flaggy and variably garnetiferous with thin carbonate beds towards the top of the formation. Following the progressive shallowing associated with the Grampian Group basin there was slow subsidence resulting in a marine transgression which led to the deposition of the Lochaber Subgroup. This was followed by a significant increase in water depth which led to the deposition of the Leven Schist Formation.

Bob McIntosh

General Strike 1926: Cleaning staff of the British Gazette

BGS image ID: P827761

During the General Strike of 1926 the government set up a newspaper called the British Gazette. This photograph shows some of the Gazette's cleaning staff. They are all members of the Palaeontology Department at the Geological Survey and are (left to right) John Pringle (1877-1948), Sydney William Hester (?1901-1982), Andrew Templeman (1887-1945) and Charles Panzetta Chatwin (1887-1971).

Andrew L Morrison 

Lulworth Cove, Geologists' Association Swanage Excursion, May 14th 1910.

BGS image :ID P805970

Geologists' Association Swanage Excursion, May 14th 1910.  Here the GA members travel by steamer. Disembarking in Lulworth Cove. Images from the T.W. Reader albums, Geologists' Association 'Carreck Archive'.

Remember the other modes of transport?  Bus,  Steam train!

BGS image ID: P805969

The Cove at Lulworth has been hollowed out in the cliffs by the force of the waves. It is nearly circular in shape being 1380 feet across at 21 feet deep at low water with a break in the side by way of entrance from the sea.

BGS image ID: P805971

In the 'Good Old Days' Lulworth Cove was one of the chief centres of the smuggling trade along the south coast as owing to its peculiar conformation the entrance is practically hidden.

Bob McIntosh

Drummond Hill, sketches in field notebook, Henry Mowbray Cadell, 1883.

BGS image ID: P680476

Drummond Hill, section No 1. Section on road along south side of Drummond Hill 1 and three-quarter miles west from Hennore 12/10/1883. H.M. Cadell sketch.

BGS image ID: P680477

Drummond Hill Section no 8 profile (on left) Section across hill No.9 on east side of the fault which shifts the felsite (Right). . H.M. Cadell sketch.

BGS image ID: P680478

Drummond Hill, quartz porphyry columnar jointing. H.M. Cadell sketch.

BGS image ID: P680479

Drummond Hill Section no 10. Cliff at SW corner of wood in line of fence passing the Praetorium near Fortingal. H.M. Cadell sketch.

Henry Mowbray Cadell famous mountain building experiments

Bob McIntosh

Geologists' Association Excursion to Hastings, June 22nd 1907. The Strade.

Geologists' Association Excursion to Hastings, June 22nd 1907. The Strade. A modern pebble beach showing the ridge formed by high tides.

From the Geologists' Association 'Carreck Archive'

Bob McIntosh

Samples from horizontal sections published by the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland.

Samples from horizontal sections published by the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland. The sections were all hand-coloured with water colour paints and were issued at a horizontal scale of 1:10,560.

To view all the sections visit: Historical maps of the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland

Extract from the 1897 'Summary of Progress of the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland' [Download full document] :

Horizontal sections
The Horizontal Sections have been an important feature in the work of the Geological Survey. De La Beche, recognising the practical disadvantages arising from the construction of sections without any regard to the proportion between height and distance, instituted the practice of drawing them on a true scale. He adopted the scale of six inches, to a mile, and invented a system of patterns for the different kinds of rock, which, as he was himself an artist, are appropriate and effective, for they represent in no small measure the general structure of the rocks. The institution of such sections, in lieu of the distorted diagrams too generally employed, was of great service to the Survey itself and also to the progress of geology; for it served to correct the evil influences of distorted drawing, with regard not only to geological structure but to the true forms of the ground.

When a line of section was chosen and traced on the one-inch map, it had to be measured on the ground with chain and theodolite. This was the invariable practice until the six-inch contoured Ordnance Survey maps came into use. Where these maps can be used as a basis, the laborious process of chaining the sections is no longer required. The section lines are drawn on these maps and the sections are plotted from them. The contour-lines and benchmarks allow the line of the surface to be traced with a close approximation to accuracy. But in order to ensure final correctness of detail, the ground is gone over with the section (and where needful, an Abney's level) in hand, and each little feature is then put in.

The sections start from Ordnance datum (mean sea-level), but where the ground is low and there is consequently not room to express what is known of the geological structure above that datum, the lines are prolonged below it. The same practice is also followed in mining-districts. An effort has been made to illustrate every great district of the country by means of horizontal sections. Each geological formation, as it varies from one point to another, is crossed by lines of section, so that by comparing these with each other the changes in that formation from district to district can at once be seen. The length of each section varies indefinitely with the nature of the ground, many of them being upwards of 100 miles in length. Thus a series of sections runs from Anglesey and the coast of Merionethshire, across the mountainous ground of North Wales, to the plains of the Midlands. Another group crosses from the central counties to the South Coast. A connected chain of sections traverses the breadth of the island from Liverpool to the coast of Yorkshire.

As an illustration of the character of these sections and their usefulness in correcting popular misconceptions as to geological structure and the form of the ground, reference may be made to that which runs from Leicestershire to Brighton and passes through London (Sheet 79). What is called the 'London basin' is by many people regarded as a deep trough of Clay, with the Chalk rising steeply from under it both to the, south and north, and we may see this conception embodied in actual diagrams in text-books and elsewhere. But in reality both the London Clay and the Chalk are so nearly flat that their inclination can hardly be detected except by careful measurement. And the section, accurately plotted from borings and well sections, shows them apparently horizontal, though on further inspection we find that their line of junction, which is well above the datum-line at either end, lies several hundred feet beneath it in the centre.

The Horizontal Sections are engraved on copper and published in sheets, each of which, if the ground be low, may include six lines or 36 miles of section. The same continuous line of section may thus extend over several sheets. Small explanatory pamphlets are usually published with these sheets, giving general information as to their rocks and their local peculiarities. Each sheet of Horizontal Sections is published at the price of 5s. In all, 193 sheets of such sections for the United Kingdom have been issued.

Besides the usual Horizontal Sections on the scale of six inches to a mile, occasional sections on a larger scale are prepared to illustrate the geological structure of particular localities. In this way the coast-line of Cromer and Yarmouth has been represented in detail, and its numerous features of geological interest have been inserted so as to exhibit a kind of picture of the arrangement of the strata in these changing cliffs. Portions of the coast-line of Dorset and of the Isle of Wight have been similarly treated.

Bob McIntosh

Macropoma a late Cretaceous fossil coelocanth. GSM109036

BGS image ID: P549485

Macropoma, a coelocanth from the late Cretaceous. Specimen GSM109036. 

Lobe-finned fish like coelocanths are occasionally found in the late Cretaceous (about 70 million years old) Chalk of Britain and in eastern Europe. However, coelocanths then seemed to disappear from the fossil record, and it was assumed that they had become extinct. However, in 1938 a living representative was found and they have since been found living off the Comoro Islands, Indian Ocean, and off Indonesia. Macropoma grew to about half a metre long. It had a deep body and a bulbous, 3-lobed tail. Its teeth are confined to the very front of the jaw. It had two dorsal fins, a pair of pectoral fins on its side and pelvic fins mid-way along on the underside of the body. Macropoma scales are very thin, ovoid plates of fibrous bone, enamelled on the outer surface. 

Fish are cold-blooded vertebrates with a braincase, fins for swimming and gills to take oxygen from the water (although some also have lungs). They therefore differ from other aquatic creatures like invertebrate molluscs or crabs; amphibians and reptiles, which have lungs and limbs rather than gills and fins; and whales and dolphins which are warm-blooded mammals. Fish are the first vertebrates, having evolved during the early Cambrian over 500 million years ago.

Paleontology collections at the British Geological Survey

Bob McIntosh

Geological excursion in the North-West Highlands of Scotland. Assynt region, 1912

The British Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting, Dundee 1912. Geological excursion in the North-West Highlands of Scotland. Assynt region conducted by B.N. Peach and John Horne. 11th 18th September 1912. Outside the Inchnadamph Hotel. Overseas participants.

From the 'Grizzly Bears' Dinner Books. 

 List of participants on the field excursion.

Bob McIntosh

Galleries in Westphalian A (Lower Coal Measures) sandstone, Hown's Quarry, Consett, Durham.

BGS image ID: P222553

Galleries in Westphalian A (Lower Coal Measures) sandstone, Hown's Quarry, Consett, Durham. Looking North. 
The upper part of the sandstone was quarried in galleries when the overburden became too great. Much of the housing in Consett was built out of this stone. The quarries have been disused since the turn of the century. The sandstone is below the horizon of the Victoria Coal. Sandstone for use as a building stone, as a roofing stone, and also to a lesser extent as an aggregate, was formerly quarried widely throughout the district. Working was always on a relatively small scale, and reserves in general have hardly been touched. The many beds that have been worked for good stone in Durham include some of the sandstones in the higher part of the Stainmore Group and the lower part of the Lower Coal Measures, and higher in the sequence the Durham Low Main, High Main, Seventy Fathom and Grindstone posts of the Middle Coal Measures. Hown's Gill is regarded as one of the larger sandstone quarries in Durham

Date taken: 14/06/1977
Original BGS Photograph number L01750 (Leeds Office Series)

Bob McIntosh