Deposits Magazine - International rock and fossil, glossy 52 page publication

Sharks of Whale Valley

Leaving behind the noise and pollution of Cairo, the drive across the monotonous buff desert comes almost as a relief. After passing through the lush farmlands of the Fayum Oasis and back out onto the desert plains, the first sign of the fossils to come is unexpected and indicated by the desert surface changing from pale brown to silver-grey. Looking closer at the shiny silver desert surface, fossils became visible, being millions of giant nummulite foraminifera covering the desert surface, each polished to a metallic sheen by millennia of sand blasting. However, it was not forams that we had been invited to study. Rather, it was far larger and more impressive specimens we had come to see and the appearance of dramatic sandstone cliffs on the horizon heralded some of the most extraordinary fossiliferous rocks that I, for one, have ever seen...

The monster nautiluses of the Palaeozoic

The handful of nautilus species found in seas today are small, retiring animals that scavenge about at night, foraging for carrion and crustacean moults. However, nautiluses were not always so insignificant and during the first half of the Palaeozoic Era especially, nautiluses were major predators, occupying the same niches in Ordovician and Silurian seas as sharks do today. Compared to their cousins, the ammonites, the Palaeozoic nautiluses are relatively unfamiliar animals. That is a shame, because they are truly remarkable, in all likelihood being the first really big predators to evolve on Earth. But, to understand how they reached the top so quickly, we need to look back at their ancestors, the floating ‘snails’ of the Cambrian. Nautiluses are the most primitive of all the cephalopods, the group of molluscs that also includes squids, octopuses, cuttlefishes, ammonites and belemnites...

Barrow Hill - 'The Dudley Volcano'

Barrow Hill is a little gem. It is virtually unknown, very accessible and in the middle of a large town – Dudley, in the West Midlands of England. Nowadays, it is almost swallowed up in the western suburbs of Birmingham. The hill is the remains of an ancient volcano that was active 300mya, in Carboniferous times. It is likely that there was one main cone, with a summit crater, and at least one smaller parasite cone on its flanks. Faults have shattered the earth on all sides, making the geology very complicated, especially for the coal miners who have worked the seams beneath the magma chamber. In its Late Carboniferous heyday, Barrow Hill was high and very active. It was one of a complex of volcanoes in the area, which are still evidenced by other eroded hills in the neighbourhood. The region was one of vast tropical deltas and swamps, filled with steaming lagoons...

Plus...

Moeraki Boulders: giant marbles of New Zealand

Iron from the sky

A field guide to Barbados (Part 1): introduction

Hell and high water: the digs of Dinosaur Cove

Historic review shows current
climate change is normal

And much more...