The geology of southwest Germany is dominated by continental to marine sedimentary rocks deposited within Mesozoic sedimentary basins which have yielded economic hydrocarbon deposits. This stratigraphy has formed the focus of geological and stratigraphical research for centuries, with world‐famous exposures becoming type sections and lending their name to some stages of the Jurassic. Studying geological transects in southwest Germany is not only interesting from a palaeontological and hydrocarbon perspective, but also allows us to reconstruct the evolution of depositional environments over time. One such transect is the ‘Geological Path’ curated by the Geological Association of Schwäbisch Gmünd, which guides the public through the local Late Triassic to Jurassic stratigraphy. In this feature, we provide an overview of this transect, contextualize the dominant changes in depositional environments and fossil assemblages, and compare these to coeval stratigraphy exposed in coastal cliffs on the ‘Jurassic Coast’ in southern England.
On 21 May 2015, the United States passed the ‘Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act’, also known as the SPACE Act, encouraging a competitive commercial space exploration industry and effectively ushering a new space race, or even space age. Unlike the former space age of the 1950s–1970s which was characterized by intense competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, the new space race involves at least 70 different countries and hundreds of private companies pursuing space exploration enterprises. One reason for this renewed interest lies in the Moon's potential for providing key natural resources capable of being mined, also known as in situ resource utilization (ISRU), such as rare earth elements for consumer electronics, water ice containing hydrogen necessary for rocket fuel and helium‐3, a valuable nonradioactive isotope that is rare on Earth. Along with the hundreds of private companies, three major ongoing multi‐government space initiatives aimed at ISRU are underway: the NASA‐led ARTEMIS Program (which saw its first crewed mission launch on 1 April 2026), the ESA‐led moon base initiative and China's Lunar Exploration Program. These initiatives have major implications for the future management of natural and cultural resources preserved within extraterrestrial environments, and it is imperative that researchers, including geologists, archaeologists and planetary scientist work together to discuss strategies to mitigate risk to these resources. While natural resources such as those mentioned above represent the main foci of space interest, cultural resources are equally important to consider for protection as we enter the new space race.
Sea monsters are mostly associated with pre‐scientific views of the world or with fiction. Despite this, various writers—select scientists among them—have interpreted sea monsters as real, often arguing for a connection between them and animals known as fossils. Efforts to bring sea monsters into mainstream science have mostly failed, but despite this they remain embedded in culture and imagination. In a recent show at Aberdeen Art Gallery, Monsters of the Deep explored the history of sea monsters and how scientific discoveries and popular culture have combined to keep the subject very much alive.
As geologists, our interest is piqued when geological processes—with varying degrees of accuracy—are portrayed in movies and especially when a geologist unexpectedly appears on screen, even in a minor role. More than a decade ago, during a coffee break, we started talking about movies that feature geologists. We counted a dozen different movies and began to wonder: how is our profession portrayed in the popular mass media?
This article demonstrates how a built‐in mobile‐device LiDAR sensor can be used to produce practical and reliable 3D cave models. Using Agios Georgios Cave in Kilkis, Greece, as a real field example, an iPhone 13 Pro Max equipped with the Polycam app was used to document cave passages, chambers and the vertical connection between levels. The results were directly compared with high‐resolution data from a FARO Focus3D laser scanner. The workflow presented here shows how a non‐specialist can collect, process and evaluate LiDAR data using only a smartphone and highlights where such an approach performs well and where it encounters limitations—particularly in vertically complex spaces. These results illustrate the value of smartphone mobile‐device LiDAR as an accessible tool for cave documentation and geoscience field work while also providing a step‐by‐step example that practitioners can replicate.
Andesites are volcanic rocks with an intermediate silica content. They are a feature of mountain chains like the Andes, from which the name is derived, and island arcs. Andesite and its associates, such as basalt, dacite and rhyolite (which belong to the so‐called calc‐alkaline rock series), occur in zones where tectonic plates are subducting (converging, so that one plate is forced down under its opponent).
The public love fossil vertebrates – dinosaurs, mammoths, fish‐lizards, whatever. William Swinton was a notable popularizer of fossil tetrapods in the mid‐twentieth century, publishing several books while a curator at the British Museum (Natural History). Fossil Amphibians and Reptiles is more than a popular work per se , with intricate details of skeletons explained for the savant, but also with beautiful diagrams and restorations to appeal to all readers.
The Nevis and Mamore ranges near Fort William comprise some of the most popular and spectacular of all Scotland's mountains including the highest peak, Ben Nevis. The beauty of this mountainous region is the product of a long and complex geological evolution, spanning 800 million years of Earth's history. This complex geological evolution featured the formation and break up of multiple supercontinents, continental collisions and uplift of Himalayan scale mountain ranges, formation of active volcanoes, continental drift from high southern latitudes to mid northern latitudes and finally sculpting of the mountain peaks and glens by Arctic ice sheets and glaciers during the most recent Ice Age. Here I describe this fascinating geological evolution and how it has shaped this spectacular landscape.
Kimberlites, while relatively rare, are perhaps the most interesting of igneous rocks and have accordingly attracted attention disproportionate to their abundance. They are the source of most diamonds and bring us direct sampling of Earth’s mantle (otherwise only available indirectly by geophysical methods). They are confined to the ancient cratons of the continents: the oldest and thickest parts of the continental crust (where the geothermal gradient is low) and are now known to occur on all the continents. They were not formed in the earliest phases of Earth’s history. Emplaced explosively in carrot‐shaped pipes, they are pyroclastic rocks close to the surface (often removed by erosion) but become hypabyssal (dykes and sills) at depth. Kimberlites belong to the ultramafic group of rocks with high MgO. They are consequently rich in olivine and lack feldspar. They are rich in volatiles, such as water and carbonate, and the above‐mentioned mantle xenoliths and megacrysts, including eclogite, harzburgite, olivine, mica, zircon, diamond and others, as well as crustal xenoliths. Kimberlites are thus hybrid rocks and the nature of the parent magmas is difficult to define. Related rocks, which may contain diamonds, are lamproites and ultramafic lamprophyres. A recent article by Tony Waltham in Geology Today discussed kimberlites and especially their diamonds; here we concentrate on kimberlites themselves with lesser emphasis on other diamondiferous rocks.
About halfway between Interlaken and Bern, Thun is one of the latest sheets to appear in the 1:25 000 geological atlas of Switzerland planned series of 220 sheets. Thun adds to the recent publication of four geological maps extending along the river Aare and the Brienzersee up the Haaslital valley, in the headwaters of this tributary of the river Rhine and the longest river flowing entirely within Switzerland.
The 1942 El Alamein battlefield exemplifies the decisive role of geological and geomorphological factors in modern warfare. Constrained between the Mediterranean littoral and the impassable Qattara Depression, the desert theatre imposed strategic immobility and shaped both defensive planning and tactical manoeuvre. Key landforms—dune ridges, aeolian sands, sabkhas and deir depressions—influenced fortification siting, troop disposition and operational viability. The Battle of Alam Halfa underscores how deep soft sands, compounded by a deceptive ‘going map’, critically hindered Rommel’s flanking attempt, already undermined by fuel shortages and Allied air dominance. Here, terrain functioned as a strategic agent.
With the transition to a low carbon future and increasing technological applications, the global demand for metals will continue to rise into the foreseeable future. However, primary ore deposits are finite, and to continue production, lower grade and more complex ore deposits need to be discovered, evaluated and exploited, with increasing exploration and production costs. Additionally, there are significant geopolitical constraints on global resources for some critical raw materials and metals, along with ethical constraints of ‘off‐shoring’ minerals supply to areas of the world with poor records in terms of legal mineral production, human rights violations, health and safety, and the long‐term environmental impact of mining. Whilst it is unlikely at present to be able to fully meet supply needs, one source of metals for the future is through recycling of both domestic and industrial waste. Modern waste streams such as end‐of‐life lithium‐ion batteries and electrical waste commonly contain significantly more metals than primary ore deposits before processing. However, these waste materials are complex, and through two case studies in this article, we focus on how methods commonly used in modern mining and mineral processing can be used to assist the processing and recovery of metals from waste. Perhaps it is time to reclassify waste as valuable resources for the future.
The Thistle landslide was a slow‐moving mass of debris that, during 1983, created a dam within a major valley in Utah, USA. It proved to be the most expensive landslide in American history, requiring huge and rapid engineering works to stabilize the debris dam, build a new railway and road and drain the lake; though not before the small town of Thistle was drowned and destroyed.
Long‐term preservation of landforms produces a geological record that can be used to unravel past Earth surface processes in space and time. Identification and analysis of landforms has been revolutionized by the availability of high‐resolution (metre‐scale) topographic survey data covering extensive areas, using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR). Airborne LiDAR has been in widespread use for over two decades; but due to increasing availability of data, some regions are only just beginning to be ‘explored’ in this way. In this article, we showcase high‐resolution topography derived from airborne LiDAR survey data across South Island, New Zealand. We evidence a variety of tectonic, glacial, fluvial, hillslope and other landforms hitherto undetected within mountainous areas and beneath forests. We discuss how the characteristics of shape, size, position and association can differentiate landforms from one another, and how combinations of landforms enable landsystems to be identified that are diagnostic of past environmental conditions.
Can a beachcomber be a geologist in the absence of in situ rock exposures? I say yes, particularly for those of us with a fondness for Aktuo Paläontologie, the interpretation of modern shell remains as if they are fossils. Modern dead shells can provide a wealth of thought‐provoking information, confirming that the present is, indeed, the key to the past.
Rapid atmospheric warming, especially at high altitude, leads to alpine mountain landscapes becoming more vulnerable to mass movements and consequently unstable. For example, decay of mountain permafrost contributes to rockfalls, landslides and debris flows; glaciers are retreating and losing mass at alarming rates, exposing unstable slopes that are more likely to fail; and meltwater, which collects in a growing number of glacial lakes, can pose an outburst flood hazard, putting communities and infrastructure downstream at risk of damage. Occurring now with increasing frequency, these natural phenomena often combine to create complex multi-hazard cascades that are more powerful and have a greater reach down-valley than a singular isolated event. Combined with increasing population and infrastructure and economic activity in high mountains, there is therefore increased vulnerability of society to natural hazards in high alpine mountains, as has been experienced in the Swiss Alps in 2025, with the collapse of the Birch Glacier and the destruction of the alpine village of Blatten. Here, we review the physical processes of this recent event, their impact on environment, people and economy, and consider what can be learned from them.
Ammonites were molluscs, now extinct, that abounded in Mesozoic seas. Their external shells are almost always the only parts of them that are preserved, and their soft-part anatomy and lifestyles remain largely unknown. The shells, however, can be preserved in various ways that shed light on the animals as living organisms, including their variation and evolution, possible colour patterning and the creatures that preyed upon them.
The Lower Jurassic Down Cliff Sand Member of the Dorset coast, southern England, is a rich source of marine invertebrate fossils. Among these are echinoderms and less common arthropods. Despite having multi-component skeletons that are prone to disarticulation, remains of some of these are remarkably complete. This article examines the circumstances that could have led to their death, burial and intact preservation.
The biggest UK railway construction site since the nineteenth century has exposed a near-complete time slice through the entire Jurassic succession of central England. This is yielding a wealth of stratigraphical, palaeobiological and palaeoenvironmental data that is otherwise generally poorly exposed at the present day. Construction of the HS2 (High Speed 2) railway scheme is generating important exposures of these strata, affording significant geological recording, research and educational opportunities.
The city of Oxford, in south-central England, is partly surrounded by hills on which coral-rich limestones crop out. The coral developments constitute small reefs and formed during a widely documented Late Jurassic (mid-Oxfordian) warming episode, near the northern limit of reef growth at that time. Given its ready availability, the coral rock and associated detrital limestone were dug as building stone for 900 years or more and used extensively within Oxford until the beginning of the twentieth century. William Joscelyn Arkell (1904–1958) was a leading twentieth century expert on Jurassic geology and had wide-ranging interests in these strata. In particular, his observations on Oxfordian reef palaeoecology, climatic significance and structural context have provided the foundations of our modern understanding of these fascinating rocks, which are poorly exposed at the present day.
