The Silurian rocks of Saaremaa Island, Estonia, provide an exceptional record of ancient marine life, not just as individual fossils but as evidence of how organisms lived together. Around 430–420 million years ago, this region was a tropical sea where corals and stromatoporoid sponges formed thriving reef ecosystems. What makes Saaremaa unique is the frequent preservation of endobiotic relationships—organisms living inside the skeletons of others. Worms inhabited tabulate corals, cornulitid tubeworms embedded themselves in stromatoporoids and solitary rugose corals grew within coral colonies and sponges, using them as stable shelters and feeding platforms. These associations show that Silurian reefs and shelves were crowded, competitive, and highly interconnected environments where organisms coexisted through tolerance rather than destruction. Now exposed in coastal cliffs, these fossils offer a rare and detailed glimpse into early symbiosis and community structure in Palaeozoic seas.
While publication has slowed as the French geological survey, Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières (BRGM), fills the final gaps in their national 1:50 000 series consisting of around 1100 maps, including overseas departments and territories, they are worth the wait. Over 70 years this series has gradually replaced historic 1:80 000 geological maps. As this output has wound down, the BRGM started producing regional guides: firstly, longer books in association with Omniscience before new titles were discontinued; secondly, more concise Curiosités géologiques which help bridge the gap between increasingly academic memoirs, accompanying each 1:50 000 sheet and their broader cultural context. This review highlights three outstanding examples of what fresh geological surveys and contemporary revisions could be yielding, considering our developing understanding of detailed scientific methods and techniques resulting in a fresh regional synthesis, within modern overarching theories like the Gaia hypothesis.
Benjamin Harrison (1837–1921) was the key figure in the Kent eolith debate. Harrison found strong support from some of the great and the good, who encouraged his lifelong pursuit of flint implements. His influence was notable, but with the discounting of the validity of eoliths as human artefacts, his contribution is now both irrelevant and largely forgotten.
The Cape Verde archipelago is a long‐lived volcanic ocean island chain formed by a mantle plume in the Atlantic Ocean. The archipelago is characterized by ten subaerial islands with complex age relationships, abundant submarine volcanism and variable volcanic hazards. Numerous studies of the subaerial volcanism have shown extensive diversity in rock types, although comparatively few have focused on submarine volcanism and its relationship to plume evolution. Here, we share preliminary results and new observations from R/V Roger Revelle cruise RR2510, which conducted high‐resolution multibeam bathymetry, sub‐bottom profile surveys and targeted dredging of submarine seamounts. Dredging enabled sampling of young volcanic cones formed atop debris fans and bathymetry confirmed the absence of substantial volcanic edifices within the ring of islands. This suggests that melt generation is confined to the islands and not within the Cape Verde swell. Preliminary results from RR2510 demonstrate the critical role of shipboard research in understanding ocean island systems, integrating monogenic volcanism with broader volcanic hazards and advancing early career‐led marine geosciences and international collaborations.
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.
