Dorset Geologist’s Association Group (DGAG) will host a talk on the Tuesday 17th March 2026.
Title: The Standard Stratigraphic Nomenclature of Offshore Ireland: An integrated Lithostratigraphic, Biostratigraphic and Sequence Stratigraphic Framework
Speaker: Nigel Ainsworth (DGAG member)
Time: Talk will start at 7pm; finish approximately 8pm
Venue: Activity Meeting Room: Dorford Centre, Bridport Road, Dorchester, DT1 1RR
Lecture Entry Cost: All welcome: £6 non-members (£5 for DGAG members), cash best.
Booking a seat: contact Chris Webb at email: events@dorsetgeologistsassociation.org
Talk Description: A modern review completed in 2020 so will be fascinating insight into the geology of one our neighbours!
Speakers’ summary: To be provided nearer the time
Photo: Temporary courtesy of Government of Ireland website pending better one from the speaker
Additional Links:
1. Publication on which the talk is a summary of the work
https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-climate-energy-and-the-environment/publications/the-standard-stratigraphic-nomenclature-of-ireland/
Dorset Geologist’s Association Group (DGAG) will host a talk on the Tuesday 09th December 2025.
Title: How the famous fish beds of Lebanon have informed on life and evolution in the Cretaceous (provisional title)
Speaker: Hady George is a PhD student in the Palaeobiology Research Group at the University of Bristol. Previously, he completed an Mres in Palaeontology and Geobiology at the University of Edinburgh and a BSc (Hons) in Biomedical Sciences at Queen Mary, University of London. His current PhD project utilises digital & dissection data of the lower jaws of extant fish and amphibians to study feeding evolution across fish-tetrapod transition through a biomechanical approach. He is also actively researching other topics in vertebrate palaeontology including the anatomy and systematics of dicynodonts (stem-mammals) & thalattosuchians (stem-crocodilians), inferring brain evolution from fossils, and of course, the palaeoenvironments and extinct species of the Cretaceous of Lebanon. Hady is originally from Lebanon (British-Lebanese dual citizen), has done fieldwork at one of the four fossil sites (Haqel), works with local fossil collectors in Lebanon, and regularly visits his home where he grew up, which is only an hour away from the exceptional fossil sites
Time: Talk will start at 7pm; finish approximately 8pm
Venue: Activity Meeting Room: Dorford Centre, Bridport Road, Dorchester, DT1 1RR
Lecture Entry Cost: All welcome: £6 non-members (£5 for DGAG members), cash only.
Booking a seat: contact Chris Webb at email: events@dorsetgeologistsassociation.org
Talk Description: The famous ‘fish beds’ of Lebanon, technically classified as the Upper Cretaceous Lebanese Lagerstätten, are world renowned. Hundreds of fossil species are known from these sites, including cephalopods, crustaceans, hagfish, sharks, marine reptiles and pterosaurs. Many of these fossils include soft tissues that almost never preserve, providing key information into the biology of many extinct animals. Besides the enormous number of fossils, the sites yield and their exceptional preservation, the sites are also renowned for their historic importance, as surviving documentation of these fossil fishes was recorded during the height of the Roman Empire and the Crusades. In this talk, the history of discovery and geology of the four best known Upper Cretaceous Lebanese fossils sites (Haqel, Hjoula, Nammoura, Sahel Aalma) will be described and followed by an overview of the great diversity of plants and animals known from the four sites and how they have informed on life and evolution in the Cretaceous. Afterwards, the gaps of knowledge surrounding the sites and their fossils will be discussed alongside potential avenues of research.
Photo: Speaker has supplied a great photo (Nematomotis longispinus), photo credit to Pierre Abi Saad
Additional Links:
1. Speaker as lead-author of 2024 paper in Journal of Geological Society : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380204734_The_famous_fish_beds_of_Lebanon_the_Upper_Cretaceous_Lagerstatten_of_Haqel_Hjoula_Nammoura_and_Sahel_Aalma
Dorset Geologist’s Association Group (DGAG) will host a talk on the Tuesday 23rd September 2025.
Title: Diamond ‘Stratigraphy,’ SDRs & LIPs*, A 1200 km ‘Restricted’ Margin and a new oil province: The Orange Basin Offshore Namibia & South Africa: An Aggressive Passive (Passive Aggressive?) Margin Basin
Speaker: Allan Scardina (Upstream Decisions LLC) who has forty plus years in exploration geology (Oil/Gas) in many parts of the globe.
Time: Talk will start at 7pm; finish approximately 8pm
Venue: Activity Meeting Room: Dorford Centre, Bridport Road, Dorchester, DT1 1RR
Lecture Entry Cost: All welcome: £6 non-members (£5 for DGAG members), cash best.
Booking a seat: contact Chris Webb at email: events@dorsetgeologistsassociation.org
Talk Description: This promises to be an intriguing mix of “hard rock” diamonds and “soft rock liquid gold” – Editor comments!
Speakers summary:
Passive margins are named for their notional lack of significant post-rifting tectonic activity. A ‘standard’ well-behaved passive margin goes through progressively slowing tectonic subsidence related to the cooling of the underlying crust. That is, most of the time.
However, in some cases, passive margins are anything but. The extensive Orange Basin offshore Namibia and South Africa is one such ‘aggressive’ passive margin. The rifting phase appears to have been heavily dominated by the development of seaward dipping reflectors (SDRs), probably in two different phases. However, the origins of these SDRs may not be what is commonly assumed by the “SDR” nomenclature. Post-rift uplift (rebound?) created one-to-several regional ridges that significantly impacted future clastic and carbonate facies development. The boundaries of the greater Southern Africa margin were, in the Aptian (exact timing may vary along the margin), geographically restricted by hot spot-generated ridges, leading to a Mediterranean-scale silled basin and the development of a thick organic-rich marine layer that is the source rock for the recent petroleum discoveries. Significant uplift (ca. 1000 – 2000+ m) of the southern African Plateau in the Late Cretaceous- Early Tertiary and linked tilting and erosion of the margin resulted in the development of at least two interconnected updip extensional-downdip compressional systems and contributed considerably to the development of both the rich placer deposits of high-quality diamonds that makes Namibia the world’s leading sources of “marine” diamonds and the turbidites containing some of the recent large hydrocarbon discoveries. The active nature of this margin continues into the Tertiary with present-day earthquakes up to M5 and seamounts probably linked to Late Tertiary volcanics in the deep offshore, both of which might be related to a reactivated transform system or underlying deep mantle processes.
This talk will illustrate the above events, place them in a regional context, and highlight several remaining uncertainties along the margin. It will also touch on the geopolitical impact of geology.
*Large Igneous Provinces = LIPs
Seaward Dipping Reflectors on seismic records = SDRs
Photo: Courtesy of the Encyclopedia Britannica pending better from the speaker
Additional Links: Pending more information
