Programme of Events
The Black Country Geological Society’s indoor meetings are now held at The Lamp Tavern. The room is on the top floor and there is a lift.
Unless otherwise stated, the indoor and Zoom meetings will normally open at 7.30 and lectures commence at 8.00.
Those wishing to attend field or geoconservation meetings please contact our Field Secretary (email address on the Contacts page).
Any non-members wishing to attend our virtual meetings should contact our Meetings Secretary for instructions (email address on the Contacts page).
Other contact details are also available on our Contact us page.
Updated 24 January 2025.
Members please check your email for any last minute changes.
Recordings of some of our virtual talks can be found on our YouTube channel.
Events in January–February 2025
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20 January (1 event)
Revealing the Geology of the Lickey Hills - The Continuing Importance of the Amateur Geologist Revealing the Geology of the Lickey Hills - The Continuing Importance of the Amateur Geologist 7.30 -
Speaker: Alan Richardson (BCGS, OUGS and Lickey Hills Geo-Champions).
To the south of Birmingham, an inlier of Ordovician quartzite rises through the cover of Carboniferous and Permo-Triassic rocks to form a prominent north-south ridge. Several disused quarries offer snapshots of the geology, but in spite of its proximity to Birmingham, and the work of many prominent academic geologists, the hills have held on to many of their secrets. In the last decade, the work of local conservation volunteers has been revealing previously unrecognised clues to the geological history of the area. This talk will describe the geological and historical contexts and explain how the new discoveries are being interpreted.
Click here for a Google map of the location.
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8 February (1 event)
Geoconservation Day, Cotwall End Quarry, Dudley Geoconservation Day, Cotwall End Quarry, Dudley 10.00 - 2.30
Saturday 8 February (Geoconservation Day): Cotwall End Quarry, Dudley. Parking/meet on Cotwall End Road, opposite house No. 61 (Grid ref: SO 906 919, nearest PC: DY3 3EJ). This is the closest access to the quarry. Meet for a 10.00 start. The area has had very little management over the last 25 years, but has some amazing features to unveil. The wardens are currently removing larger material to restore the area to grassland and encourage geological interest and biodiversity. Bring appropriate footwear and outdoor gear and a packed lunch. Wardens will provide tools. We will aim to end by 2.30.
Click here for a Google map of the location.
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17 February (1 event)
The Wuda flora: an earliest Permian tropical forest ecosystem preserved under volcanic ash The Wuda flora: an earliest Permian tropical forest ecosystem preserved under volcanic ash 7.30 -
Monday 17 February (Indoor Meeting): 'The Wuda flora: an earliest Permian tropical forest ecosystem preserved under volcanic ash'. Speaker: Professor Jason Hilton (University of Birmingham).
This talk will showcase an exceptional fossil flora preserved in exquisite detail under a blanket of volcanic ash at Wuda in Inner Mongolia (north China). Think of it as Pompeii without the Romans, but rather than stepping back in time a few thousand years in Mediterranean Italy, jump back 299 million years to the earliest Permian and a tropical forest ecosystem. The visually stunning fossils are preserved complete, in their life positions, and with exceptional preservation that records their morphology and, in some cases, cellular anatomy. So far more than 50,000 specimens have been identified and their distributions mapped from over 12,000 1x1 meter quadrats, recording the entire forest ecosystem. Detailed and time-consuming work continues to document new plant species, genera, and families, and interpreting their evolutionary and ecological significance. This remarkable fossil flora provides an unrivalled glimpse into the past and is revolutionising our understanding of Paleozoic peat- (and hence coal-) forming communities. It also provides key information on the persistence of wetland plants from the Carboniferous of Europe and America into the Permian of China, and the changing palaeoenvironmental conditions that led to the dramatic changes in global floral distributions through the Carboniferous-Permian transition.
Biography: Jason completed his BSc in Natural Environmental Sciences (Earth Sciences) from Sheffield University in 1992, then undertook his PhD at Cardiff University in Paleozoic palaeobotany. He worked at the National Museum of Wales (Cardiff), the Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing), the National Museums of Scotland (Edinburgh) before joining the University of Birmingham in 2003. His primary research focus is on fossil plants, investigating origin and systematic relationships of plant groups, changes in diversity through evolutionary radiation and extinctions events, and floral responses to intervals of profound environmental and climatic change through the fossil record. He teaches a range of courses in Earth Sciences spanning introductory fieldwork, stratigraphic principles, Earth history, resource geology, and palaeobiology.Click here for a Google map of the location.
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