Briefing COMMUNITY Dinosaur tracks and traces: Dinosaur Stamps of the World* (see accompanying picture) by Stuart Baldwin and the late Beverly Halstead is a beautiful book that will clearly remain the definitive introduction to its subject for many years to come. Not the least of its attributes is colour; unlike in most volumes on thema- tic stamps, all the stamps here are illustrated in colour and all known dinosaur and prehistoric-reptile stamps (available up to June 1991) are illustrated. Moreover, also pictured are dinosaur ‘stamps’ that were not issued, namely, the rejected designs for the British issue of 20 August 1991. (Looking at the full set of unadopted designs, it is difficult not to agree with Andrew C. Scott’s view [Geology Today, v.7, p.187, 19911 that on both scientific and aesthetic grounds the prize should have gone to Jenny Halstead, who, in- cidentally, is also the designer of the book under notice here.) But this is not merely a volume of pretty pictures; there are notes on all the dinosaurs (where identifiable!) depicted on stamps, a short essay on ‘Richard Owen’s Dinosuuria’, a description of how the Post Office goes about selecting and producing its commemorative issues, an introduction to palaeonto- logical philately, illustrations of selected dinosaur postal cancellations, first-day covers and cigarette cards, and various indexes. A fine Christmas present for any dinosaur lover - and who isn’t?

Remembering Bev: All the author royalties from Dinosaur Stantps of the World are to go to the Halstead Trust, set up to commemorate Beverly Halstead, who

DINOSAUR STAMPS ! ofthe World

*Published by Baldwin’s Books, Fossil Hall, Boars Tye Road, Silver End, Witham, Essex CM8 3QA. ISBN 0 9508063 4 X (paperback). f 10.00 (plus f1.50 by mail). pp.128.

Cover story (see Dinosaur tracks and traces).

Stuart Baldwin & Beverly Halstead

A page from Dinosaur Stamps of the World (see Dinosaur tracks and traces).

died in a car crash last April. At the time of his death, Bev was both President of the Geologists’ Association and Past Vice-president of the Palaeontological Asso- ciation. The two organizations have therefore jointly instituted the Halstead Trust to generate a fund to be used mainly to help young palaeontologists and geologists. Donations to the fund are welcome and should be sent to The Geologists’ Association (Hal- stead Trust), Burlington House, Piccadilly, London WIV 9AG.

Take a year off Dinosaur Stamps of rhe World was published (no, no, we’re not getting a kickback for this, unfortunately), the Post Office’s set of dinosaur stamps was issued, and the 1991 British Association meeting was held in Plymouth (as was that of 1841), to celebrate the 149th anniversary of the coining of the word Dinosauria by Sir Richard Owen. Er, well, actually, it was meant to be the 150th anniversary; but perhaps the most astonishing event in Plymouth was Hugh Torrens’ revelation, based on detailed research, that Owen used the word neither in his lecture of 1841 nor in the published version of that year. So next year we shall all be able to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the coining of the word Dinosauria by Sir Richard Owen in 1842. The Canadians will also be issuing their set of dinosaur commemorative dinosaur stamps next year. How did they know?

Pipe dream: Imagine the scene. You are quietly sit- ting there in the countryside, chewing a straw and generally communing with nature, miles from the sweaty mob, when all of a sudden a piece of piping

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC PRLHISTOKIC ANIMALS. IPBU.

198IGEOLOGY TODAY November-December 1991

emerges from the rock behind and hits you in the back. This, broadly speaking, is what the group of Norwegians in the accompanying photograph are celebrating; or rather, they are drinking to the accura- cy with which they got you. When the pipe entered the other side of the hill 365 m away, it was aimed at the position of the white stick, which deviates 70 m from a straight line (i.e. the planned trajectory was curved). I t emerged just 30 cm from its target. This is the achievement of the Vic drillhead, developed by Devico of Trondheim. The average drillhole deviation in rock is 7 m per 100 m in length; the Vic can reduce that to an average of less than 1 m in 100 m, a direc- tional precision which, the company hopes, will save considerable time and money in, among other things, mineral prospecting.

Decreasing odds: At long last, Californians are obliged to insure their houses against earthquake damage. By a law recently passed, every householder now has to pay an annual surcharge on building insur- ance of $12-$60, the precise figure depending on proximity to high-risk zones. The surcharge is ex- pected to raise $250 million a year, which will go into a special fund to provide each householder with up to $15 000 compensation if hislher property is damaged in an earthquake. What frnally persuaded legislators to act was the Loma Prieta earthquake of October 1989, in which 25 000 house suffered average damage of $8000 (although another 1000 houses were des- troyed completely). A new report by the US Geologic- al Survey claims that the likelihood of a big earth- quake in the San Francisco Bay area over the next 30 years has risen from 50% to 67%, largely as the result of remeasurements of the rate at which strain is build- ing up along the San Andreas fault. Anne Kiremidjian of Stanford University puts the statistics rather dif- ferently. For a San Franciscan under 45, she says, there is a 2 in 5 chance of experiencing a big earth- quake during hislher lifetime, and for someone under 25 there is a 2 in 3 chance.

Latest meteorite on show: The meteorite that fell in Arthur Pettifor’s back garden at Glatton, near Peter- borough, on 5 May -1991 (see Geology Today, v.7, p.161, 1991) went on display at the Narural History Museum on 12 September. Incidentally, in the item referred to above we said that the Glatton meteorite was the first recorded fall in Britain since 1965 (Bar- well meteorite), which is true. There was, however, a slightly more recent fall in the UK, at Bovedy, North- ern Ireland, in April 1969.

The Story of the Earth at Trinity College, Dublin: The University of Dublin (Trinity College) will cele- brate its 400th anniversary in 1992. The Geological Museum, situated within the Department of Geology, which is one of the oldest in the British Isles, has been refurbished; and a new exhibition, ‘The Story of the Earth’, opened in October 1991 and will run for a year. The exhibition serves as an introduction to geol- ogy, consisting of over 20 individual displays. These include dinosaur material from Africa and eggshell from Mongolia, meteorites (including three Irish falls), zeolites from the Tertiary of Ireland, gem- stones, Carboniferous ‘reef communities, fossil fish from the Eocene of Italy, and Irish industrial pro- ducts. The Geological Museum is open Monday to

Celebrations ar Lillesand, Norway (see Pipe dream).

Ammonite poster advertising Dublin’s new exhibition (see The Story of the Earth at Trinity College, Dublin).

Friday from 10.00 am to 12.30 pm, admission free, groups by appointment (Tel: Dublin 7021477). [Pat- rick Wyse Jackson]

Geoglasnost: The Robertson Group has acquired for sale and distribution limited quantities of current geological and mineral maps of the USSR, previously unavailable in the west. The geological map comprises 16 sheets at a scale of 1:2500000, produced by the Sovipt Ministry of Geology. The mineral map consists of six sheets at 1:1500000, showing the main mineral deposits of the Soviet Union - including oil, gas, metallic minerals, industrial minerals, diamonds and gold - superimposed on a geological background. Further details may be obtained from Nicola Cowden at The Robertson Group plc, Llandudno, Gwynedd LL30 1SA. Soviet magnetic anomaly data, on the other hand, are available from the National Geo- physical Data Center, 325 Broadway, Boulder, Col- orado 80303, USA. In 1974 the Soviet Ministry of Geology published a set of 18 sheets at a scale of 1:2 500 000 showing the residual magnetic anomaly over the landmass of the USSR. These maps were digitized by the US Naval Oceanographic Office in 1982; and it is this version that is now available from the NGDC, in the form of four magnetic tapes.

SCIENCE T h e world’s oldest oil?: Such are the new discoveries coming from Australia on all aspects of geology that there seems just cause to rephrase the quotation ‘Out of Africa, always something new’. Latest in the won- ders must be the discovery in a stratigraphical well in the McArthur Basin, Northern Territory, of what is described as the oldest live oil (Am-Geo News, no.3, April 1991). Earlier, in the mid-l980s, exploration parties from the Bureau of Mineral Resources in Can- berra had also discovered potential source rocks in the same McArthur Basin from strata of approximately the same age. Incredible as it may seem, the rocks in question belong to the Roper Group, dated at about 1400 million years old - in other words, late Precam- brian, approximately equivalent to the Laxfordian of the north-west Highlands of Scotland. If that is a fair comparison for the age of the rocks, the structural and

GEOLOGY TODAY November-December I991 1199

tectonic setting must be quite contrasted for the oil not to have been destroyed by temperature changes or to have migrated as a result of structural rupture of the oil trap. From the location at 133”46‘E, 16”27‘S, the well would seem to have been situated between the ancient block mass of Arnhem Land and the ancient shield-core of the Australian continent, with the McArthur Basin set between the two blocks and so protected from later deformation during the Palaeozoic-Mesozoic eras. It is just possible that similar basins may exist at the margins of the Siberian Shield, but for the moment the record of the oldest oil must go to Australia.

WHAT THE PAPERS SAY For peat’s sake: Paul Brown of The Guardian (15 August 1991) reports that B&Q, the DIY and gardening chain, will, on conservation grounds, stop selling peat collected by Fisons, the UK’s largest ex- tractor, when current stocks run out. The ban applies to all peat cut from bogs designated as Sites of Special Scientific Interest. B&Q still plans to sell peat from non-SSSIs for a while, but it prefers peat substitutes and even talks of the possibility of becoming a ‘peat- free store’. Fisons is not pleased, being quoted as saying that it doesn’t see why conservation should be allowed to interfere -with its ‘legitimate commercial needs’. Fisons obtains peat from Thorne, South Yorkshire, and Hatfield Moor, Humberside, more than half of which sites has been destroyed.

Unexciting statistics: There was a story going the rounds some years ago (for which there may or may not have been supporting data; we can’t remember) to the effect that the average number of readers per research paper published in the Earth sciences was less than one. Be the accuracy of that figure as it may, it certainly seems to be true that a great many of the papers upon which so much effort is expended go unread. Now David P. Hamilton reports another de- pressing statistic (Science, v.251, p.25, 1991). David Pendlebury of the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) of Philadelphia has discovered that 43.6% of papers in the Earth sciences are never cited by (i.e. referred to in the bibliographies of) other papers dur- ing the five years after publication. Still, that’s much better than many other subjects (see diagram). The ‘uncitedness rate’ in the arts and humanities is 98.0%,

Comparative uncitedness rates for papers published in 1984 and the citations they failed to receive through 1988. The analysis was based on ISI’s database, which covers roughly the top 10% of journals published worldwide. T h e average uncitedness rate for science, medicine and engineering was 47.4% (see Unexciting statistics).

an average that conceals even worse figures for some subdisciplines (theatre, 99.9%; American literature, 99.8%; architecture, 99.6%, etc.).

Pompeii gives up more dead: Writing in The Guar- dian (30 August 1991), Ed Vulliamy reports that, for the first time in several decades, more victims of the 25 August 0079 eruption of Pompeii have been found, and put on display. The newly discovered group - which includes a small non-Roman girl of about 14 years, apparently a slave - was found at roof height and the people concerned were apparently scrambling across the roofs in a vain attempt to escape the gas, ash and lava. They were just a couple of hundred metres from their goal, the sea. ‘The slave girl . . . has been felled by a blow to her head - perhaps a roof tile or rock - and is just trying to get up to resume her flight, leaning on one elbow, when the burning ash smothers her . . . One man has apparently given up his flight, perhaps intoxicated by gas, and lies down, resting his head on a roof or floor and covering his face with his right hand as he is devoured. Another appears to have a basket over his head, possibly an attempt at protection.’ The ‘bodies’ now on display are not, of course, human remains but are casts made by pouring plaster and resin into the cavities in the rock left after the original bodies had rotted away. Nevertheless, they are remarkably revealing, even re- cording facial expressions of desperation.

The desertification of mid-North America?: The agriculturally important great plains of the American mid-west are a semi-desert where rainfall is always low and sometimes (1880s, 1930s, 1980s) almost ab- sent. They could therefore be devastated by global warming, which is partly why, as The Economist (24 August 1991) reports, a team of geologists from the US Geological Survey and elsewhere has recently been investigating the behaviour of sand dunes in the re- gion. Until recently, geologists believed that the dunes of the great plains had been more or less static for over 10 000 years; but trench-cutting investiga- tions have revealed ripple strata (evidence of blowing sand), ‘avalanche strata’ (evidence of the slumping of large dunes) and rapidly buried animals and plants (evidence of sand storms or fast-moving dunes) from as recently as 1500 years ago and possibly as little as 240 years ago. The moving dunes could perhaps easily return, burying farmland and thus ruining American agriculture. Certainly, all computer models based on current climatic data and trends appear to suggest that the dunes are already becoming more active. In the meantime, wind erosion is increasing, the area darn- aged having risen from 7.8 million acres across 10 states in 1989-90 to 8.2 million acres in 1990-91.

Quote-unquote 1: ‘Mothers could soon be dressing their offspring in the perfect nappy. More than 15 years of research by one of the world‘s biggest health care companies has identified a remarkably suitable material from nature that will be familiar to Irish crofters and gardeners alike. Researchers say that peat moss excels at absorbing liquid, soaking up 12 times its own weight . . . Scientists have tested everything from absorbent plastics to sea sponges, but nothing seems to rival peat moss.’ - Nick Nuttall, The Guar- dian, 13 March 1991.

2OOlGEOLOGY TODAY November-December 1991

Quote-unquote 2: ‘Now, though, the dinosaur is widely held to be a primitive beast, a scornful simile for everything big, slow to react and generally out- dated, from trade unions to steel.companies to gov- ernment departments. Admittedly, dinosaurs were not over-endowed with brains. But, to turn the image around, why should anyone criticize them for having a slimmed-down head office when their decentralized operations were so spectacularly successful? For over lOOm years no non-dinosaur bigger than a turkey walked the earth, and mammals scurried about irrelevantly.’ - The Economist, 10 August 1991.

ENDPIECES Blind geological dating: One of the two ‘winners’ on ‘Blind Date’ on 26 October 1991 was a geologist

employed on a North-Sea oil rig. Yes, yes, we know that all British readers of Geobgy Today were glued to their sets at the time, but don’t forget that we have a responsibility to our overseas subscribers, who would otherwise not receive such important information.

‘Nostradamus definitively decoded: George Bush re- elected - without Quayle - 1992; Biggest ever Califor- nia earthquake commences 7.05 am, 8 May 1993; . . . Black holes explained 1995; . . . New hole in the ozone layer 19%; . . . Aliens televised 1998; Mission to Mars 2000.’ Keep a check! - from a blurb about a new book on Nostradamus’ supposed prophesies, publisher’s catalogue, 1991.

News & comment: Home and general Site recording in west Somerset Hugh Prudden (Montacute, Somerset) writes: Many groups are at present involved in making surveys in their county as part of the scheme fostered by English Nature to list Regionally Important Geological Sites (RIGS). Making an inventory of sites of geological interest is a big undertaking, especially in a county so richly blessed as Somerset. The current survey embraces those parts of Somerset west of easting 300 (Dunster). The old-fashioned 6-inch Ordnance Survey maps, which show trees, crags and quarries, have proved invaluable in making an initial desk survey. Treasure your old 6-inch sheets, for the new 1: 10000 series are soulless, sanitized creatures and cost a fortune.

Probably at least half of the sites will now be filled in, grassed over or a mass of nettles and old pesticide drums. A long walk to a sire may be fruitless or may be rewarded with the discovery of a gem, such as the large quarry north of Dulverton with the afternoon sun lighting the multicoloured vertical Pickwell Down Sandstones - a site with good geological and wildlife conservation potential, and certainly a candidate for nomination for RIGS status. Nearby is the smooth, rounded Weir Rock set deep in the Exe Valley and which, in the 1880s, was taken to exhibit the scratches and abrasion from a Pleistocene ice sheet but is now ascribed to Variscan tectonics. Readers’ views would be welcome if they are in the vicinity; the rock is close to the road on a corner, and one can park in the roadside quarry (SS 9292 2952).

One lesson learnt from exploring west Somerset is that the surveyor needs to adopt a broad outlook and not be confined to, for example, the realm of stratigraphy (begging your pardons!). Low-grade metamorphism and Variscan tectonics are an important aspect of the area. The sandstones on Dunkery have experienced the pressures and temperatures associated with burial to 5-6 km. Recent geophysical surveys by research workers at University College Cardiff have provided direct evidence of a major Variscan thrust in the Palaeozoic basement beneath the Mesozoic Bristol Channel syncline.

Fig. 1. An asymmetric fold in massive sandstones (‘Hangman Grits’) at Greenaleigh, west of Minehead, Somerset.

Visitors without seismic aids can get a glimpse of the evidence for Variscan tectonics at Greenaleigh, west of Minehead (SS 953 483), a lovely setting in the care of the National Trust. Greenaleigh also claims RIGS status on account of a fine section of head overlying beach cobbles and reminiscent of the features at Prawle in south Devon. There are also veins of calcite in the quartzitic Devonian sandstones and a puzzling arcuate shingle beach. Has anyone studied the shoreline dynamics of the coast west of Minehead?

Hurlstone Point (SS 898 494) is another complex of sites with RIGS status and which provide something for everyone. The cliffs show overfolded near-

Fig. 2. Scree slopes on the side of Bossington Hill, Somerset. These seem to develop where the ‘Hangman Grits’ are riven by a high density of NNW-SSE joints.

GEOLOGY TODAY November-December 1991 I201