Lectures

Lectures are open to all and there is no charge for admission. However regular in person attendees are expected to be members of the society.

Time:
7:45pm for 8:00pm

Venue: 
In Person: Sorby Room, Wager Building, (formerly Geoscience),
The University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading.
Use Car Park 8 (OS: SU 7336 7159, W3W: ///herbs.clap.type, Lat,Long: 51.4385775,-0.9459335)
Via Zoom: Members are sent the joining link by email.
Non-members wishing to join a zoom lecture can request this using the registration link when shown. Requests should always be made before 6pm on the previous day.
This lecture will be both in the Sorby room and via Zoom.


2023-12

Monday 4 December 2023

Experimental Taphonomy: Unravelling the Burgess Shale

Dr Nic Minter, Portsmouth University
Non Members Registration


Almost all major animal groups appeared on Earth half a billion years ago in an event known as the Cambrian explosion. Certain fossil sites from this time have been used to reconstruct what communities of marine animals were like and to study the evolution of ecosystem complexity. However, the fossils are rarely considered in the context of how the sedimentary rocks in which they are preserved were deposited. Here, I will take you on a tour from studying trackways in a museum, to fieldwork on the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and into the laboratory where new experiments are helping to unravel this problem.
Animals and their environments have been interacting and modifying one another since life began. Dr Minter is interested in co-evolution between life and the planet. He works at the interface among palaeontology, sedimentology and behavioural ecology; focussing on organism-substrate interactions and what they can tell us about the make-up of ecosystems through time and their responses to major events in the history of the Earth. These include evolutionary radiations, colonization events and mass extinctions.


Programme 2023

The programme for 2023 as currently proposed is also available as a pdf document.

Other programmes

Previous years programmes and other programme information can be found on the About us page.