Bath Geological Society is holding its AGM at 7.p.m. on Thursday 2nd February - BRLSI, 16 Queen Square, Bath.
This will be followed by our first lecture for 2012, 'Testing Macroevolutionary patterns in the fossil record' by Dr. Matthew Wills, University of Bath.
Biologists studying extant organisms have a huge battery of methods at their disposal. Morphology can be observed and dissected in great detail, physiology and biochemistry can be made the subject of experiment, behaviour can be observed, and heritable changes within populations can be studied from generation to generation. Information is available at tremendously high temporal resolution (the ‘ecological’ time scale). But life has a history spanning something in the region of 3.5 billion years, with Metazoa originating at least 540 million years ago. The extant biota is just one time slice of this history. However great our understanding of living animals, we could never have predicted the existence of dinosaurs from looking at today’s birds and reptiles, or giant 5m long sea ‘scorpions’ (eurypterids) from studying spiders and mites. Fossils provide us with less detailed morphological and palaeobiogeographical information, but over vastly longer (geological) time scales.
Everyone is welcome - £4 for visitors - free refreshments
On Saturday 4th February, the Society is hosting a field trip to Brown's Folly, geological SSSI for the Middle Jurassic, with Elizabeth Devon
Click here for further details about Brown's Folly. The morning is also our annual clear-up of the Geological sites on this reserve. If you know the site well and do not want to join the tour, then please come along with gardening tools and help to keep the sites open for others.
Meet at 10.00 a.m. at Brown's Folly Car Park (G.R. ST 798663). Strong boots, waterproofs, hard hats are required.
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