ALONG
WITH most of the rest of the West Yorkshire RIGS committee,
I’m attending a meeting about Yorkshire Geology Month
organised by the North Yorkshire Geology Trust. Yorkshire Geology
Month will be held in May/June.Richard Bell's Wild West Yorkshire nature diary
Saturday, 31st March, 2007
ALONG
WITH most of the rest of the West Yorkshire RIGS committee,
I’m attending a meeting about Yorkshire Geology Month
organised by the North Yorkshire Geology Trust. Yorkshire Geology
Month will be held in May/June.
We’re at the new Leeds Museum Discovery Centre where collections are kept in a controlled environment. I remember the old museum stores at Sovereign Street, a rambling Dickensian building, as I used to go there to draw fossils when Jim Nunney, who retired a few years ago, was in charge of the geological collections.
Club-moss
Amongst
the exhibits: a perfect Lepidodendron (Giant Club-moss,
left ) fossil, an impression of its scaly bark so immaculately preserved
that it looks like something mechanical – like a freshly made tyre track,
suggested Phil (top left) of the NYGT.
After the meeting we set off for a stroll around the centre of Leeds, looking
at building stones including some Jurassic limestone polished paving slabs in
a newish shopping centre off the Headrow where you can see hundreds of fossils
of ammonites, belemnites and the occasional coral.
I sketched the landscape from the train on the way back to Wakefield. As you
can see, it's possible to squeeze a quick watercolour into a 15 minute journey.