Day excursions

No formal technical sessions are scheduled for Wednesday, July 19. Instead a day-long field-excursion and a visit to the collections of the NHM have been arranged. It may also be possible to provide bench space and microscopes for informal specimen based discussion, should there be demand for this (contact the organisers - ICOS2006@leicester.ac.uk).

Short Field Excursion: Lower Carboniferous, North Staffordshire.

Leaders: Patrick Cossey (University of Staffordshire) and Mark Purnell. This trip will visit two or three localities which expose Lower Carboniferous sections on the margins of the beautiful Peak District National Park. Localities to be visited will include Brown End Quarry, of early Visean age, and Cauldon Railway Cutting, of Serpukhovian age. Both localities yield some rich conodont faunas; the Cauldon fauna (which also includes abundant micro-remains of other vertebrates) was reported in Higgins (1975, Conodont zonation of the Late Visean-early Westphalian strata of the south and central Pennines of northern England. Bull. Geol. Surv. of Great Britain, 53, 1-90). There may also be opportunities to visit nearby Dovedale and the fantastic Yew Tee Inn.
Maximum 50 people, minimum 20.
Cost £20.00 including lunch.

Day trip to the Natural History Museum, London.

Leader: Giles Miller. Visit one of the world's best known museums; an opportunity to go behind the scenes and examine conodont collections, including material deposited by Hinde, Higgins and large collections donated by Austin. For more information go to: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/conodonts/.
Maximum 40 people, minimum 19.
A maximum of six people can examine collections at any one time, so if you wish to examine conodont material you must let Giles Miller know what you would like to look at well in advance of the trip (email: g.miller@nhm.ac.uk)
Cost: £25.00 including lunch.

Provisional itinerary
Morning: travel by coach to Natural History Museum; arrive 10.30 approx. Split into small groups to tour micropalaeontology section.
Lunch (cold, buffet style)
Afternoon: free for visiting museum. The excursion also includes a ticket to Dino-Jaws, a visiting exhibit on Dinosaur feeding. Leave museum at 3.30 approx. returning to Leicester by coach in time for dinner in halls.

Workshop 1 Conodont Bodies and Skeletons

An opportunity to examine and discuss specimens preserving conodont soft tissues and articulated skeletons, including much of the best material from around the world.

Excursions

Excursion 1: The Carboniferous of Ireland

July 12 - 16 (pre-meeting)
Leader: George Sevastopulo
Estimated cost: Euro 200 (not including accommodation, food, Guiness etc.)
Maximum 30 people, minimum 7
Booking deadline, May 31

This field trip will focus on Mississippian (Carboniferous) rocks of the Dublin Basin and Hook Head, County Wexford. The Dublin Basin provides sections (mainly coastal) of the late Tournaisian (in a shelf/ramp setting) and all of the Visean (in both basinal and shelf settings). The basin/shelf margin is preserved and the sedimentology of both shelf and basinal carbonates (and less abundant siliciclastics) is exciting. Conodonts occur at many horizons together with foraminiferans and macrofossils. Current research activity includes identification of the Tournaisian/Visean boundary in both shelf and basinal settings. Hook Head provides a spectacular section from early Tournaisian redbeds and shallow marine carbonates and siliciclastics through progressively deeper water limestones and shales (youngest part of the Polygnathus communis carina Zone in the highest preserved beds). Conodonts from Hook Head were described by Johnston and Higgins (1981; Conodont faunas from the Lower Carboniferous rocks at Hook Head, County Wexford, Journal of Earth Sciences of the Royal Dublin Society, 4, 83-96).

Outline Itinerary
Wednesday July 12: Arrive in Dublin. Tour of Trinity College and visit to the Book of Kells for those arriving by early afternoon. Introduction to the trip in the evening.
Thursday July 13: Hook Head. Drive to Hook Head (ca. 3 hour drive). Examine Tournaisian section. Lunch at and tour of the lighthouse (see http://homepage.tinet.ie/~earrings/hook-head.html for some touristic images). More Geology. Return to Dublin.
Friday July 14 - Saturday July 15: Dublin Basin. Drive to sections in north County Dublin including Tournaisian at Malahide and Waulsortian limestone at Feltrim, late Tournaisian - late Visean shelf succession south of Skerries, Visean basinal succession between Rush and Popeshall. Opportunity to examine substantial collections of Carboniferous conodonts from Ireland and also to drink some Guinness in the evenings.
Sunday July 16: Travel to Leicester (most convenient and cheapest flight is with Ryanair to East Midlands Airport).

Accommodation
Participants will need to book their own accommodation. Below is a list of recommended accommodations, provided in rough order of cost. Trinity College Dublin rooms are available on the campus; anyone who does not want luxury should book these, but those interested should book early. The alternative TCD accommodations are out of the centre but close to the Tuas (tram) service.

Hostels:

Hotels:

TCD Student rooms

Trinity College student rooms, may be on or off campus
www.tcd.ie/accommodation

Excursion 2: Iapetus - from coast to coast

July 22 - 27
Leaders: Howard Armstrong, Rob Raine & Paul Smith
Provisional Cost: £550
Maximum 30 people
Booking deadline, May 31
Cost includes coach travel, accommodation, food, and field guide. Participants are responsible for ensuring that they are insured under their own travel insurance policy. Some financial support support for students wishing to participate on this trip may be available.
This fieldtrip will take the form of a transect across the Caledonide mountain belt of Scotland and northern England or, in palinspastic terms, a coastline to coastline traverse across Iapetus.

The trip will commence by looking at the Ordovician-Silurian succession in the Lake District, including an examination of the Ashgill in its type area. We will then cross the Scotland-England border, marking the leap from Avalonian to Laurentian crust, with the next stops at deep water Ordovician localities in the Southern Uplands, where current controversies over the tectonic interpretation of the Southern Uplands and Midland Valley terranes will be discussed. Crossing the Midland Valley of Scotland, the Neoproterozoic Dalradian Supergroup will be traversed from the Highland Boundary Fault, where obducted Ordovician ocean floor and islands with shallow water Laurentian conodont faunas can be seen at Dounans, north to the Great Glen fault and Loch Ness. We will then continue northward across the Moine thrust belt, where Neoproterozoic metasediments are thrust over the Laurentian foreland, to end the trip on the shoreline of Laurentia at the classic Cambro-Ordovician sections in Durness. In addition to providing the opportunity to sample conodont localities described by Higgins, Bergström, Ethington, Lindström, Armstrong and Orchard, the trip will also consider the history of geological exploration in this region, together with current interpretations and controversies regarding the margins of Iapetus, its constituent terranes and the final closure of the ocean in the Silurian.

The trip will traverse some of the most scenic parts of northern England and Scotland, and the majority of localities will be close to the road. Numbers will be limited to 25-30 participants and accommodation will be in a mixture of hotels and guest houses.
Come fishing across the Iapetus Ocean...

Outline itinerary
Friday July 21 (late afternoon), depart Leicester by coach, drive to Lake District, arrive at hotel around 9.00 pm
Saturday July 22, Lake District
Sunday July 23, Southern Uplands
Monday July 24, Dounans
Tuesday July 25, Loch Assynt roadside section. Stronchrubie cliff and Knockan Crag.
Wednesday July 26, Balnakeil Bay section, Durness. An t'Sron and Loch Eriboll. Drive to Inchnadamph. Drive to Edinburgh (participants who wish to fly from Inverness can be dropped-off, but they must make their own flight bookings; similarly, participants can be left in Edinburgh to make their own onward travel arrangements should they so wish).
Thursday July 27, return by coach to Leicester for those not left behind. Arrive Leicester afternoon or early evening.