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Wednesday, 19 October 2022

The Midlands erratic hunt




Thanks to Richard for drawing my attention to this: 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/19/rock-project-missing-midlands-birmingham-boulders

See also this post from a few years ago:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2016/10/erratic-behaviour-in-midlands.html

It's all a bit of fun, of course, but it's nonetheless pleasing to see "Heritage of the Ice Age" being flagged up by Bromsgrove and Birmingham heritage organisations -- and accorded a cultural "value".  There are going to be seven erratic walking trails, which is great news.

I'm not sure who decided that these boulders were dumped 450,000 years ago,  in the light of the most recent evidence, but we'll let that pass......

Anyway, good for the University of Worcester and the National Lottery Heritage Fund for funding this project, and good for the Guardian, the BBC and other media for publicising it.

I think we should now have another "erratic walking trail" at Stonehenge.  It's quite a short walk, around the bluestone circle, or what's left of it.  Perhaps the National Lottery will also fund an erratic search across Salisbury Plain for all of the 40 or so bluestone erratics that have supposedly gone missing?



This is the dedicated web site:


See also:





An 1890 map of the erratic boulders:


Known Welsh erratic boulders in the region:


This is a very useful summary of the geological context:

http://geologymatters.org.uk/2012/02/16/erratic-ice-of-the-black-country/

Update:

I have been making enquiries about the cosmogenic dating of some of the erratics, and I thank Prof Ian Fairchild for reminding me of the work of Seb Gibson and others.  I mentioned the new Midlands work here:
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/09/more-on-wolstonian.html

There are actually 6 cosmogenic dates already, and I'll cover those in a separate post.


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3 comments:

  1. Tony Hinchliffe20 October 2022 at 10:58

    We need the National Lottery or somebody to foot the bill for COSMOGENIC RESEARCH into how long the so - called 1924 Newall erratic boulder, excavated then at Stonehenge itself, has been exposed to the atmosphere. Brian and I examined and photographed this small glacial erratic bullet - shaped " clast" at Salisburry Museum in June this year, see the Posts on this Blog.

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  2. BRIAN JOHN20 October 2022 at 11:38

    These Midlands boulders also need to be cosmo dated -- there should be some cash in the kitty for that. We need to know which glaciation was responsible for carrying these rocks from N Wales (or wherever)........

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  3. BRIAN JOHN21 October 2022 at 12:51

    Correction -- six of them have been dated. Interesting results, pointing to a Wolstonian glacial episode that was quite extensive -- in which the ice pushed well south, towards Moreton in Marsh. See my later post.

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