Dear all,

Please find below a report on the BIGG meeting that was held last weekend.

The next meeting will be in September, and will be organised by James
Wilkinson. He will be sending round more details in the near future. The
meeting will be a joint one with the Ludlow Research Group.

Best wishes,

Lucy

-- 
Report on the BIGG meeting 9 and 10 May, 2015

10 a.m. to 12:30 pm: Business meeting, Commodore Hotel, Llandrindod Wells

Attending: Joseph Botting, Mike Howe, Lucy Muir, Keith Nicholls, James
Wilkinson.

Apologies from David Loydell, Paul Rosenbloom, Adrian Rushton, Margaret
Sudbury, Peter Warren, Jan Zalasiewicz

There were four talks: Keith Nicholls on a graptolite death assemblage
from Llyn Geirionydd; Joe Botting on the puzzling absence of graptolites
in the late Tremadocian of Wales and on a new Darriwilian–Sandbian
boundary section near Llandrindod; and Mike Howe gave an update on BGS
fossil scanning and databases.

There was a brief update on the graptolite atlas: nothing much has been
done on this project for a while, but Lucy and James both intend to work
on it before the next meeting.

It was decided that the next BIGG meeting will be a joint one with the
Ludlow Research Group. The joint meeting will be in September (date tbc)
and organised by James Wilkinson, who will be circulating further details.

On Saturday afternoon the group visited the geology display in the
Radnorshire Museum, Llandrindod Wells, and then moved on to Llanfawr
Quarries. These quarries were used to produce dolerite for building stone,
but there are exposures of mudstone around the edges of the dolerite
intrusions. The rocks are Ordovician (Sandbian, Nemagraptus gracilis
Biozone) black mudstones of the Llanfawr Mudstones Formation. We collected
graptolites, sponges, brachiopods, pieces of trilobite and a nice
assemblage of solitary hydroids.

On Sunday, Joe, Lucy and Mike visited Meeting House Quarry, The Pales,
Llandegley, near Llandrindod. The rocks are Silurian (Ludlow, scanicus
Biozone) Llanbadarn Formation siltstones containing abundant graptolites
and often inconspicuous echinoderms. We collected graptolites, crinoids
and ostracodes.