Saturday 3rd March 2012.

A piece of the Cambrian deep seafloor

Leader: Dr. Peter Haughton (UCD)

Meet at the beach-level car park close to the old Bray Head Hotel at the south end of the esplanade at 10am.  The trip will involve relatively easy walking (4-5 km in total) along the Bray to Greystones coastal footpath (with a little scrambling off-piste for those who are up for it!). We expect to return to Bray at about 4.30 pm. Bring lunch!

Bray was the location of the first IGA field trip 50 years ago. The Cambrian rocks on Bray Head are some of the oldest in the Dublin area and were once thought to contain evidence for the oldest life on Earth. They formed on unstable deep-water slopes on the margin between the Gondwana continent and the opening Iapetus Ocean.  At the time of the first IGA visit, understanding of deep-water processes was in its infancy.  Since then, deep-sea drilling, improved seabed imaging and experiments in large tanks have greatly improved our understanding of sediment deposition in ocean margin settings. The trip will review some of these new insights in the context of the geology of the Bray Group, as well as considering the post-depositional evolution of these rocks and the modern coastal geomorphology.

Leader Biography:

Peter is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin (1981). After a year working in mineral exploration in the Irish Midlands, he took up a University of Glasgow Overseas Scholarship and obtained a PhD in 1986 for work on Old Red Sandstone conglomerates in the NE Midland Valley of Scotland. Subsequently he was appointed as a Britoil Research Fellow (1985-1988) and then a Royal Society of Edinburgh/BP Research Fellow (1988-1991), both at the University of Glasgow. From 1991 to 1996, he worked as a consultant in the oil industry, before returning to Dublin in 1996 to take up a lectureship at UCD. Peter was Editor-in-Chief of the journalSedimentology from 2002-2006.   REGISTRATION: It is necessary to pre-register with excursions secretary Dan O’Shea by email, excursions@geology.ie  before Friday 2nd March at 5pm. Time:       10am-4.30pm Meet at:  Bray Head Hotel Car Park (On the waterfront beside the amusement arcade at the south end of the esplanade.)