1. Pavement Palaeontology
Sometimes you don’t have to travel far from the city to see fossils! This tour, led by Julie Schroder of the Black Country Geology Society, will take delegates on a trail around Birmingham’s city centre to see the vast array of fossils hidden in iconic buildings and dotted across the pavements. Birmingham was one of the first British urban centres to undergo an industrial revolution, leading to many grand civic buildings, first in the Victorian Classical style and later embracing the Gothic Revival movement. Many of the buildings in the city centre are constructed from local building stones, including Penmon Marble, a Carboniferous limestone, and Portland Stone from the Late Jurassic. Stops on the tour will include the reef deposits of the Town Hall, the shallow marine fossils in the interiors of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and the echinoids on Colmore Row. Afterwards, we’ll retire to The Old Joint Stock for pies and other refreshments.
Participants: 25 max.
Duration: 2.5 hours
2. Lapworth Museum ‘behind the scenes’ tours
The Lapworth Museum of Geology is home to over 300,000 nationally and internationally important specimens, including the type specimen of the trilobite Calymene blumenbachii, British ichthyosaurs, numerous graptolite type specimens, and early tetrapod trackways. The museum’s director, Jon Clatworthy, will take groups on a ‘behind the scenes’ tour to see many of these specimens along with other geological and biological specimens.
Participants: Groups of 10 max.
Duration: 1–1.5 hours