Do we have a submerged ‘Doggerland‘ in New Zealand? In 1950 a boat, the HMNZS ‘Lachlan’ dredged a sample of “lignite” from the bottom of Toitoi (or Toetoe) Bay, at the far south end of New Zealand’s South Island, from a depth of nine fathoms… Read more
What happens when you make the serious charge of Academic Misconduct at the University of Otago? I decided to find out. In 2015 a doctoral thesis was awarded to one Tammo Reichgelt, under the senior supervision of Associate Professor Daphne Lee of the University of… Read more
On March 21, 2011 I was sent to do a job in the far south-east of Turkey. Me and Erol, my indispensable helper, met the local contact, dined, and were then driven far into the hills. I only had the fuzziest of notions where I… Read more
The Gobi is the great desert that extends along southern Mongolia and northern China. Its northern extent is marked by a series of mountain ranges called the Gobi Altai (Altai means ‘golden’). The mountains appear desert-like, with usually nothing higher than small shrubs growing on them,… Read more
When I was a novice geology student, the world appeared kind of simple. Faced with a rock, I could ask myself the most fundamental question – is this rock sedimentary, metamorphic or igneous? And there was some sort of expectation that the question could be answered… Read more
We set up ‘camp’ at the base of Mongolia’s ‘White Doors’ — a gap in a massive outcrop of vertically-tilted limestone. ‘Camp’ was the three of us, our swags (roll-up beds we just placed on the ground and slept under the stars) and our big… Read more
When I was growing up in Central Otago (New Zealand) graywacke was a bane of my life, and certainly of my Dad’s too. The family lived on a section near the foot of an alluvial terrace dating back to glacial times. The loess soil was… Read more
Anyone who knows anything about New Zealand geology will know that it was once ‘part of Gondwana’. This is true, but how did it become a ‘part’? This is the origin of New Zealand in ‘deep time’. The question was addressed by researchers Li and… Read more