A new Geological Map of the Greater Himalayan Ranges; mountain building processes, Tuesday July 21st

a talk by Professor Mike Searle
Dept. Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Rd. and
Oxford University Natural History Museum, Parks, Rd. Oxford, UK.

A new geological map (scale: 1:1.5 M) of the Greater Himalayan Ranges has been compiled and will be published in two sheets. The Western Sheet includes the Pamir, Hindu Kush, Karakoram, Kohistan, Ladakh ranges, including SW Tibet, with the Nanga Parbat syntaxis, and the Pakistan and Indian Himalaya. It extends from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in the west to the India-Nepal border in the east. The Eastern Sheet includes the Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Arunachal Pradesh ranges, southeast Tibet, Namche Barwa syntaxis, the Shillong Plateau and northwest Myanmar (Burma) ranges. The map includes five cross-sections, and a detailed Key. Together with magmatic, metamorphic, thermobarometric, strain measurements, as well as geochronological and geophysical data, several key geological processes can be deduced from all these geological strands. These include the nature and timing of the India – Asia collision, crustal shortening and thickening processes across the Tethyan Himalaya, channel flow processes along the Greater Himalaya, Pliocene – Pleistocene high-temperature metamorphism and rapid exhumation – uplift rates in the Nanga Parbat syntaxis, and the distribution of earthquakes along the orogen.

21st July 2026

6.30 – 7.30 pm
Westwood Room, Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH)
All welcome – free to attend.
We would kindly ask for a voluntary donation of £3 or more (cash or card) to allow us to continue this lecture series. This will be gratefully received.

From the bog to the sea: the Mull Dyke Swarm, Tuesday 18th August

A talk by Joe Cartwright of OU Earth Sciences

Of the many hundreds of giant dyke swarms known from Earth, Venus and Mars, the Mull Dyke Swarm is arguably the best documented, and certainly the longest studied. At just over 650 km in length, the Mull Swarm is one of the longest on the planet, and its constituent dykes represent an extraordinary intruded volume of over 400 Km3.
Since the 1800s, a veritable honours board full of eminent geologists have studied the extraordinary story of how the dyke swarm was emplaced: Sedgwick,Teall, Bailey, Geikie, Peach, Tyrrell, Richey and Holmes all having literally put the Mull Swarm on the map.
In this talk, I hope to convey the incredible richness of the geological information obtained over many long field seasons in harsh conditions by these pioneers (and their mules!) and contrast that with the more recent armchair efforts of a small group of students equipped only with modest computers using data donated by the petroleum industry.

18th August 2026

6.30 – 7.30 pm
Westwood Room, Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH)
All welcome – free to attend.
We would kindly ask for a voluntary donation of £3 or more (cash or card) to allow us to continue this lecture series. This will be gratefully received.

Shipton-under-Wychwood village fair, Monday August 31st

Visit the Oxfordshire Geology Trust stall at the Village Fair

31st August 2026

New Beaconsfield Hall, Shipton-under-Wychwood,
All day