About the event

Joe Cartwright
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford

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, Joe Cartwright will 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.

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