Annual report 2011 of the Regional Committee on Northern Paleogene Stratigraphy

The RCNNS/RCNPS encountered problems finding a venue for the bi-annual meeting. As a result the group joined the RCMNS-RCANS Interin Colloquium 21-23th of September in Salamanca, Spain. We announced our own session for the Paleogene, and assumed that the Neogene presentations would fit into the 5 other sessions that covered many aspects of Neogene stratigraphy. However, no presentations were entered for the Paleogene, so the session was cancelled again. Only five (5) persons from the previous meetings were present, and 3 presentations were given. In light of the problems finding a host for the meetings and the ever decreasing number of participants, it has been decided (in dialogue with Noël Vandenberghe, Vice-chair of the ISPS) to let RCNNS/RCNPS "rest" until renewed interest will take up the committee work again. A mail was send out to all participants of previous meetings but none came forward to take over as Chair. I hereby resign as Chair.

Report by Gitte V. Laursen (Chairwoman and secretary in RCNNS/RCNPS)

Annual report 2009-2010 of the Regional Committee on Northern Paleogene Stratigraphy

The committee held one meeting this year, in Fribourg Switzerland. The meeting was quite successful and it shows that the stratigraphic community of Northern Europe is still active, trying to combine the different stratigraphic methods and correlate to/from other basins as well. The 11th joint Meeting of RCNPS/RCNNS in 2009 was held in the city of Fribourg, situated in the Molasse Basin in Switzerland from Thursday, August 27 till Saturday, August 29. The number of attendants were 31. The lectures and posters represented a broad spectre of stratigraphy from the Northern Hemisphere, ranging from problems when creating a new lithostratigraphic chart for the Paleogene and Neogene of Switzerland; overview of the molasse of W.-Switzerland an E.-France; the possible identification of early Eocene hyperthermals in the Corbières in SW France by means of Foraminifera and Ostracoda; construction of a new database of Tertiary index fossils for the Mainz Basin; incursions of Nummulites in the Belgian Ypresian to Early Lutetian; orbital forcing that can be recognised in the marly parts of the Oligocene Boom Clay of Belgium;  Iran, where micropaleontology is being used to solve the age of the Asmari Formation (Chattian/Aquitanian), calibrated with Sr87/Sr86 dating; Mammalia stratigraphy represented by relatives of Tapirs from the Swiss Molasse Basin, and by the Ruminantia, which shows several changes during the Oligocene and at the transition Oligocene-Miocene. All posters were briefly presented as powerpoint/pdf in the lecture room, so that discussion at the posters them selves flowed freely in the coffee breaks. This meeting, although the group was small, was very successful. There was a good exchange of opinions in a very relaxed atmosphere, and, although it did not concern the North Sea Basin strictly speaking, this is a region, which is important in the understanding of possible connections to other parts, together with the effects of the Alpine orogeny. It was decided to continue the work of the Regional Committee, and a process for finding a venue for the next meeting in 2011 has started.

Gitte V. Laursen & Rui da Gama (Chairman and secretary in RCNNS/RCNPS)

Annual report 2008 of the Regional Committee on Northern Paleogene Stratigraphy

One scientific meeting was held in 2008, by the German contingent of the committee: The Cenozoic Geisental from a palynostratigraphic view.Workshop, Friday, d. 09. May, 2008. The workshop was held by the Landesamt für Geologie und Bergbau Sachsen-Anhalts and the German Sub-commission of Cenozoic stratigraphy. The meeting was held in connection with the 80 Birthday of Prof. Dr. W. Krutzsch. This year was used to start the preparations for the 2009 meeting, which will be held at the Department of Geosciences–Geology, at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland in September 2009. The convener will be Jean-Pierre Berger.

Gitte V. Laursen & Rui da Gama (Chairman and secretary in RCNNS/RCNPS)



Annual report 2007 of the Regional Committee on Northern Paleogene Stratigraphy

The RCNNS/RCNPS September 2007 joint meeting was held in Krakow Poland at the Geological Institute of the academy of Sciences. The city of Krakow impressed the participants with its architecture, culture and people.
A wide range of people from different nationalities and scientific background were able to attend and made this a very successful meeting. From these it is important to highlight the participation of students who presented their concluded and ongoing work. It is also important to refer the presence of oil industry professionals who have brought different perspectives to the scientific discussions and who provided after sessions career discussions with the students.
During this meeting we Rui da Gama was elected as the new secretary of the RCNNS/RCNPS who replaces Jost Verbeek after over 22 years of duty. Ideas on how to maintain future RCNNS/RCNPS meetings were also discussed.
Due to the excellent quality of the presentations and the relatively high number of participants at the Krakow meeting it was unanimous the decision to ask Prof. Dr. Jean-Pierre Berger to host the next RCNNS/RCNPS joint meeting in Fribourg, Switzerland. It has been accepted and we are looking forward to having a great meeting in 2009.

Gitte V. Laursen & Rui da Gama (Chairman and secretary in RCNNS/RCNPS)

Annual report 2006 of the Regional Committee on Northern Paleogene Stratigraphy

No scientific meetings were held in 2006. This year was used to start the preparations for the 2007 meeting, which will be held at the Institute of Geological Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow. The conveners are Michael A. Kaminski and Przemyslaw Gedl.
The tentative program includes a first day, that will be a scientific session (eg. Neogene), followed by a field trip to the Wieliczka Salt Mine and some other Neogene localities on the second day. The third day can be the Paleogene session, followed by a field excursion to see Paleogene in the Carpathians (including petroleum Geology). This way the cost of the excursion can be factored into the participation fee.

Report by J. W. Verbeek, Secretary.

Annual report 2005 of the Regional Committee on Northern Paleogene Stratigraphy

As main topic for the year 2005, the biannual meeting in cooperation with RCNNS was planned for the first week of September. Unfortunately only 13 participants subscribed for the meeting. For a number of reasons, some of the members, who always take part in the bi-annual meetings were unable to attend this time. Hopefully the next meeting (preliminary plans is to hold it in Poland, but contact person has not yet reacted to the inquiry) in two years time will be a success as we are used to.

Still there have been a number of activities mainly organised by personal initiatives of one or more members. Most important was the Workshop „The East German Tertiary” organized together with the German Stratigraphic Sub-commission for the Tertiary and the Regional Committee on Northern Neogene Stratigraphy (RCNNS) from the 6th to the 08th of September in Spandau (near Berlin) by dr. Juliane Fenner of the BGR.

Topic of this well attended (23 participants) and lively workshop was the discussion of correlation methods in the Tertiary of East-Germany (Sachsen-Anhalt, NW-Sachsen, NE-Thüringen, S-Brandenburg) between bio-and lithostratigraphers.

The main part of the workshop was arranged around the presentation by W. Krutzsch of new results obtained from developing further the palynological correlation method. These results obtained during the past 10 years are soon ready to be published.

His presentation was flanked by a sequence stratigraphic interpretation of the East German Tertiary by H. Blumenstengel and lithologic remarks by G. Standke.

In the late afternoon the discussion, of where lithostratigraphy resulted in wrong correlation of coal beds and where future studies are necessary to solve open questions, was continued while the huge stratigraphic collections of the Prussian Geological Survey and its successor organisations were visited. These collections (stratigraphy/micropaleontology ca. 290.000 samples, palynology ca. 230.000, microzoology: ca. 400.000, reference collection: ca.35.000 samples) now have found an adequate home in the architecturally attractive, well suited and spacious brickstone buildings erected 1878 for the 3rd Brandenburg Train-Battalion. The extensive micropalaeontological collections, which were built up by the micropalaeontologists, who dated the sediments from the “Reichsbohrprogramm” and the many boreholes drilled during DDR times, are also housed here. The palynological collection of W. Krutzsch (slides, lists for each borehole with counts of species in the samples analysed, photos of taxa present) is part of this collection. The history and the possibilities of this stratigraphic collection, in which many boreholes are documented by reference samples (original sediment as well as microfossil concentrations and specific fossil collections from those samples), was outlined by J. Fenner and W. Krutzsch.

On October 8th two open-pits of mining Middle Miocene brown coal (Seese –East and Klettwitz-Nord) were visited, in both of which flooding has started as part of the recultivation program affecting now the whole region and destroying geological outcrops.

At Gram in Denmark a profile was collected from the upper part of the Gram Formation in Mai and a hand drilling of ca 4 metres continuing the profile down into the clay pit was made in September. The plan is to analyse the samples for forams, heavy minerals and molluscs.

Report by J. W. Verbeek, Secretary.

Annual Report 2004 of the Regional Committee in North-European Paleogene Stratigraphy

In the year 2003 a successful Bianual Meeting of RCNPS in cooperation with RCNNS was organized in Mainz. In 2005 the next Bianual Meeting will be organized in the Greenwich University (UK).  The year 2004 was an intermediate year between those two meetings without activities.

Report by J. W. Verbeek, Secretary.