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Howells, M. F. British Regional Geology: Wales.

British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham, UK, 2007. 230 pp. Price: £18. ISBN: 978-0-85272-584-9.

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

As the foreword to this edition in the British Regional Geology series points out, Wales punches well above its weight in terms of the influence on the science of geology in relation to its small area. Some of the periods in the geological column were defined in Wales in the 19^th and early 20^th century. Understanding of the complex geology of Wales and the Welsh Borderland led to the establishment of the Cambrian and Silurian systems by Adam Sedwick (1835) and Roderick Murchison (1839), respectively. Later, Charles Lapworth (1879) defined the Ordovician system to consist of rocks that had previously been assigned to either the Cambrian or Silurian by Sedwick or Lapworth, and which ever since had been a topic of considerable controversy.

Some of the earliest mapping by the Geological Survey took place in South Wales. There were seminal works on the volcanic rocks of north Wales by Harker (1889), and on the evolution of the sedimentary sequences in central Wales in an evolving ‘geosyncline’ by Jones (1938). One of the earliest palaeogeographical reconstructions led to identification of an ancient Ordovician shoreline in the Builth Wells . . . [Full Text of this Article]