Swedish Geological Spring Meeting 2025
by Erik Sturkell
The annual meeting for the Geological Society 2025 in Skövde
On Friday the 9th of May, the Geological Society had its annual meeting. In the afternoon, after the meeting, we had a mini conference about geo-learning, including university didactics, outreach, and more. At the end of the day, the Geological Society Award for public outreach was given to Anders Rapp. Before the conference dinner I withdrew to my hotel across the street at Hotel Billingen. During the conference other participants joined, among others old colleagues from Stockholm.
The following day, we took part in an excursion to parts of the table mountain area (Platåbergens geopark); the Middle Swedish end-moraine zone and the drainage of the Baltic Ice Lake and the geology of Kinnekulle. We started at 8 o’clock from Skövde and travelled to the northern part of Billingen. This part of the excursion was led by Mark Johnson and Christian Öhrling. The only Quaternary stop was in Garparör about 12 km north of Skövde. At this stop we saw a shoreline deposit which is now interpreted as deposits in a tunnel. From this locality we travelled west by bus. We could see end moraines, dead ice pits, eskers and plenty of other ice age deposits. The bus took us to the western side of Kinnekulle and with our three guides, Jenny Andersson, Axel Sjöqvist, and Adrian Gyllingberg we got a fantastic guided tour! The first stop was at Råbäcks harbour with the sub-Cambrian peneplane, the Cambrian conglomerate, and the lowest sandstone member the Mickwitzia Sandstone. Next stop was at the large quarry in Hällekis. It comprises most of the lower and the middle Ordovician. The quarry was active until 1979 and most of the material was used for cement production. In the Hällekis quarry a conspicuous grey layer stick out from the red succession on mid- Ordovician limestone. This is the so called “täljsten layer” which is a stone worker term. This limestone has good qualities for construction. The final stop was at the top of Kinnekulle. The succession terminates in the lower Silurian with a shale, followed by a diabase which intruded as a sill in Permian time. Most of the table mountains in the area are terminated by a diabase that intruded at different stratigraphical levels (Cambrian – Silurian). The contact is often obscured so it was necessary to dig to expose it. It is called the Andrées pit and it was dug (blasted) in 1895.
Thank you for a good meeting, excursion, and a fantastic excursion guided tour!
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