The Maryland Geological Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to the collection, study, and display of all aspects of the geological sciences. Members include amateur and professional fossil and mineral collectors. Membership is open to all.

The club meets at the Community Center in Bowie, Maryland, usually on the third Sunday of every other month, beginning in March. Please check the club calendar. Visitors are always welcome!

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Latest Club and Related News

Status of Meetings

In the July issue of the Maryland Geological Society's newsletter, The Rostrum, MGS President Rick Smith described the circumstances under which the club's July meeting was canceled. He indicated that he would update members on the status of the September meeting as its scheduled date approaches. If in-person meetings cannot be held at all this year, Rick wrote that a Zoom virtual meeting might be considered.

The Rostrum

The July issue of The Rostrum was emailed to MGS members on July 29, 2020.

Natural History Society of Maryland's August Raffle - Fossils!!

The Natural History Society of Maryland's fund-raising raffle for August features a beautiful array of Chesapeake Bay-area fossils, including a 3.5 inch meg! Raffle tickets are $5 each (a maximum of 2,000 will be sold). Visit the NHSM website to see all of these fossils with identifications and to purchase tickets. The winner will also win a lifetime membership in the NHSM (a $750 value).

Featured Mineral

The "Featured Mineral" is native copper which is copper that, for the most part, is not chemically bonded to other elements. This mineral is the subject of a column by MGS member Bob Farrar that appears in the July issue of The Rostrum. Bob's article describes the properties of native copper and delineates the many different ways in which it occurs. As he recounts, mining native copper is challenging. Historically, in Michigan, which has the largest deposits (in excess of five million tons of it was mined), the mineral was extracted by being hand chiseled out of the rock in which it was found.

Pictured below is a very small specimen of native copper from the Bisbee area of Arizona. (This image is reproduced with permission of Rob Lavinsky under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, and is available from Wikimedia Commons.)

Next Meeting

To be announced

Tour the Smithsonian's Dinosaur Hall from Home

At the moment, we no longer have access to the wonderful Fossil Hall - Deep Time at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.


All of the marvels of the Fossil Hall are waiting patiently for us to visit once this crisis has passed. But you can enjoy these marvels on one of virtual tours the Museum of Natural History has made available here. The Fossil Hall tour is part of the "permanent exhibits."

Smithsonian Publication about the Calvert Cliffs

The Geology and Vertebrate Paleontology of the Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, edited by Stephen J. Godfrey, offers detailed descriptions and stunning pictures of vertebrate fossils from the Cliffs. A PDF copy of the book is available here.

WebSightings

Want to keep up with some of the latest information on fossils and minerals appearing on the web? Then check out the MGS WebSightings page.

The Maryland Geological Society is a member of the Eastern Federation of Mineralogical and Lapidary Societies and the American Federation of Mineralogical Societies.

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