Embedded Files
‘Restoring Ghost Pingos’
A new advisory booklet for land owners and managers about how to go about restoring the biodiversity value of backfilled periglacial ponds. Partnership work by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, the Norfolk Ponds Project and the NGP has resulted in some very interesting outcomes, increasing our knowledge of periglacial pond sediments and associated prehistoric archaeology, and the regeneration potential of biodiversity from these sediments, including rare plant species.
Download a copy of the leaflet here.
More info about the Norfolk Wildlife Trust's work on this project here.
Alfred Savin and the Fossil Collectors of Cromer
The Friends of Cromer Museum have been awarded a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant to work with the Norfolk Museums Service ( Cromer Museum) to digitise the historic collections of Alfred Savin (1860-1948) and Anna Gurney (1795-1857) and contemporary collectors.
An excerpt from the database is shown left, featuring the carnassial tooth of an extinct species of Wild Dog Canis (Xenocyon) lycaonoides collected by Jon Stewart..
The NGP has been making advisory input on the stratigraphy of specimens.
You can access the database here.
Further work on the geoarchaeology of 'ghost pingos'
Partnership work has continued this year with the Norfolk Ponds Project and researchers from UCL and Leiden on excavating 'ghost pingos' as part of biodiversity enhancement work at East Harling. NGP members have been involved in recording sediments and collecting molluscan and other samples from two excavated pond sites.
These sites are conventionally termed pingos but we find there is increasing evidence of the role of chalk solution in their formation during periglacial times. According to the farmer, the pond infill happened in the later 20th century as part of land reclamation work. The sequence of pond mud overlying the periglaciated chalk basement was compacted, and we found evidence that some of its upper layers may have been removed for peat extraction. Thus the lowermost layers of mud may be many thousands of years old. Samples have been taken for pollen analysis by Leiden University, and are likely to shed light on the evolution of the ponded depressions.
Our work has been publicised in an excellent article by Patrick Barkham in an edition of The Guardian (2-9-2025).
'Conserving Norfolk's Earth Heritage'
An overview of Earth Heritage conservation in Norfolk has been published as the Presidential Address by Tim Holt-Wilson (2023) in the latest edition of the Transactions of the Norfolk & Norwich Naturalists' Society (Vol.57, part 1, 2024, pp1-13).
A Brief Account of our Achievements, 2008-2025
The NGP has extended the range of its activities over the past 17 years, including advisory, outreach and geoconservation work. see below for a summary.
A_Brief_Account_of_NGP_Achievements_2008-2025.pdfGoogle Sites
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