Petrology Collections

The Sedgwick Museum’s Petrology Collections comprise over half a million hand specimens and microscope slides of igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rock, which are available for scientific research.

 

A picture of our collections store which houses, the Museum's petrology collection.

Petrology Collections Overview 

The collections can be summarised as follows: 

Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology (Harker) Collection 

Sedimentary Petrology Collection 

Svalbard Collection 

Additional material (undocumented thesis collections, field collections and transferred university collections). 

The petrology collection grew out of the work of Adam Sedgwick and his predecessors, and originally included igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks.  In 1931 the majority of the igneous and metamorphic rocks were transferred to the new Department of Mineralogy and Petrology, the majority of sedimentary rocks being retained by the Department of Geology (Sedgwick Museum). The Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology Collection was returned to the Sedgwick Museum in 1980 with the formation of the Department of Earth Sciences and Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences. Since the 1980s the Museum has also acquired the collections of universities who have closed their geological departments, the most notable being Luton and Sheffield. The collection continues to grow through the effort of researchers working today

Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology (Harker) Collection

The Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology Collection mostly consists of the accumulated field collections of researchers working at the University of Cambridge and other institutions. As well as a resource for current research, it contains historically important sample sets charting the development of geology and petrology as scientific disciplines over the past 200 years.  

The collection contains about 160,000 hand specimens and 250,000 thin sections, about 25% of which have been referenced in the international scientific literature. It has global coverage; most major igneous and metamorphic provinces are represented. Its notable strengths are Great Britain and Ireland; the former British Colonies (in particular, Australia, New Zealand, India, and African countries); North America; Central Europe and the Mediterranean; as well as Greenland and Antarctica. 

Important subsets of the collection include: 

Beagle Collection 

Some 4000 rock and soil samples, mainly from South America, collected by Charles Darwin during the 1831-1836 voyage of HMS Beagle (animal specimens from the Beagle voyage may be seen at the Cambridge Museum of Zoology, and the University Herbarium has many of his plants). An important collection for the history of science, illustrating the development of Charles Darwin as a naturalist and early 19th Century exploration and collecting practices. 

Scottish material 

A comprehensive collection from the type areas of Barrovian and Buchan metamorphism in Northeast Scotland and from the Tertiary igneous centres of Western Scotland, by workers such as George Barrow, Alfred Harker, C.E. Tilley, and others. 

Polar material 

The Museum holds a large collection of material collected from various expeditions to polar regions. The earliest collected material is a piece of ultramafic rock collected during Martin Frobisher’s 3rd Northwest passage voyage of 1578. Other Northern hemisphere material includes that collected during the British Naval Northwest Passage Expedition of 1824-1825. Southern hemisphere material includes material collected during whaling expeditions and the various British Antarctic Expeditions including Scott’s Terra Nova expedition of 1910-1913.  

Skaergaard igneous intrusion material 

Thin sections and accompanying rock chips collected during the 1935–1936 British East Greenland Expedition, related to the pioneering work of Lawrence Wager and William Alexander Deer on the Skaergaard Intrusion, East Greenland. The collection also includes two long drill cores sampling the intrusion, collected during the 1966 British Greenland Geological Expedition. 

Shabani Core 

Drill core sampling a suite of uniquely fresh Archaean age komatiites from the Belingwe Greenstone Belt, Zimbabwe. 

Mantle Xenoliths 

Several hundred specimens, mainly from South Africa, collected by researchers Barry Dawson, Bret Harte, Dan McKenzie, and others.

Sedimentary Petrology Collection

The Sedimentary Petrology Collection contains an estimated 32,000 hand specimens and core samples. It includes specimens collected by John Stevens Henslow, Adam Sedgwick, Rev. John Hailstone, and R.H. Rastall. In addition, there is a large amount of bore core material used for palynological analysis by N.F. Hughes, and from the Cambridge experimental borehole made by W.B.R. King c. 1951.  

The Sedgwick Museum Stratigraphy Collection of thin sections (about 3,500 specimens) has been cut from many of the specimens in this collection.

Svalbard Collection 

Some 60,000 specimens collected between 1938 to 1993 under the direction of Brian Harland, resulting in a Geological Society Memoir (Harland, W.B. 1998. The geology of Svalbard). 

 

For further enquiries about this collection, please email museumcollections@esc.cam.ac.uk.