Mnemonics

To promote a wider interest in the science of geology through organised lectures, field excursions and social activities.
To provide a link between the amateur, the student, the teacher and the professional geologist.
To foster interest in geological sites within the area with a view to their study and wise conservation.
To establish and maintain good relations with organisations that have common interests.

I think I want one to remind me how to spell it! This is the first of some occasional pieces ( i.e. when Graeme needs a filler), on those aids to memory which I hope are as necessary to you as they are to me. If you have a particularly good one please confide it in me and I shall be pleased to tell everyone for you!
I am beginning with that old chestnut which relates the succession through the Palaeozoic and the Mesozoic with dromedary and Bactrian ships of the desert, but have also cudgelled my brains to think of something via the epochs of the Tertiary and Quaternary to take us up to the present day – well not to (month, year etc.)!

Evidently they the

Camels Ordinarily Sit Down Carefully. Perhaps Their Joints Creak.

- Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous.
I particularly like ‘creak’. It combines the ‘C’ for Cretaceous with the ‘K’ we use for denoting the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary. Now for the extra bit:-

Pachyderms Even, Often Missed Pounding Pleasant Hollows.

- Palaeocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene, Holocene.

We shan’t be able to resolve this particular mystery as to whether they suffered rheumatism or some other condition until a few more million years have passed!

Well – that’s my effort. Can we have some interaction from our audience out there? As the Treasurer I have taken the executive decision, which the committee is only just hearing about, to give a free wine and cheese to the best offering in place of mine for the Tertiary/Quaternary succession. Judge’s decision etc, etc.