SUMMARY The lithostratigraphy of the Staithes Sandstone and Cleveland Ironstone formations in North Yorkshire and Cleveland is reviewed and redefined; two new subdivisions, the Penny Nab and Kettleness members, are proposed for the Cleveland Ironstone Formation. Both formations and members are recognisable throughout the Cleveland Basin, but only the Kettleness Member continues southwards over the Market Weighton High, where it undergoes lateral facies change into the Marlstone Rock Bed. The latter, together with a finer grained representative of the Staithes Sandstone Formation, can be tentatively identified in the southern North Sea area.

Ichnofossils from a Lower Mississippian (Tournaisian) coastal plain succession with a rich vertebrate fauna, including early tetrapods, record repeated, short-lived marine interactions that influenced floodplain lake development and ecosystems. The ichnofauna contrasts with the more typical Scoyenia Ichnofacies of other Devonian-Carboniferous tetrapod sites. In the Tournaisian Ballagan Formation of the Scottish Borders, Chondrites is identified in 128 horizons within a 500-m succession and is associated with lesser occurrences of phycosiphoniform burrows, Diplocraterion, Rhizocorallium and Zoophycos?. Chondrites and phycosiphoniform burrows commonly occur within dolostones, interpreted as part of a saline-hypersaline lake facies association, containing a non-marine to marginal marine macrofauna of bivalves, ostracods, Spirorbis, Serpula and sarcopterygian fish. Marine scolecodonts are reported from 18 horizons of diverse lithology, four of which co-occur with Chondrites. The single-colonisation, single-tier, high ichnofabric index and thin beds (mean 10 cm thick) that characterise Chondrites horizons indicate: 1) adverse Tournaisian coastal floodplain ichnofauna Bennett et al. 2016 2 environmental conditions; 2) rapid colonisation of the sediment; and 3) short-lived bioturbation episodes.Other ichnotaxa identified are Monocraterion and Asterosoma?, which occur exclusively within the overbank or fluvial facies associations, and are here interpreted to have lived in freshwater conditions. The Chondrites trace-makers are interpreted as having originated in shallow-marine waters and were transported into floodplain lakes by storm surge events, although a few examples suggest more significant transgressions. Ichnofossils are much more common than marine body fossils or scolecodonts, and thus record cryptic marine incursions that might otherwise remain unidentified. This study contributes to our understanding of the complex mosaic of environments present when terrestrial tetrapods first appeared.

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Geological survey organisations (GSOs) are established by most nations to provide a geoscience knowledge base for effective decision-making on mitigating the impacts of natural hazards and global change, and on sustainable management of natural resources. The value of the knowledge base as a national asset is continually enhanced by exchange of knowledge between GSOs as data and information providers and the stakeholder community as knowledge 'users and exploiters'.Geological maps and associated narrative texts typically form the core of national geoscience knowledge bases, but have some inherent limitations as methods of capturing and articulating knowledge. Much knowledge about the 3D spatial interpretation and its derivation and uncertainty, and the wider contextual value of the knowledge, remains intangible in the minds of the mapping geologist in implicit and tacit form.To realise the value of these knowledge assets, the British Geological Survey (BGS) has established a workflow-based cyber-infrastructure to enhance its knowledge management and exchange capability. Future geoscience surveys in the BGS will contribute to a national, 3D digital knowledge base on UK geology, with the associated implicit and tacit information captured as metadata, qualitative assessments of uncertainty, and documented workflows and best practice.Knowledge-based decision-making at all levels of society requires both the accessibility and reliability of knowledge to be enhanced in the grid-based world.Establishment of collaborative cyber-infrastructures and ontologies for geoscience knowledge management and exchange will ensure that GSOs, as knowledge-based organisations, can make their contribution to this wider goal.

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