NEW! Dorset section.

The Discovering Fossils web site is a fantastic resource for fossil hunting in the UK.

I requested help in identifying the mystery fossil (at the bottom of this page) from the discovering fossils web site. They got back to me within 24 hours.

Here's what Mr Randall (of Discovering Fossils) e-mailed back:

- The Colwyn bay area exposes Carboniferous limestone, ~ 320 million years old.

- The first 6 fossil images show the remains of crinoids (sea-lilies);
animals related to starfish
http://www.chalk.discoveringfossils.co.uk/3crinoid%20terminology.htm

- the fossil with a sponge-like surface seems to be part of a
stromatoporoid; an extinct group of reef-forming organisms

- the glossy black nature of the mystery fossil suggests that it is part of
a fish, perhaps a tooth-plate

Thanks Mr Randall. You have been a great help.

These next two are pictures of lichen found on the rocks. Lichens are a symbiotic organism. They are made up of two components. A fungal component and a green algae or cyanobacterial component.

This next one, is the possible stromatoporoid.

I think that the next picture shows something like a worm running from bottom left to the mid position on the right. The other fossils are better defined.

Mysterious fossil (possibly a tooth plate).

These next few images relate to a mystery 'fossil' that is embedded within some limestone near Colwyn Bay. It caught my eye a while ago and I examined it with a little pocket lense. I recently borrowed my mothers camera (which has a very good macro zoom feature)

It looks a little bit like a slug.

I like the 'pores'.

Extreme close up!!!!!!

The item in question is very small. ~2 cm on it's longest extent.

But I really don't know whether it was ANIMAL VEGETABLE OR MINERAL.

And I'd love to find out.

Here are the Hi-res verisons of the pictures.

lime stone and pebble Jan 2006 090.jpg

lime stone and pebble Jan 2006 091.jpg

lime stone and pebble Jan 2006 092.jpg

Dorset Beach

During July - 06 I spent a week down in Devon on holiday. We went to the West to visit the Eden Project and The lost Gardens of Heligen. On the following day we visited the village of Charmouth (Dorset) which is a good introduction to the World heritage site called the Jurrasic Coast. I loved it. It was fantastic! Bereft of hammer or anything else useful I spent 3 hours scouring the base of the muddy cliffs for fossils.

The view you get as you approach Charmouth is quite weird. The land up to the top of the cliffs appear to be lovely farm land. It's as if you are in a typical fertile hilly area then all of a sudden you are at the sea.

You can park at Charmouth (£3 all day) and walk East or West to look for fossils. We walked East. The surprising thing, for me, was that the cliff face is made of clay. Not stone, clay. Some of it was incredibly fine clay, some was quite hard and on it's way to rock but the vast majority of the material within 30 mintues East of Charmouth is Clay-ish.

Within 5 minutes I could see imprints of ammonites embedded in the mud.

These are a couple of centimeters across at most.

The lighter colouration is (I think this is right) Iron Pyrites which is Fools Gold. If the components of the creature aren't replaced with a mineral (like Iron Pyrites) then the shape is usually lost in the rock formation process. Bare in mind that the above 'fossil' is in clay and as soon as the sea hits it it will be lost.

The following day we returned to the beach. 'Herself settled down to read a book under a beach/fishing umbrella we'd bought earlier and I started tapping away with my brand new (very expensive) geology hammer. I then spent 5 or 6 hours pottering about getting alternatively frustrated and excited as I found various bit of long dead sea creature and odd bits of geology. Next year I intend to spend at least a week on the fossil coast. Although next time I'll use suncream on my legs as well as on my arms.

All told I found a number of fossils (nearly all of them ammonites) a few nodular items that may be geological or may be biological (I still can't decide) and had a great time (3rd degree sun-burn aside). I think the key to fossil hunting near Charmouth is finding deposits of Iron Pyrites. As wherever the mud seemed to have little nuggets of Fools Gold you where pretty likely to find a proper fossil or two. A little later on I found a chap who was digging carefully in an area of recently collapsed cliff (just under another bit that looked ready to fall down and kill him) and he seemed to be having a lot of success with small ammonite fossils that were mineralised. and there was an awful lot of Pyrites nuggets around the area.

So when I return I'll know where to look. Watch this space for further images.

I found a web site or two that go on about the same area.

And a nice web site generally about fossils