Our Fossil Adventure

Last weekend was the weekend of our first great geological expedition!
Drawn by tales of pink rocks, lovely coastlines, ammonites and belemnites we set off for the south west coast of England. Before we left though were sure to arm ourselves with some serious rock smashing equipment.

At the first stop of Kimmeridge we discovered a bunch of very cool ammonite and bivalve fossils in the flat flaky clay that was washed over the beach. The coastline itself was also extremely beautiful

As well as incredible fossils and scenery at Kimmeridge I saw this gigantic fly (which looks like a huge mozzie! .. about 4cm across)

We ended up finding heaps of ammonite fossils on the beach at Kimmeridge and in lots of other spots as well

Next up on our itinerary was the famous Lulworth cove which was swarming with people compared with quiet Kimmeridge but strangely enough, didn’t have much in the way of fossils to see. In her frustration at not finding more fossils Jan found the beginnings of her great talent as a rock smasher …

which proved to be extremely useful at our next stop of Seatown where the fossils could only be found by careful through the art of smashing which Jan has so perfectly refined.

At Seatown we found a couple of really nice belemnite specimens but they somehow got smashed up .. not by Jan and her hammer but by the english rain on our back courtyard at home .. oops.

One of our favourite places was Quantoxhead with beautiful cliffs made up of layers of different coloured rock.

Ira was determined to find and collect a large ammonite, and finally found one in Quantoxhead.

However, his back (nor backpack) has still not recovered the 2km walk back to the car.

Links
A geological time period named after the first town we visited!

Ammonites and Belemnites

At Blue Anchor we collected some lumps of pink gypsum