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Just come back from a fun trip to look for fossils in/around Whitby, and have a couple of finds I'm not 100% on. 1. I suspect this is a vertebra: 2. bones of some description, perhaps including some teeth? Thanks

Found what looks like to me like a tail of some crustacean in Saltwick Bay a few years ago. It's about 3 inches long, and the surface detail is incredibly well preserved. Was wondering if anyone has found anything similar, or knows what kind of crustacean it could have come from?

Another find from Saltwick Bay, this time very recent. I'm guessing that the main chunk is fossilised wood of some sort, but I'm stumped by the small (~1cm diameter) patch of pyrite that exhibits very regular dimples (see images 1 & 2). Any ideas?

Hello, I found these pieces a few weeks ago at Saltwick Bay in Yorkshire. The first one is obviously bone and I assume its ichthyosaur, but bone isn't really my forte so I hope that someone else may be able to confirm this or provide an ID. It also has a kind of stone cap on the flat end, anyone got ideas on how to remove that? The second piece I'm not too sure about. The shape is suggestive to me and there are bits that seem somewhat bony in texture, but as I said, I'm not sure. Thanks

Hi guys, I’ve done a bit of prepping of this ammonite I found in Salwick Bay, Yorkshire a few weeks ago and have no idea what it is. There are two obvious tubercles and there may have been more but as you can see it isn’t in great shape..

Me and my boyfriend made the drive to Whitby yesterday for the first time. We spent about 3 hours fossil hunting at Saltwick Bay. We made some nice finds but we only found one of the really nice Whitby ammonites at the end of the trip which is the main reason I wanted to go to Whitby. There were plenty of ammonite fragments about but we struggled to find the famed ammonite bearing nodules (though we did pick up a few small and low quality ones, will need prep and not worth posting here). We did pick up a couple of shale plates with some nice bivalves and flattened ammonites. I did however find a sizeable chunk of bone (which I’m presuming is Icthyosaur - input welcome) which I am chuffed to bits with. In terms of prep/preservation I’ll be soaking them all for a couple of days to draw the salt out but I’m a bit nervous about the shale plates. I’ve heard of people applying paraloid but I have never used it and we don’t have much ventilation in our small flat so if any anyone has any advice I will gladly listen! No clue what this is in the town of Whitby

Found these 2 pieces of rock next to each other while beachcombing on Saltwick Bay, North Yorkshire. I believe they are bone because of the honey comb structure. Can anyone confirm whether the rocks are bone or just rock. Many thanks for any help with identification.....other photos to follow.

Found this little thing this morning while rummaging in the shale on Saltwick Bay. First thought was just a small piece of belemnite, but one side is concave and the other is convex, so not sure what it could be (if anything at all) Can anyone shed any light on it? For those unfamiliar with the area the beaches are awash with belemnites, ammonites and bivalves. Ichthyosaurs are occasionally found here too. Thanks in advance

G'day all! After three years since my last visit to the UK, i finally returned in December 2017 for another massive collecting trip across England. This was my most ambitious tour of the UK's Mesozoic and Cenozoic vertebrate deposits thus far, with 20 days of collecting across ten different locations. These were (in chronological order from first visit): Abbey Wood in East London Beltinge in Kent Bouldnor on the Isle of Wight Compton Bay to Grange Chine on the Isle of Wight Lyme Regis to Charmouth in Dorset Aust Cliff in Gloucestershire Saltwick Bay in Yorkshire Kings dyke in Cambridgeshire Minster in Kent Tankerton in Kent. If you went collecting at any of these places in the last month, there's probably a 25.6975% chance you saw me looking very intimidating hunched over in my hooded rain jacket and muddy pants 14 of those collecting days were back-to-back, a new record for me, though it was very tiring! Having just come from the hot Australian summer, winter collecting in England was certainly a challenge at times and my fingers and toes froze to the point i could barely feel them on multiple occasions. Temperatures for many of the days reached 0 degrees celcius or below, with ice on the ground around me and even snow falling while i was trying to collect! I also went out during the middle of the night to collect using a head torch on some occasions (mainly at Bouldnor) due to the tidal conditions and bad weather which prevented collecting during the day. All in all i am certainly pleased with how the trip went, i was successful at all locations with the exception of Tankerton. For some of the locations (Aust Cliff, Kings dyke, Saltwick Bay) it was also my first and only visit, so i'm glad i still managed to do well with no prior experience at these sites and with such limited time at each. I have tried to write this trip report not only as a means of showing you guys my finds but also to provide an informative overview of some of the better locations for Mesozoic and Cenozoic vertebrates across England for others who might be planning similar trips. Anyway, here are the results! Pictures will be spread across the next 12 posts due to file size restrictions. Abbey Wood - East London (6/12/17, 30/12/17 and 31/12/17) Formation: Blackheath ('Lesnes Shell Bed') Deposit Age: 54.5 million years (Eocene) Fossil Diversity: Sharks, bony fish, chimaeroids, bivalves, gastropods, rare mammals, turtles and crocodiles This was one of only two inland locations i visited (the other being Kings dyke). As i have found, the majority of the UK's easily accessible fossil collecting locations are coastal! Abbey Wood is an excellent location just 45 minutes on the tube from central London. It is situated in a park called the Lesnes Abbey Woods and there is a small collecting area that is open to the public for shallow digging (see my first two pictures below). You definitely need a sifter, shovel and basin of water at this location to have any real success. Be warned though that once you combine the fine Blackheath sediments with water during sifting you get some pretty gnarly mud so expect to come away from this site looking like you've just been rolling around in the dirt. I'm sure i got some interesting looks from people on the tube going back to London it was all worth it though, as every single sift load produced at least one shark tooth across the three days i visited. Very impressive considering the number of obvious holes dotted around the ground from years worth of other collectors visiting. It should be noted though that the mammalian material from this location is of high scientific importance, and collecting here is allowed on the condition that any mammalian finds be brought to the attention of and handed in to specialists like Dr Jerry hooker at the Natural History Museum in London. I didn't find any such material on my trips unfortunately. Here is the designated collecting area. The statue at the front is of Coryphodon, one of the rare Eocene mammals that has been found at the site. The full haul of shark teeth from three days of sifting in the collecting area. Most are from Striatolamia and Sylvestrilamia. I gave up trying to count them once i got past 100 Some of the other fishy bits that often turn up during sifting, including guitar fish teeth on the far left and two dermal denticles (Hypolophodon sylvestris), one gar pike fish tooth in the middle (Lepisosteus suessionensis), one shark vertebra down the bottom and unidentified bony fish vertebrae on the right. I don't typically collect shells, but i picked these up for the sake of adding a bit more diversity to my Abbey Wood collection. These are bivalves and gastropods of various species. The molluscan diversity from this one location is actually quite impressive. Beltinge - Kent (7/12/17 and 29/12/17) Formation: Upnor ('Beltinge Fish Bed') Deposit Age: 56.5 million years old (Paleocene) Fossil Diversity: Sharks, chimaeroids, bony fish, rays, turtles, crocodiles, bivalves, wood This is my favourite shark tooth collecting location in the UK and probably my favourite that i have visited anywhere so far. The shoreline directly opposite the access point at the end of Reculver Drive in Beltinge is loaded with teeth and dare i say it's impossible to come here and walk away empty handed. The shore however is very flat so there is generally only about a two hour window of time that collecting can be carried out here, one hour either side of low tide. Conditions can also vary depending on how sanded over the shore is, whether the Beltinge Fish Bed itself is exposed and how low the tide drops. However even on a poor day you will still find teeth here, just not as many! I experienced this first hand as the first day i visited on December 7th the conditions were excellent. The tide dropped quite low, there wasn't too much sand covering the clay and the Beltinge Fish Bed was exposed. This allowed direct in-situ collecting of teeth from this rich layer and i ended up with something like 240 teeth from just a couple of hours of looking. The second visit i made on December 29 of the same month was almost the exact opposite. It's amazing how quickly these coastal locations can change! The shore was largely sanded over, the fish bed was covered and the tide didn't drop anywhere near as much. I was out about the same amount of time as the first but only managed 69 teeth (only ). Keep these things in mind if you are planning a visit. Luckily though i didn't just find shark teeth, i also managed to locate some of the other less common finds as you will see below! Here is the area of shoreline that produces teeth, photographed on December 7th. It was quite cold and rainy! Three teeth sitting next to each other as found. More as-found shark teeth. This one made me quite excited when i saw it. It's a large piece of chimaeroid fish jaw and mouthplate coming straight from the Beltinge Fish Bed itself (the darker, dull-green sandy clay in this picture). Beltinge is continued in the next post.

Today i visited saltwick bay, the beach right next to famous Whitby. I parked at the holiday park at the top, had a cup of tea and made my way down the steep steps. The beach is great, good for dog walking and fossil collecting! The cliffs are massive and the pictures do not do it justice to show how large they are. It is also constantly eroding even while i was stood there. So it’s probably wise to spend as little time under them as possible. It’s rarther scary really. I had lots of great finds, my favorite find of the day is the hildoceras on the left. Others included multiple ammonite nodules and a Belemnite phragmocone. Another great place to come if you’re in the area!

Hi all, I recently found this massive bowling ball sized rock at Saltwick Bay near Whitby on the Yorkshire coast (Northern England). It is lower to middle Jurassic, i think about 180-170 million years old (possibly the Whitby Mudstone Formation). As you can see it it's full of various bones, which occur on almost all sides of the rock so they are probably running right through it. Prep for this one is going to be a nightmare i can tell and i don't have the right tools, but for now i really just want to try and figure out what i've got. I think it's fair to assume the bones are associated. The options for this bit of coast are fish (Gyrosteus), ichthyosaur, marine crocodile, plesiosaur or dinosaur. I was hoping based on the cross sectional shapes of some of the bones, and the texture of the bone itself, someone would be able to narrow down what it might be. Fish or reptile would be the first thing to determine. My obvious first assumption was marine reptile, but some of the fish on the Yorkshire coast like Gyrosteus are also huge (5m long) and i'm not very familiar with their bone structure. In this picture, i thought the rectangular bone towards the bottom might be a vertebra in cross-section. If so, from what? Could it be the edge of an ichthyosaur vertebra before it dips down in the centre? This bone is the biggest in the block, about 8 cm long and 3 cm thick. Continued in the next post!

Can someone help me identify this fossil, it looks like a plate or some sort of tooth

Are these the fossilised internal parts of the actual creature as opposed to the shell please. I have collected a few which have incredible detail and I think they are beautiful. Regards Steve

Just hoping really (I am persistent if nothing else) but could someone please put me out of my misery on these two photos. Regards Steve