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Hi, I went to Aust cliffs today. I brought back some material, and noticed these. Could they be bone fragments? They are probably not identifiable, but I think if they are bone fragments would most likely be from an Ichthyosaur or Plesiosaur. I think the one on the right isn't a bit of bone, rather an interesting bit of rock. Many thanks.

Hi everyone, I am new to fossil hunting and recently took a trip to my local spot at Aust cliff in Bristol. I found some small chunks of bone bed about the size of a golf ball along the foreshore which I can see have small bits of bone including teeth. Does anyone have a good technique to extracting these without damaging the interesting bits. Cheers

Does anyone know if this is bone or not? It was found in aust Cliff and measures 4 by 6cm.

Does anyone know how to prep out this vertebrae from Aust Cliff? Acid prepping Will burn through the fossil. It measures about 3cm from bottom to the top of the neural arch.

Could someone please ID these fossils found at Aust cliff? To those who don’t know, Aust Cliff is Triassic. 1.inch long tooth with jaw section? 2.skin? 3.vertebrae and bone shard and coprolite, ichthyosaur? Largest vertebrae around 5mm 4.bone shard 5.no clue 6.another bone shard

A couple of fossils found at Aust Cliff which could someone please ID? I have put suggestions of what they might be.

I recently found this bone at Aust Cliff. When I was removing it from the matrix the bone broke into many small sections as well as two larger sections. In the dome shaped display there're the fragments that broke off, in the low quality blurry picture there is the matrix and the other one is the two large fragments. Can anyone ID the bone, thanks in advance. I am afraid I can't take any other pictures of the bone because it is too fragile.

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.

Ok so some weeks ago I visited a friend in Bristol one of the days he was in work I ventured up north via public transport (which is always good fun especially when the buses run only every hour and stop at 6) so was limited on time a found a few rocks containing some surface but fragile fish scales, having never been there before I really should have thought on to bring some field tools but was a more spare of the moment type of thing, anyway so back home with the blocks and have just started processing them (and by them I mean 1 so far very nervously) by using a bolster and chisel and splitting along the sediment layers, first I was wondering if anyone has any tips on extracting fossils from this type of matrix yes it is limestone however I remember reading somewhere that using an acid such as vinegar can also damage the specimens. However what I have been ding is using a manual tool to very little effect and the dremel, the problem with this is the manual tool just isn't really helping with matrix removal and the dremel isn't chipping the matrix as effectively as I would hope and instead more crushes than chips (yes this is a dremel engraving tool however this vibrates rather than using a pneumatic action) the other thing I have been doing is using a syringe and very weak solution of b-72 protecting any specimens and using small amounts of vinegar on the surrounding matrix however again the amount that seems to be removed by the vinegar is minimal its probably soaking in to the matrix to be honest but I don't want to fully emerge the blocks and damage precious fossils, I understand this has almost become and essay of writing and was wondering if I should post in the preparations forum however I do have a few pieces I was looking for some id help with again first real exposure to fossils that are non dinosaur in origin, and first time ever dealing with this type of matrix. Any help is always appreciated Matt

I was sent a chunk of material from the aust bone bed of the U.K. by @JohnBrewer (thank you very much!) to practice some prep on, mostly for the large bone and coprolites. I was also told to soak the material in vinegar to get all the little microfossils. I've gotten started by breaking off some chunks (I haven't gotten the acetone for my consolidant yet so I'm not touching the bone just yet) and soaking them in concentrated vinegar (30% acetic acid I believe, strong stuff). After an initial soak I saw this little guy poking out the surface. I saw the opportunity to prep and got right to work (being the forgetful procrastinator I am, I haven't bought a new scribe yet so for the first half I used a blunt dental instrument, the next fourth using a sowing needle, and the last with the needle duct taped to a piece of metal). Here are some pictures of the prepping process. I at first got excited thinking it was a plesiosaur, but I doubt that because of its size (6mm). It's hollow, and has striations similar to the carinae of a crocodile (don't think they have those there). Severnicthys is one possibility I stumbled upon. Opinions are welcomed and encouraged!

While digging around in some bone bed (Triassic, Rhaetic, Penarth Group, Westbury Formation, Rhaetic Bone Bed Aust Cliff, River Severn, South Gloucestershire, UK.) I found this tooth. I must have cracked a ton of this stuff over recent years and have never found anything like it. Fossils of the area are marine reptiles tiles and fish. Common finds are fish teeth and coprolites, plesiosaur and ichthyosaur bones, mostly, unsurprising, vertebrae. Oh and thank you Ray @aerogrower it's first outing Your wisdom and comments please! Labial surface Lingual surface Occlusal surface Root end Stupidly I forgot to photograph the proximal sides but hopefully you can get a rough idea from the other shots.

Found this a little while back at Aust, any ideas ?? Thanks

Hello everyone, I recently took a trip to Aust in the UK and got myself some nice chunks of bone bed with various large bones and teeth embedded in the rock. I am wondering what tools are recommened for me to try and get some of these out? I have never done this before but would like to give it a go as currently random chunks of rock on my shelf doesn't look the best haha plus it will be fun exposing ichthyosaur and pliosaur parts! I do not have a huge budget so I can't be spending thousands of pounds but I am willing to spend a little on getting the right tools. Any questions please ask. Thanks in advance Lance

Hi folks I've been digging through a few lumps of rock I collected a couple of years ago from Aust, Gloucestershire, UK which is rich in plesiosaur stuff among other things. I found these two pieces (three now :/ ) which were touching. I'm guessing they're plesi paddle bones. Am I right? Thanks John