Search the Community

Hello, I went searching in the Callovian Lower Oxford Clay at Yaxley, and I found this small tooth, measuring 6mm across. Could it perhaps be Hypsocormus? Aside from the tooth, I found a few crinoid ossicles, annelid tubes and the pyrite ammonites from the Oxford clay are stunning, I think I found several Kosmoceras, possibly Peltoceras athleta and Quenstedtoceras lamberti. I have attached a few photos of some of the ammonites too. Thank you.

It's been a sunny and very, very cold day. Most of the finds at the Yaxley site are small and intricate, lots of crinoid ossicles. What pops depends a lot on the weather conditions - today I found a lot of lighter coloured fossils, including my first coprolite from this site. There are a few I think I'll ask for help to ID.

I will do these over a few posts. The site is Jurassic Oxford Clay, Peterborough Member, c.163 ma at Yaxley in Cambridgeshire. Any help would be greatly appreciated! The scale is in mm. The first I thought was Genicularia Vertebralis, but it looks a bit different from the others I've found, and has three distinct lines at the bottom of an unusually straight column.

This is from the Oxford Clay, Peterborough Member so Callovian, Middle Jurassic. I'm not sure what it is, it's very small and I took the pictures with a digital camera - the scale is in mm. Other fauna found with it included ammonites, crinoids, belemnites and gryphia. Any suggestions appreciated. Other things I've found of a similar size and shape there are echinoid spines and some kind of burrow cast, but this is very different. I was wondering if it might be a different part of a crinoid than I'm used to finding?

Hi everyone! Took the two hour drive to Kings dyke on Sunday hoping that the new material that had been dumped would produce. For those who are unsure Kings dyke is a nature reserve situated next to a working brick quarry. Every so often they dump a load of the spoil from the quarry in a area that the public are allowed to search in. In the photo below you can see the working quarry in the background and the fenced in fossil area in the foreground. What i would give to be allowed into the main quarry..... This material is absolutely full of Gryphaea 2D ammonites and sometimes marine reptile bones and fish fossils. Unfortunately on this day, the bones eluded me. I ended up digging in random spots until i found large blocks that were big enough to split and this resulted in some lovely large belemnites with most coming out in a multiple pieces apart from a couple which came out complete. Certainly the largest ones i have ever found. I then drove 20 minutes down to a road to a disused quarry located on the edge of Yaxley. This quarry has nearly been completely flooded however there is a small area where the Oxford Clay is exposed on the surface at the edge of the flooded area. The fossils erode out of the bank on the waters edge so you can either walk along the bank, or, as i and others do, put on waders and sieve the material that is at the bottom of this bank in the water. Before long i had found plenty of smaller ammonites of different species, a single vertebra which looks like it has come from a fish, and what i think is my first ever Ichthyosaur tooth. Albeit just the tip. If anyone can confirm for me that would be brilliant. Length is 9mm. After a few hours my back was in agony and with big black rain clouds threatening i headed off for what should have been a two hour drive home, however due to an accident and a detour i got lost on it took nearly 5 hours... Hope you have enjoyed reading this and have a nice day!

Hi everyone, Two days ago, I went to Yaxley lake in Cambridgeshire (UK) and I found a handful of ammonites and belemnites. However, buried in the Oxford Clay with those ammonites and belemnites, I found this odd looking pebble which I was not able to identify (I am only able to tell obvious ones like ammonites, belemnites, bivalve, gastropod etc...). Before I decide to throw this away, I just wanted to ask you all whether this is something worth keeping for or just another random pebble. Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated. I can upload more pictures if you need so please let me know. Cheers, Bong

I went to Yaxley today, and after processing most of my finds I'm left with a few puzzles. I recently found an echinoid spine, and was wondering whether the first one below is part of an echinoid test, The second was picked up as a belemnite, but the cross section looks wrong, and I've seen echinoid spines in museums of a similar shape. The third bobbly one I have no clue, and would be grateful for any suggestions. I've called it Mr Bobbly. Finds are from Yaxley, UK, Jurassic, Lower Oxford Clay, Callovian. ETA: the order of the photos changed as I posted, the first fossil is the round black one in the images, the second is the very pale belemnite-like one, including cross sections, and the third is the long bobbly one.

I picked this up a year ago as it is convex on both sides and looks a bit like a vertebra. It's from the Jurassic Callovian Lower Oxford Clay at Yaxley, and a year on I still can't decide if it's just a suggestively shaped rock or a very worn vertebra. It's really hard to show the convex shape in the photos. ETA: I meant concave, not convex

Hi, @oxford clay keith @DE&i and anyone with any thoughts on the matter I go to two sites, within a few miles of each other, with exposures of the Oxford Clay. I've been puzzling at the difference between the biotas I find: Yaxley - Lots and lots of crinoid ossicles, vertebralis and surpula. Also plenty of gryphaea, belemnites and ammonites, the latter three dimensional and pyratised. Basically a lot of benthic critters, with some pelagic. King's dyke - No crinoids. No serpula. Haven't found verterbralis. There is evidence of pyrite, but this is usually a dusting over delicately preserved aragonite shells. There are gryphaea, but the benthic fauna seems less diverse. I'm baffled. I thought one possibility could be that Yaxley represents an oyster reef, glued together with serpula tubes. This would provide a firmer base for animals such as crinoids than the usual soupy mud of this period and location. Oyster reefs exist all over the world today, still exist off the coast of Britain, and there are very rare serpulid reefs off the coast of Scotland. Gryphaea are a form of oyster, and these unlike at King's dyke, are really encrusted with fantastic serpula tubes. I thought perhaps the Yaxley exposure was in the Jurassic slightly closer to a shore and sustaining reefs. There are some other important differences between the sites. Yaxley is an eroding former brick quarry, so relatively static, whereas at King's dyke the clay is supplied and renewed by the brick company from different layers of the Oxford Clay, and put on a site for fossil hunters. The preservation is very different, and in part that will be because the latter is fresh clay, just quarried. I could be as much looking at different layers as different locations. Both sites produce marine reptile fossils. But one seems more pelagic than benthic, the other more benthic than pelagic. Preservation bias could be playing a big role. Delicate fossils would not survive at Yaxley in the same way, leaving mostly heavily mineralised, hard fossils. All thought very welcome.