Salthill Quarry, UK

[Calli99]

About a week ago my boyfriends' parents and uncle came to visit us in Lancaster and on Monday I had the pleasure of entertaining them for the day while my boyfriend was pulled away unexpectedly by work.

 

With the prospect of a beautiful drive (and of course, selfishly, some fossils) I decided to take them to Salthill Quarry. It's an interesting site as it's an old limestone quarry that has been turned into a nature reserve, in the middle of an industrial park. Whilst walking we all thought we could smell bakery goods and were getting hungry, I looked this up later and found a pet food producer is located in the park...

 

Anyways it really is a fascinating place. As soon as you get to the fossiliferous part all you have to do is look down, grab a handful of gravel, look closely and you will find that that gravel is actually thousands of crinoid ossicles. The floor is literally littered with them, it would be impossible to walk away from this site without fossils. It's a fantastic show of just how prevalent crinoids were and how they flourished in this area 340 mya.

 

There isn't much to find apart from crinoids, although I found a couple of small rugose corals and plenty of calyces too.

 

Overall everyone had a good time, it's easy hunting so turned out to be a great place to bring people who had never really thought about fossils much before.

 

I haven't got far on IDs yet but hopefully I'll be able to ID most of the calyces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Amphoracrinus sp.?

 

 

 Also Amphoracrinus sp.?

 

 

This fossil cracked in two, on the other side is a large, broken calyx (below). Whilst cleaning it I discovered the whole Amphoracrinus sp. calyx above and managed to pick it out.

 

 I have no idea what is covering this crinoid stem. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are many other types of crinoid species stems as well, too many to photograph them all.

 

The rugose corals, I think Dibunophyllum sp.

Edited August 28, 2021 by Calli99

[Tidgy's Dad]

A UK location that I have never visited. 

Wish I had now. 

I spent years hunting in the UK Lower Carboniferous but never found that many calyxes. 

Wonderful finds and a great report.

Thank you. 

[Calli99]

On 8/28/2021 at 11:56 PM, Tidgy's Dad said:

A UK location that I have never visited. 

Wish I had now. 

I spent years hunting in the UK Lower Carboniferous but never found that many calyxes. 

Wonderful finds and a great report.

Thank you. 

Thank you. 

I live in Lancaster for uni so am trying to discover new fossil locations here in the North West. The Carboniferous yields very interesting fossils, but they have been few and far between so far (apart from Salthill Quarry of course).