Fossil Hunting Holiday in England (Dec 2017)

[izak_]

Awesome finds nathan, congrats! Sounds like you had a great time  

[6ix]

I am amazed - those are some absolutely incredible finds...  those annos! Teeth!   Well earnt!

 

[LiamL]

Thanks for the great report Nathan. Glad you visited Saltwickbay, i'll be spending a whole week there in May. That ichthyosaur rostrum is gorgeous by the way.

[caldigger]

For all you kids making comment on wanting to go there. Even if you don't end up finding much in the way of fossils, I am sure you won't be disappointed. The country is so scenic and beautiful, there is so much to take in and experience you may just forget about collecting dead things off the beach.

Go for the atmosphere and let fossils be the icing on the cake of life.

Cheers!

[Ancient Bones]

Paleoworld-101  your trip report was so well presented and the pics were great!  ( please excuse the drool! )  A lovely variety of finds.  Have you ever been to Old Hunstanton in Norfolk ?  

[Nimravis]

All I can saw is WOW. Great trip report, Great pictures and Great finds. My favorites were the Belemites and Ammonites. Thanks for posting this great report.

[Paleoworld-101]

On 10/01/2018 at 12:25 PM, Foozil said:

Awesome finds nathan, congrats! Sounds like you had a great time  

On 10/01/2018 at 5:11 PM, 6ix said:

I am amazed - those are some absolutely incredible finds...  those annos! Teeth!   Well earnt!

 

Thanks guys!!

 

14 hours ago, LiamL said:

Thanks for the great report Nathan. Glad you visited Saltwickbay, i'll be spending a whole week there in May. That ichthyosaur rostrum is gorgeous by the way.

Good luck! Out of interest, how does Saltwick compare to other locations on that coast such as Port Mulgrave, Kettleness or Staithes, especially with regard to vertebrate finds? I mainly went to Saltwick because of the easy access and walking proximity to Whitby train station. 

14 hours ago, caldigger said:

For all you kids making comment on wanting to go there. Even if you don't end up finding much in the way of fossils, I am sure you won't be disappointed. The country is so scenic and beautiful, there is so much to take in and experience you may just forget about collecting dead things off the beach.

Go for the atmosphere and let fossils be the icing on the cake of life.

Cheers!

You're right some of these locations are spectacular. Postcard material. 

13 hours ago, Ancient Bones said:

Paleoworld-101  your trip report was so well presented and the pics were great!  ( please excuse the drool! )  A lovely variety of finds.  Have you ever been to Old Hunstanton in Norfolk ?  

Hahaha thanks! No i haven't been there (yet), next time i do hope to get to Norfolk and Suffolk though. I am especially keen to collect the Pleistocene mammal stuff that comes from over there. 

13 hours ago, Nimravis said:

All I can saw is WOW. Great trip report, Great pictures and Great finds. My favorites were the Belemites and Ammonites. Thanks for posting this great report.

Your welcome. Great to hear you enjoyed it!

[LiamL]

3 hours ago, Paleoworld-101 said:

Thanks guys!!

 

Good luck! Out of interest, how does Saltwick compare to other locations on that coast such as Port Mulgrave, Kettleness or Staithes, especially with regard to vertebrate finds? I mainly went to Saltwick because of the easy access and walking proximity to Whitby train station. 

You're right some of these locations are spectacular. Postcard material. 

Hahaha thanks! No i haven't been there (yet), next time i do hope to get to Norfolk and Suffolk though. I am especially keen to collect the Pleistocene mammal stuff that comes from over there. 

Your welcome. Great to hear you enjoyed it!

I've been to Runswick Bay, and Staiths before. I went to Mulgrave last year but at the time i didnt know you had to walk over the 'Danger, cliff fall' sign and turned back. 

I'm trying Port this year for sure.  I'm Pretty sure Saltwick, Whitby and Mulgrave are best for finds, and Kettleness is hard to access i hear.

[Anomotodon]

Great finds! This tooth looks really interesting, can we see more pics of it and maybe others like it? It looks very very similar to a lamnoid shark lateroposterior tooth, but lamnoids did not appear until Early Cretaceous. Is it possible that this tooth is actually Cretaceous (or less likely Paleogene), not Triassic?

 

[Echinoid]

Awesome report!  

Thanks for sharing with us

Hope you can tick the Megalodon of your bucket list soon! 

[Paleoworld-101]

On 22/01/2018 at 9:38 PM, Anomotodon said:

Great finds! This tooth looks really interesting, can we see more pics of it and maybe others like it? It looks very very similar to a lamnoid shark lateroposterior tooth, but lamnoids did not appear until Early Cretaceous. Is it possible that this tooth is actually Cretaceous (or less likely Paleogene), not Triassic?

 

Sure, i've put up a couple more pictures below. I also thought it looked quite like a typical younger shark tooth, but i am certain that this came from the Triassic Westbury Formation at Aust Cliff. It was the only example like this that i found. On the labial surface it has wrinkles or stitching near the crown base that stops part way up, while on the lingual surface there also looks to be faint striations that cover the crown but are also more prominent near the crown base. I tried to take close up pics that show both of these features. From the side, the tooth is also laterally compressed like a typical more-recent shark tooth (not rounded like the other Hybodus teeth). So far the best match i have found from the Rhaetian of England is Hybodus minor but i'm not certain. 

 

Labial:

 

Lingual:

 

 

19 hours ago, Echinoid said:

Awesome report!  

Thanks for sharing with us

Hope you can tick the Megalodon of your bucket list soon! 

Cheers! Yes, one day!

[Anomotodon]

It looks really really like a Protolamna or early Archaeolamna lateroposterior tooth (compare it to my Albian Protolamna lateroposterior, but from a deeper jaw position). Only neoselachians from the Triassic with at least a little similar tooth shape are Synechodontiformes (like Synechodus or Rhomphaiodon(=Hybodus)), however they usually do not have so 1) wide teeth, especially in the basal part 2) distally recurved teeth 3) labio-lingually compressed teeth 4) well pronounced continuous carinae that are 5) shifted towards the labial side so that it is completely flat. Another very important factor is root shape: Synechodus and Rhomphaiodon have polyhemiaulacorhizous root type, that is completely different from root type of your tooth (holaulacorhizous; on the chart below the example is rhinobatid skate, but lamnoids have basically the same) that is clearly bilobate and it looks like it has a nutrient groove.

I looked at the geological map of Gloucestershire and there seem to be no evidence of Cretaceous deposits (I was thinking it came from somewhere like the Wealden group, Valanginian-Barremian seemed to be more or less accurate estimate of its age).

However, cusplets look weird for lamnoid sharks... So, either this is actually Cretaceous, or this is first evidence for holaulacorhizous lamnoid-like tooth type, or I am wrong

Maybe more root pics, @Al Dente, @Troodon or someone else could help...

 

[Paleoworld-101]

Interesting! I've taken a few more pictures. It's hard to photograph something so small though! We can rule out Cretaceous, it popped right off one of the pieces of Aust bone bed that i picked up on the shore along with a few loose fish teeth (Severnichthys) that i collected the same way. 

 

 

 

This is the figure of shark teeth from a paper on Rhaetian vertebrates of England. The closest as you can see is Hybodus minor (G-H) but it isn't a perfect match. Sorry the figure legend was on a different page. 

 

 

[Anomotodon]

This is definitely really interesting! Let's see what others say.

[ynot]

1 hour ago, Paleoworld-101 said:

It's hard to photograph something so small though!

It makes it a lot harder when You hold the object and try to take a picture (it increases movement blur).

Please place it on a solid surface and retake the close up pictures. It will help with an id.

@MarcoSr, @siteseer

[Paleoworld-101]

7 minutes ago, ynot said:

It makes it a lot harder when You hold the object and try to take a picture (it increases movement blur).

Please place it on a solid surface and retake the close up pictures. It will help with an id.

@MarcoSr, @siteseer

My hand was perfectly still, what I meant was focusing on such a small object. The pictures i have are already the limit of my cameras focusing ability. 

[ynot]

Sorry, but the fingerprints are in focus and the tooth is not.

[Paleoworld-101]

I think i might have solved it... i went back and looked at the cases that i used to bring back my finds from England and realised that some were the same that i used to bring back fossils from a mid-Cretaceous marine site in Central QLD a couple of years ago. There was shark teeth at this location, and it's possible that this tooth came off one of these rocks and, because it was so small, i simply didn't notice it when i cleared the cases out. For all this to happen though, gosh, what were the chances?! I put blocks of bone bed from Aust Cliff into this particular case, and bits of them crumbled and fell off into it to make it more convincing, which just so happened to be the one with this little leftover shark tooth floating around in it (only one case of about 32)? Crazy... but plausible, and now i can't be certain if it comes from either location which feels like it is now a waste of a specimen  mad props though to @Anomotodon for picking up on this! Bravo sir! I guess the lesson is to always be certain of provenance before re-writing the text books and make sure that information is never lost. 

[Anomotodon]

Of course, it would be cooler if it was the first Triassic lamnoid ever discovered, however this is still a great Protolamna tooth  

[DE&i]

Well done @Paleoworld-101 at the King's dyke Nature Reserve. As I know the clay in the fossil area had been turned over in the first week of December. With the remaining stockpile of clay that comes direct from the adjacent working quarry also added. It does take a few months for the right conditions to weather the bone material out. From the finds you posted , you done quite well

[Paleoworld-101]

2 hours ago, DE&i said:

Well done @Paleoworld-101 at the King's dyke Nature Reserve. As I know the clay in the fossil area had been turned over in the first week of December. With the remaining stockpile of clay that comes direct from the adjacent working quarry also added. It does take a few months for the right conditions to weather the bone material out. From the finds you posted , you done quite well

I was originally hoping for an ichthy or a plesi vert, but with the terrible conditions i suffered i'm just glad to have found any bone at all. When i got my permit i told them when i was coming, and they kindly said they would endeavour to turn the pile over before i arrived which was very nice. It's a shame the weather turned out how it did though. 

[chloedieds]

Thank you for sharing!  I am planning a trip to England and hoping to hunt down some shark teeth.  Your post was very helpful!  I'd love to chat to discuss more of your trip details.

[Carl]

Can't bear to read all them details but the photos all made me very happy. Exactly the kind of collecting I adore. You are a lucky person.