Fossil Hunting Holiday in England (Dec 2017)

[belemniten]

Thats an awesome report ! 

You really found some beauties   I love that ichthyosaur rostrum ! Congrats 

[Monica]

6 hours ago, minnbuckeye said:

Like Monica, I collect invertebrates. Also like her, we really do not have a choice due to the geology of our home bases being Ordovician/ Devonian. I am sure she would love to find the vertebrate material you showed. If I solidify a trip, is your offer to answer questions only directed to Monica or can I pick your brain??  

 

Mike

 

I would absolutely LOVE to find some vertebrate material but, alas, my focus is indeed on inverts (likely due to, as you have said, the fact that that's about all I can find around here!).  That ichthyosaur rostrum, vertebrae, and rocks with bones in longitudinal section from Saltwick Bay-Yorkshire would be AMAZING to find!!! 

[kirk]

Really nice report. England is definitely on my list to go to and do some fossil hunting.

 

[Paleoworld-101]

8 hours ago, sixgill pete said:

Great trip report. What an amazing assortment of locations and finds. 

 

Thanks, though the UK itself should take some of the credit, for such a small place geographically speaking i'm still amazed how much fossil diversity there is across almost the entire Phanerozoic.

7 hours ago, minnbuckeye said:

Great post!!! Thanks for creating such an informative description of your trip. It comes at a time I am seriously contemplating a trip to England. My wife turns 60 on Feb 26th and she has ALWAYS wanted to visit England. So I am currently looking into the costs of such a trip, though I don't like what I am seeing. We will see how much I love her!!!. If we go, reading your trip report helps me tremendously in deciding whether  side trips for fossils are possible.

 

 

Like Monica, I collect invertebrates. Also like her, we really do not have a choice due to the geology of our home bases being Ordovician/ Devonian. I am sure she would love to find the vertebrate material you showed. If I solidify a trip, is your offer to answer questions only directed to Monica or can I pick your brain??  

 

Mike

 

Absolutely, ask away when the time comes. There are a lot of great Paleozoic sites that i didn't get to as well for both inverts and verts alike if you're into that too (further north in Scotland and west in Wales). 

7 hours ago, Uncle Siphuncle said:

Great report, and one I’d like to make someday.  My focus would be ammonites, echinoids, and ichthyosaur verts.

You should! For both ammonites and ichthy verts together the Dorset coast is your best bet. Echinoids i haven't really collected but i know they get some in the Cretaceous chalk deposits around Dover, Peacehaven and other similar locations. 

7 hours ago, WhodamanHD said:

What an awesome trip and report

I really do have to visit someday! I thought the mammals were particularly cool, but everything you found was pretty awesome! Some sites reminded me of contemporaneous sites we have over here that I’ve visited, cool to see the comparison.

Cheers! Yes, i have thought that as well, for example how the stuff from Beltinge is quite similar to the Potomac River fossils (which i have never been to, actually i've never done any US collecting yet). Both are after all Paleocene and similar depositional environments so it makes sense i guess. 

6 hours ago, masonboro37 said:

Capitvating report, pictures and finds! Thank you so much for posting and explaining each area, epoch and the specimens. 

 

Libby

Your welcome! I'm glad you appreciated the extra doses of information to provide a bit more context  

6 hours ago, CBOB said:

Thanks for such a fantastic post!  A nice read while enjoying some morning coffee!  Thanks!  And congrats on what looks like a great haul of finds!

Glad to hear it! A dose of fossils certainly helps me start the day. 

5 hours ago, ynot said:

Looks like a trip of a lifetime!

so much fun and nice finds!

Thanks for the wonderful report.

Thank you! 

4 hours ago, belemniten said:

Thats an awesome report ! 

You really found some beauties   I love that ichthyosaur rostrum ! Congrats 

It's a beauty alright, glad you liked it. 

1 hour ago, Monica said:

 

I would absolutely LOVE to find some vertebrate material but, alas, my focus is indeed on inverts (likely due to, as you have said, the fact that that's about all I can find around here!).  That ichthyosaur rostrum, vertebrae, and rocks with bones in longitudinal section from Saltwick Bay-Yorkshire would be AMAZING to find!!! 

Head over to some of these locations and you'll be drowning in vertebrate material! Finding the big bone block was indeed great, lugging it in my backpack for a couple kilometres back to the train station... not so much hahaha

1 hour ago, kirk said:

Really nice report. England is definitely on my list to go to and do some fossil hunting.

 

Thanks, you've got some pretty great locations around NC though too! Finding a meg tooth is still something i haven't ticked off the bucket list yet. 

[Miocene_Mason]

46 minutes ago, Paleoworld-101 said:

Cheers! Yes, i have thought that as well, for example how the stuff from Beltinge is quite similar to the Potomac River fossils (which i have never been to, actually i've never done any US collecting yet). Both are after all Paleocene and similar depositional environments so it makes sense i guess. 

The exact two I was thinking of! Let me know if you ever want to take a Maryland collecting trip, I’ll tell you where the better places to go are.

[Tidgy's Dad]

Marvelous! 

I enjoyed this read so much! 

brings back so many happy memories and wishes that i'd visited some of the places i'd never got around to visiting. 

Thank you so much for this! 

[Connah]

Another great post @Paleoworld-101 So many nice finds from some truly great locations. 

 

  I'm heading back home (UK), for two months this year & already have some of the locations you visited booked in, really looking forward to it.

[jcbshark]

Wow, Excellent finds and report! Love the in situs

[Plantguy]

Great report. Love seeing the cliffs and the insitu shots. Congrats. Regards, Chris 

[fossilized6s]

Wonderful report(s), photos and finds! Congratulations!! Thanks for sharing. 

[Jeffrey P]

Great trip report. Really enjoyed reading it and perusing the photos. Some excellent finds there. The whole thing must have been a blast. Thanks for sharing. 

[smt126]

Great report. The ammonites just lying on the beach are amazing.

[Coco]

Hi,

 

What a beautiful adventure ! Many found fossils, an impressive variety, of big visited sites... Of the happiness. Thank you for having shared.

 

Coco

[deutscheben]

Great report, thank you for sharing! I love how you documented each site with scenic views, in situ fossil shots, and the clear pictures of what you found. Those chimaeroid jaw pieces are especially fascinating.

[t-tree]

I enjoyed your report and it reminded me of the Abbey Wood dermal denticles i had forgotten i have, On Sunday night BBC 1 (UK TV) treated us to a new "David Attenborough And The Sea Dragon" program examining the 200 million-year-old fossilised remains of an icthyosaur on the jurassic coast from finding to prepping and it's detailed reconstruction.

 

Cheers John

 

 

[Vulcanspotter]

Hi I am intending to visit Aust this week, not been for at least 5 years. Hope to find some excellent fossils.

[Paleoworld-101]

On 08/01/2018 at 9:16 AM, WhodamanHD said:

The exact two I was thinking of! Let me know if you ever want to take a Maryland collecting trip, I’ll tell you where the better places to go are.

Hahaha, you know what they say about great minds  thank you for that!! I hope it happens one day! The other comparison i have thought of also is the Bouldnor vertebrate material on the Isle of Wight and the stuff from Florida's rivers, although the age is quite different this time. The preservation looks so similar and they are the same sorts of turtle/croc/mammal fragments. Maybe i need to plan an east coast US trip going from New Jersey all the way down to Florida. That would be epic!  

On 08/01/2018 at 9:22 AM, Tidgy's Dad said:

Marvelous! 

I enjoyed this read so much! 

brings back so many happy memories and wishes that i'd visited some of the places i'd never got around to visiting. 

Thank you so much for this! 

I'm glad! Which of these sites did you visit and how long ago?

On 08/01/2018 at 9:25 AM, Connah said:

Another great post @Paleoworld-101 So many nice finds from some truly great locations. 

 

  I'm heading back home (UK), for two months this year & already have some of the locations you visited booked in, really looking forward to it.

Cheers Connah! That's excellent, hopefully there have been some more storms since my departure to produce some new finds! Don't forget to post what you find, i'd love to see  

On 08/01/2018 at 10:13 AM, jcbshark said:

Wow, Excellent finds and report! Love the in situs

22 hours ago, Plantguy said:

Great report. Love seeing the cliffs and the insitu shots. Congrats. Regards, Chris 

22 hours ago, fossilized6s said:

Wonderful report(s), photos and finds! Congratulations!! Thanks for sharing. 

19 hours ago, Jeffrey P said:

Great trip report. Really enjoyed reading it and perusing the photos. Some excellent finds there. The whole thing must have been a blast. Thanks for sharing. 

Thanks guys! The as-found shots are great to take, but often you need to stop yourself from just lunging out and picking something up out of excitement when you first see it hahaha. I'm also a believer that once you've touched it/moved it, it's not the same to place it back and take the photo. Sometimes i have found excellent things that i didn't realise what they were until i picked them up, at which point it's too late for the photo as-found. 

16 hours ago, smt126 said:

Great report. The ammonites just lying on the beach are amazing.

Thanks, indeed they are. I actually saw groups of people walk right over those spots at Lyme Regis who were ahead of me. Maybe they just weren't good enough for them, with standards like that i'd love to see their collections!  

15 hours ago, Coco said:

Hi,

 

What a beautiful adventure ! Many found fossils, an impressive variety, of big visited sites... Of the happiness. Thank you for having shared.

 

Coco

Your welcome! Glad you enjoyed it. 

6 hours ago, deutscheben said:

Great report, thank you for sharing! I love how you documented each site with scenic views, in situ fossil shots, and the clear pictures of what you found. Those chimaeroid jaw pieces are especially fascinating.

Thank you, i love the chimaeroid bits too! 

3 hours ago, t-tree said:

I enjoyed your report and it reminded me of the Abbey Wood dermal denticles i had forgotten i have, On Sunday night BBC 1 (UK TV) treated us to a new "David Attenborough And The Sea Dragon" program examining the 200 million-year-old fossilised remains of an icthyosaur on the jurassic coast from finding to prepping and it's detailed reconstruction.

 

Cheers John

 

 

The denticles were much harder to find than the teeth from the same species of guitar fish. I probably missed a whole bunch of them though. I also saw shorts for that documentary as well, i wonder when it was filmed/excavated? 

1 hour ago, scouserdownsouth said:

Hi I am intending to visit Aust this week, not been for at least 5 years. Hope to find some excellent fossils.

Good luck! I would suggest, prior to low tide, going underneath the bridge and checking out the northern side of the exposure. I didn't get time to go around there but i'm sure there would be bits of bone bed to check out. The south side in my picture is more heavily collected (by people like me haha) 

[Tidgy's Dad]

Aust was not far from where I used to live so visited there many, many times in the 70's and 80's.

Likewise i spent several summers in the Isle of Wight collecting in the mid to late 80's and 90's, including those locations. 

Charmouth and Lyme Regis were also regular haunts during this time, last visit probably about 1994.  

I also did Abbey Wood once, in the late 90's? 

The others I never got around to and doubt i will now!

But there's many other opportunities for me here in Morocco! 

Happy hunting! 

 

[Paleoworld-101]

25 minutes ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

Aust was not far from where I used to live so visited there many, many times in the 70's and 80's.

Likewise i spent several summers in the Isle of Wight collecting in the mid to late 80's and 90's, including those locations. 

Charmouth and Lyme Regis were also regular haunts during this time, last visit probably about 1994.  

I also did Abbey Wood once, in the late 90's? 

The others I never got around to and doubt i will now!

But there's many other opportunities for me here in Morocco! 

Happy hunting! 

 

Wow!!! You've certainly been around! Do you think collecting at these locations was better back then? A lot more people are doing it nowadays i presume thanks to the internet. Morocco is another place I'd like to visit when I'm older, I know there are guided tours that take you digging at places like the Kem Kem beds. I'd love to spend weeks there looking for dinosaur teeth!

[Tidgy's Dad]

I grew up in the South West of England, so several of those sites weren't far from me. 

Now i live in Morocco.

I think collecting was better  back then, before the web and so on, people didn't know as much and there weren't as many collectors. 

However, each spring brings fresh rockfalls and as long as you know what you're doing, or are lucky, there's still plenty of things to be had. New discoveries are still made even in these popular old locations.  

[KimTexan]

I am an ammonite and cephalopod lover. As I’m looking through your posts I was saying to myself “Please don’t tell me he went all the way to the UK and didn’t find a single ammonite!”

Of course if the tables were turned you might be thinking “Please don’t tell me she went all the way to the UK and didn’t find a single ____ something, because my focus would be the cephalopods.

Thank goodness we all like different things, because if we were all looking for the same thing they would be even harder to find.

[jpc]

Excellent trip and report, P-101.  I love trips like this and have done a few myself.  Someday there will be a grad tour of the UK form Isle of Wight up to Scotland done by myself and hoprfully Mrs. jpc.  But I am glad to see your pix and read all about it.  Armchair traveling is almost as good.  Very nice ichthyosaur piece.  

[Paleoworld-101]

15 hours ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

I grew up in the South West of England, so several of those sites weren't far from me. 

Now i live in Morocco.

I think collecting was better  back then, before the web and so on, people didn't know as much and there weren't as many collectors. 

However, each spring brings fresh rockfalls and as long as you know what you're doing, or are lucky, there's still plenty of things to be had. New discoveries are still made even in these popular old locations.  

That's what i suspected. I wonder how good the collecting must have been at Lyme Regis for example back in Mary Annings day... maybe a good bone that now often takes a few hours to find could be found back then in 10 minutes or less hahahaha

13 hours ago, KimTexan said:

I am an ammonite and cephalopod lover. As I’m looking through your posts I was saying to myself “Please don’t tell me he went all the way to the UK and didn’t find a single ammonite!”

Of course if the tables were turned you might be thinking “Please don’t tell me she went all the way to the UK and didn’t find a single ____ something, because my focus would be the cephalopods.

Thank goodness we all like different things, because if we were all looking for the same thing they would be even harder to find.

Oh i can certainly imagine the feeling if that's your thing. I didn't disappoint though i hope! Those nodules from Saltwick Bay could prep up to be real beauties. You're right, it helps ensure one particular fossil group isn't totally exhausted from over-collection. Though the ammonite searchers are luckier in many ways i think. They are often not visible anyway as they can be inside rocks that you split open, and there will always be a supply of these to search. Bones that are loose and visible are more obvious to someone in the know, and more easily exhausted because of it (not to mention being less common in the first place).  

11 hours ago, jpc said:

Excellent trip and report, P-101.  I love trips like this and have done a few myself.  Someday there will be a grad tour of the UK form Isle of Wight up to Scotland done by myself and hoprfully Mrs. jpc.  But I am glad to see your pix and read all about it.  Armchair traveling is almost as good.  Very nice ichthyosaur piece.  

Thanks jpc, when you do get around to such a trip, i certainly want to read about it on here!  

[KimTexan]

On 1/7/2018 at 2:50 AM, Paleoworld-101 said:

 

A beautiful ammonite. I believe this is Dactylioceras commune. I found this ammonite amongst the boulders as-is, which makes me suspect that someone planted it there. The other side is encased in rock, but to have this side beautifully exposed like this, could it really be natural?! I'd like to hear from other Yorkshire collectors if this happens or not. Maybe someone decided to leave an anonymous Christmas present???  

Belemnite guards. The last one has a weird wavy wear pattern to it, am i going crazy or does it look like insect damage on trees? Are any ancient invertebrates known to do this to belemnite guards? 

 

 

Someone may have spoken to this already, 

regarding the ammonite: Odds are it just weathered away the nodule on the one side. I see that around North Texas quite often. Sometimes it is the fossil itself that has one side up that weathers away. Sometimes, depending upon the minerals in the soil or pH of the soil it is laying in, the down side may erode away more rapidly.

 

Regarding the last belemite:   It looks like worm or snail boring. It is pretty common to see it on almost anything that was in the water, especially if whatever it was on was already dead prior to the fossilization event.

[Paleoworld-101]

5 hours ago, KimTexan said:

Someone may have spoken to this already, 

regarding the ammonite: Odds are it just weathered away the nodule on the one side. I see that around North Texas quite often. Sometimes it is the fossil itself that has one side up that weathers away. Sometimes, depending upon the minerals in the soil or pH of the soil it is laying in, the down side may erode away more rapidly.

 

Regarding the last belemite:   It looks like worm or snail boring. It is pretty common to see it on almost anything that was in the water, especially if whatever it was on was already dead prior to the fossilization event.

Nope nobody has addressed either yet so thank you. The ammonite still seems strange to me, they fall out of the cliff encased in solid rock and then get tumbled around on the beach. It's hard to see how one side could be fully exposed and the other still fully encased when the means of exposure is movement that should theoretically wear all sides for the most part equally. It was lying with the exposed side facing up, just on the pebbles on the beach. 

 

As for the belelmnite, i agree some kind of invertebrate boring is the most likely explanation. I'll have to do some searching and see if i can come across others like it.