Tag: tooth

england fossils palaeontology

Collecting sharks’ teeth at Herne Bay, Kent

Les Lanham (UK) Just to the east of Herne Bay in Kent, on the way to Reculver at Beltinge, there is a small area on the foreshore where fossils of shark and other fish remains can be found on a good low tide. As this is a beach location, success will depend on good, local conditions but, if favourable, a good number of fossil teeth can be found. In fact, Beltinge is one of the best areas in Britain to collect such teeth and it is not unusual to find 20 to 30 persons on the beach on very low tides. Even so, everybody there could end up with a good haul of material by the end of the day. Fig. 1. Four keen geological groups meet for the annual extreme low tide event. I have set out directions at the end of this article detailing where to start your day. From this starting point, go as far out as the tide will let you and shark teeth can be found. Indeed, the chances of finding teeth improve the further out the tide goes. Broadly speaking, the collecting area is in the section of beach between the groynes either side of the concrete steps. Here, when the tide has gone out quite a distance, there appears to be a “stream” running out to sea. This is the junction between the clay beds to the west and the shingle to the east. Fig. 2. Thanet Beds exposed east of Herne Bay. … Read More

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fossils geology minerals palaeontology

Trouble with pyrite

 Fred Clouter (UK) On Wednesday, 26 April 1882, the Queenborough Chemical and Copperas Works were auctioned off, heralding the demise of the copperas industry on the Isle of Sheppey. Green copperas was used to make sulphuric acid or vitriol, chemical manures and dye stuffs. “Being in Queenborough Castle in the year 1579 I found there one Mathias Falconer, A Brabander, who did in a furnace that he had erected there, trie to drawe very goode brimstone and copperas oute of a certain stone that is gathered in great plenty upon the shoure near untoe Minster on the isle”. This extract is from ‘Lambard’s Perambulations of Kent’ and is probably the earliest known reference to a ‘chemical’ factory in Britain. Fig 1. Poster advertising the sale of Queenborough Chemical and Copperas Company. The first reference that I have that links copperas with the collection of fossils is found in the ‘Life and letters of Edward Lhwyd (second Keeper of the MUSEUM ASHMOLEANUM) Oxford March 28th. 1695’. Below is an excerpt from ‘A Museum of the Early seventeenth Century’ By Cyril Edward Nowill Bromhead, BA, FGS, FRGS. (Read 18Th. June, 1947) referring to the Lhwyd letter: “If you could setle a correspondent in the Isle of Shepey to save us all the Crampstones the copras-women pick up for a month or two, I would now fall about a Lithologia Britannica: and so contrive it that the first tome shall consist of onely teeth and bones of fish.” (Sharks’ teeth were called ‘cramp … Read More

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australasia climate fossils palaeontology

Australia’s Polar Cretaceous mammals

Dr Thomas H Rich (Australia) The Cenozoic Era is commonly referred to as the ‘Age of Mammals’. That is certainly the time in the history of life when their fossils are most abundant and diverse. However, two-thirds of mammalian history was during the Mesozoic Era – and they appeared about the same time as the dinosaurs. All continents except Antarctica have some record of the early, Mesozoic mammals. Of those that do, Australia has the most meagre record of all. Despite this, with this landmass that today has the most distinctive terrestrial mammals on the planet, their Mesozoic origins are so enigmatic that it has motivated a major effort since 1984 to search for fossils of those mammals that lived alongside the dinosaurs on this now isolated continent. Fig. 1. A map of Australia showing the location of the four sites where Cretaceous mammals have been found on the continent. During the Cretaceous, Australia was much further south than at present. Shown here are the lines of latitude at that time on the continent: 50o south, 60o south and 70o south. The famous Lightning Ridge opal field has provided some of the answers – two different early Late Cretaceous egg-laying mammals (the monotremes), as well as a third mammal that may be a monotreme, have been discovered there. One thousand, three hundred kilometres to the south-southwest along shore platforms pounded by the waves of the Southern Ocean, which expose those rocks on south coast of the continent, are three sites … Read More

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