Since my last blog I have also taken a trip down to the fossil coast.
Every so often I take a trip down to the dorset coast in search of fossils. You can always find fossils in shops, there are plenty of annomites about but i have always found that searhing for your own fossils feels much more rewarding. You can find things that you don't find in your average rocks and mineral shop, such as what I found a few trips back, which I persume to be an ithyosaur tooth due to its likeness to the mososaur tooth I had bought before it. This time it had been raining and there was what looked like fresh rockfall on the beach. The lowest tide was at 1:00 pm and we arived at 11:00 am, when the tide was still lapping at Lyme Regis's sea defences. A lone cormarant stood among a flock of lesser black backed gulls. It tolerated my presence uneasily for a while before taking off and flying out to sea. After making a break for it onto the beach, luckily avoiding any wet feet I automatically started scanning the sand for any signs of fossils. There was plety of fragemented seaglass. Sea glass itself is very interesting to collect as you can search up the history of the glass and where it came from. I found plenty of dark blue fragments. The fragments of sea glass were also mixed up with fragments of glass that had fallen from the victorian dump, which meant that there were some sharp bits and even complete bottles lying around. I have always found that when looking for fossils, the best thing to look for is iron pyrite. Wherever there is iron pyrite, there are fossils. You can find fossils formed from the mineral itself, which can lead to some amazing specimin's but can also sadly lead to some fossils that are clearly of an anomite shape but have been 'over-pyrited'. This time, as I was there when the tide was going out, I was one of the first to find particular area's that were covered in Pyrite. There I found complete and partial annomites. These fossils made it clear why the mineral that formed them was called 'fools gold'. To some they may appear to be the element itself when held in the morning sunlight. As I was fossil hunting Oystercatchers darted to and fro out to see, calling to each other as they crossed from one headland to the next. Even when I was not looking directly out at the sea, I could hear their piping calls as they passed by and when I turned to look I could see the distinct pattern on their back's as they flew away. I also found plenty of belemites at lyme regis and some interesting looking rocks. We headed back to the car, but not before buying a cone of chips. We then headed off to Charmouth. Charmouth has very steep cliffs and it was amazing to think that these had once been the floor of the ocean. I remember thinking about it when I first went fossil hunting, years ago when I was around 5 and feeling amazed by the height of the cliffs and the process by which fossils are formed. We walked along the cliff edge, always watching for any sign of a fall. There had been some debris that had recently come down from the cliff and so we looked in it for any fossils. In the chipped clay, there were many complete annomites and loads of belemites.Some of the belemites appeared to have been formed out of smokey quartz, which was quite unusual. It reminded me of an annomite that my gran found a few years ago that was made of quartz and was very beautiful to look at. From near the cliffs, a robin was tikking at me and there were ducks on the river that approached the cars for food, quacking. After visiting the charmouth fossil centre and shop we headed off home, where I cleaned up the fossils I collected and removed as much clay as possible from the complete annomites. I would reccomend these places as good area's for fossil hunting as I have always found interesting specimens there. I have had an interesting few weeks concerning fossils and nature. A few weeks back I got bitten by a False Widow spider (I was identifying the spider on google images whilst dipping my whole foot in a bowl of cold water as it throbbed and stang like it was on fire. My mum said she thought I had taken my wildlife interest to the extreme at this point.) The false widow was introduced to the UK a hundred years ago and has been in the news a lot recently due to its rare habit of biting people. (I unfortunatly happened to roll over onto mine at night.) People have experienced reactions to the bite (I was slightly worried, considering my history of allergic reactions but luckily none occured) and so people are often scared of the spiders, even though apparently to most people spider bites in the UK are no worse than a bee sting unless it gets infected. Mine just stang like mad, the bite rose up and kept on stinging and aching for the rest of the week. Spiders come into houses in the winter as it is warmer and some even come in to look for a mate. The giant spiders that people find in their houses are actually often Giant European House Spiders, which are harmless but to me hugely cool. Garden spiders can also be found in houses, as well as others. There are quite a few species in the UK with an ability to bite, but most rarely do unless threatened (Or flattened accidently like the one in my case.) I hope all my readers have a wonderful holiday and Christmas (if you celebrate it). I will be looking forward to posting my next blog and I hope you enjoy reading it! :D
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About Me!Hello, I am a young birdwatcher and wildlife enthusiast here to talk about my interests and other things on my mind. I hope you enjoy my blog. Archives
April 2017
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