Kimmeridge Clay Ichthyosaur Paddle

Here (link) is an awesome picture of a fossil ichthyosaur paddle found in 2003 near Osmington Mills. The original story can be read on Ian West's website here;
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~imw/kimfoss.htm
It's a great read and really makes me wish I was back in Dorset instead of being in Scotland.

Background image

I've been changing the background colour of this bolg frequently usually because new photos have clashed with the original colour. So I decided to create a background image with a ichthyosaur which is more related to the blog title. Here is the design I sketched last night. I cant get the blog description to move out of the way of the paddle so for the moment its difficult to read but no one reads this blog anyway!

The sketch is from an illustration of ichthyosauras communis in Dictionnaire Universel D'Histoire Naturelle published by Alcide d’Orbigny in 1849. It can be seen on google books here. There are some other good images and information in Ian West's Dorset website; http://www.soton.ac.uk/~imw/liasfos.htm

‘Fossil’ clothing

I’m a sucker for ‘branded’ clothing – anything with palaeontology logos. Here are a couple of my favourites;

http://www.threadless.com/submission/250874/know_your_dinosaurs - (I know a pterodactyl isn’t a dinosaur and so does the designer!)

A proper palaeontologist once told me they liked this – ego trip there for me.

http://www.cafepress.co.uk/+fossil_dark_tshirt,195297220

The links are to the shop websites - I can't put pictures on here beacuse of copywrite.

More pinhole photography

Here are some pinhole camera photos I took at Wardie Shore – as you can see the wall I rested the camera on wasn’t horizontal. 

These last 2 are very dark - they were taken at the same time but 180 degrees in the opposite direction. It shows how much sunlight is needed fro good shots - or more shutter time. Lots of scope for practice here.

I wish I had thought to get a picture of the sunset to accompany this digital one.

Fish Ancestry

 

My goldfish Attenborough gets a bit lonely on his own so I decided to introduce him to some of his ancestors. I’m not sure how fish lineages work so I just showed him some of my fish fossils. 

 

The fish on the left I bought from a fossil fair and is Knightia eocaena a relative of a modern herring. It’s from the Green River formation, Wyoming, USA. The Green river formation is DEFINITELY on my ‘to visit’ list especially after reading this article in geo times . Here is the national monument website. The formation is Eocene inland lakes (it’s called green River after a modern river) here are some details of the fossil formation.

 

The fossil on the right looks less impressive but I was very excited when I found it. It’s from Monmouth beach, Lyme Regis I thought it was a bit of fossilised wood when I picked it up. I was on an OUGS (Open University Geological Society) trip so I could get it identified by the leader as a section of fish scales. I’m not sure which species so I will take it to the NMS when it reopens to get it identified.

 

Attenborough wasn’t very interested in the fossils so I gave him some bloodworms instead – he obviously prefers invertebrates.

Wardie shore fossil photographs

Here are the photographs of the fossils I bought back form Wardie shore last week. These are nodules containing coprolites in spiral form. According to the geological conservation review (link below) they are presumed to be chondrichthyan - a cartilaginous fish (see Wikipedia chondrichthyan and Chondrichthyes). Cm ruler for scale.

 

 

 

  

Also here is a plant fragment.

This is a very soft shale and I expect it will crumble away when it drys out. I'm told that you can spray these with hair lacquer for preservation but I have no money so the experiment will have to wait.

Here is a link to the geological conservation review for Wardie shore (in pdf)

http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/pdf/grcdb/GCRsiteaccount1370.pdf

The limpet living in my bathroom sink.

I have a limpet living in my bathroom sink - it was an accident. He hitched a lift in some fossils I bought back from Wardie Shore this week. I thought the hot water I washed the fossils in had killed him but he still seems quite active.   

I went to Wardie Shore on an evening trip with the Edinburgh Geology Society we visited the East shore home of the excellent fish beds.  They are described best in ‘Lothian geology an excursion guide’ by McAdam and Clarkson (amazon link). The beds are formed of a lake or lagoon either brackish or freshwater with sea incursions – the interpretation is slightly different depending which interpretation I read. It is suggested that temperature differences created an oxygen free layer below the surface waters where organic remains sank and were preserved.  These beds are famous for their fossil fish but on pout trip we only found plan material, fish scales, and many coprolites (fossil fish scat).

Here are some of the fossils we saw in-situ;

2 important points about Granton / Wardie shore;

-the Forth estuary is badly polluted always wash always wash your hands and any finds form the beach well! A bottle of hand wash is always a good idea when out looking for fossils.

-the site is an SSSI hammering in the bed rock and collecting in-situ fossil is forbidden – stick to the loose material.  Any fossil removed from the bedrock immediately looses any stratigraphical information and becomes just a pretty rock. If you find anything interesting in-situ contact the NMS for advice.

Here are some pictures of our trip;

I will try and photograph some of the fossils I collected for another post.