Fossil Finder Database 2022
Here is a large, quite common and easily identified bivalve shell from the Corallian rocks of the Portland Harbour Shore. As the name suggests, bivalves consist of two shells. ‘Bi’ means two and ‘valve’ means shell. The shells are held together by a strong muscle, and hinged at the pointed end.
Shell with a hitch-hiker This brachiopod, called Rhynchonella boueti, exists in huge numbers in the rock layer in which it’s found, the Boueti Bed. This specimen has a bryozoan growing on it – a tiny animal that grows on the surfaces of rocks, plants or animal shells. Bryozoans are filter feeder that sieve particles of food out of…
Bivalve and burrow Here is a a really interesting specimen showing both the shell and its burrow. This type of bivalve lived buried in the sea bed. The photo shows it in life position. Extending upward were two siphon tubes contained within a burrow and part of that burrow is still attached to the bivalve.…
The beautifully-preserved ribbing, decoration and growth lines are visible on this bivalve shell. There are two different kinds of bivalves. Like this specimen, mussels, scallops and clams have a solid, hard shell, whereas the shell of the oyster is made of many fine layers.
This bryozoan, the minute mat-like structure at the end of the white arrow, colonised the shell of a Goniorhynchia boueti brachiopod.
This tiny tubeworm lived on a Goniorhynchia brachiopod. Tubeworms, as the name suggests, are worms that protect themselves by living in a hard tube which they secrete around their body. They all start small, obviously, while most need a hard surface to attach to and the brachiopod shell provided that.
Crinoids have a five-fold, or five-sided symmetry and that is what places them in the same family as starfish (with five arms) and sea urchins (with five sides). The stalk, shown here, is composed from a series of plates that sit one on top of the other. The delicate pattern on the surface is to…
Why are fossils from Charmouth in Wareham Museum? The answer is that we wanted to make the connection between the oil under Poole Harbour (the Wytch Farm oilfield), and the rocks from which the oil originated. The oil comes from organic material trapped in rock. These rocks formed on a stagnant sea floor where the…
A liquid fossil Oil is formed from organic material, mostly plankton, that rained down into a muddy, stagnant sea floor where, rather than rotting, it became trapped in the sediments. Millions of years later, if the rocks are buried deep enough (typically over 2,000 metres), heat and pressure can ‘cook’ that organic material into oil…