Fossil Finder Database 2022
How ammonites tell the time The display of ammonites in Beaminster Museum was collected by Bob Chandler, who has been studying the ammonite zonation of the Inferior Oolite for some 30 years and still has not fully figured it out! Horn Park Quarry is famous for the profusion of ammonites that have been found there…
The ammonite shell has been ground away and the cast of the inside of the shell, formed from calcite and sediment, has been polished to show up the suture lines. These complex patterns were made where the chamber walls met the inside of the shell itself and can therefore only be seen when the shell…
This collection of fossils illustrates just how rich the Inferior Oolite limestone is. The block is dominated by a large ammonite and a bivalve but there is also a second species of bivalve and a small snail or gastropod. Horn Park Quarry near Beaminster is the smallest National Nature Reserve (NNR) in Britain, being just one…
Horn Park Quarry Horn Park Quarry near Beaminster is an internationally-important site for the study of rocks from the start of the Middle Jurassic, about 174 million years ago. Its ammonites are important because they are ‘tools of time’ – they evolved rapidly through time and their shells became trapped in the rocks in sequence. …
This is a banded flint complete with a cast of a fossil Inoceramus shell. The formation of banded flint remains a mystery.
This is the internal, flint-filled cast of the sea urchin Conulus. Urchins like this can be found anywhere where flint is found lying around, including beaches and even gravel drives!
This is possibly part of a dorsal or back spine from a Dimetrodon or Arizonasaurus-like reptile. It would have supported a ‘sail’ along the back of the animal.
This specimen was found by Chris Moore and bought for Sidmouth Museum with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund Collecting Cultures Programme. It has been studied and described by a team from Bristol University, but not enough of the specimen survived to enable it to be assigned to a known species or to support…
Nasty monster? These small but spectacular teeth illustrate that there really are some nasty little monsters in the Triassic rocks of East Devon. Someday, someone is going to find a complete skull, so long as collectors continue to search for them.