Fossil Finder Database 2022
Quality building stone This section of cut roach stone is packed with bivalves and gastropods. Look very closely and you can also just about see the minute egg-shaped ooliths (grains) that make up Portland Stone and help create its quality as building stone. Ooliths form from grains of sand and shell fragments rolled about in…
Oysters encrusted with tubeworms These two fossils are an extinct kind of oyster called Gryphaea. They have two shells, and as you can see on the top specimen, one shell is much larger than the other. The shell opened to allow water to be drawn inside and filtered for food. If you look closely, you’ll…
What was for dinner? This is the most common species of ichthyosaur from the Lower Lias. It would have been around two metres in length had it been a complete specimen. Careful acid preparation has revealed stomach contents such as squid tentacle hooklets. The shape of the intestines is picked out in cololite (faecal matter…
As big as they get? This specimen is one of the largest Ichthyosaurs found in the Lower Lias around Lyme Regis. ‘Kevin’ was found in 2005 by museum geologist Paddy Howe, during phase II of the ongoing sea defence works. He was supervising the digging as part of the palaeontological watching brief. The specimen was named…
Superb skull This specimen is the skull of a very large Ichthyosaur which would have measured up to eight metres long. This makes it one of the larger Jurassic ichthyosaurs. Many of its teeth are missing, something which may have contributed to the animal’s death. The museum also has one front fin and a row…
Scelidosaur, the Charmouth dinosaur This is a dorsal vertebra (a back bone in between the shoulders and hips) of a young dinosaur. It is from a scelidosaur, which are only found in the Charmouth area. This specimen was one of the first dinosaurs to be discovered and described anywhere in the world. The specimen is the paratype,…
Beautiful burrower These beautiful and highly-decorated bivalves have a triangular shape which gave rise to the old name Trigonia, but they have now been reclassified and given a new name, Myophorella. This is a burrowing bivalve that lived in the sediment on the sea bed. Siphons extended through the sediment allowing the animal to suck water…
Here is an example of a ‘classic’ chalk sea urchin. Look closely and you can see the tiny pimples that supported fine hair-like spines, used when the animal was burrowing through the soft chalk ooze. Notice that there’s also a shell encrusted on the urchin (bottom side of photo).
This is a common bivalve shell particularly in the middle chalk. As the name suggests, bivalves consist of two shells. ‘Bi’ means two and ‘valve’ means shell.