Sea Urchin
Here is a sea urchin, Micraster, preserved in a block of flint. These specimens are best left as they are because they are ‘welded’ into the flint and cannot usually be removed from the rock.
Fossil Finder Database 2022
Sea Urchin
Club spines Some sea urchins, particularly the regular forms (round with a central mouth) were covered with heavy club spines, each armed with hundreds of fine spines. The spines easily fall off after death, so it’s rare to find the shell and spines together.
Lobster
Claw back the years Unbelievably, this lobster is over 100 million years old! Compare its segmented body and claw to a modern-day lobster, and you’ll see that there is hardly any difference at all. Undamaged specimens such as this are hard to find, and even harder to clean or prepare.
Sea Urchin
Often, the delicate test (shell) of the sea urchin is crushed, but some like this are beautifully preserved. You can clearly see the ‘knobbles’ where the spines were attached to the test, and the rows of tiny holes where flexible ‘tubed feet’ extended out.
Crinoid sea lily
This crinoid, Marsupites, has a relatively large, bulbous body (the calyx) which might have been partly buried when the creature was alive, increasing its fossilisation chances. The long arms (not preserved here) extended into the water. Some sea cucumbers, another type of echinoderm, live in a very similar way today on the sandy sea bed of…
Crinoid sea lily
Apiocrinites is one of the more unusual and distinctive crinoids from the Jurassic Coast. Unlike the Lower Jurassic Pentacrinites which has a star-shaped cross section, Apiocrinites is composed of a series of round disks that swell in size to form the calyx, the structure that houses the main body. The individual, scattered disks are more…
Starfish
A fossil cushion! Goniaster is a type of starfish. The legs or arms have become shortened almost to the point where the body has become a five-sided structure. They are known as ‘cushion stars’ because of their shape and plump appearance.
Starfish
Bottom dweller Dorset Kimmeridge Clay is rich in fossils of different animals, most of which were free-swimming. Very few bottom-dwelling animals such as this starfish are found because most of the time the sea floor was stagnant and poisonous to life. Although poor for the bottom-dwellers, these conditions are excellent for fossilisation because there were…
Brittle Star
Caught in a storm? This near-perfect brittle star comes from the ‘Starfish Bed’ between Eype and Seatown. Hundreds of similar fossils have been recovered from huge fallen blocks on the beach for more than two centuries. Many, like this one, have some or all legs pointing or trailing in one direction. This suggests that there was…