Fossil Finder Database 2022
These are tiny teeth from the shark Acrodus minimus. In the Rhaetic Bone Bed where they were found, little shark teeth are relatively common. They are usually found by collecting a bulk sample and processing it to concentrate the teeth while removing the clay.
Here is a good example of this sponge, showing the shape that gives it the specific name ‘tulipa’. Such specimens are not found very often.When complete, the sponge would have had a long ‘stem’, looking just like a flower.
This average-sized specimen is beautifully preserved, missing just a small part of the tail. It was found in a layer of rock known as Langs’ Fish Bed which sounds very promising, but actually fish are rarely found there.
What’s woodstone? Nodules of hard limestone often form around pieces of fossil wood, particularly in the Lower Jurassic rocks around Lyme Regis. This type of stone is known as ‘woodstone’. You’ll see that attached to the wood are the shells of the oyster Inoceramus dorsetensis. Oysters would often grow on floating driftwood, keeping themselves above…
This specimen is the skull of the fish Dapedium. This specimen formed part of the Philpot sisters’ collection. The Philpot sisters were friends of Mary Anning, and spent much time collecting fossils with her.
This was a boring sponge which lived in the cavities it created inside the shells of other creatures. Here, the shell has dissolved away, leaving a cast of the space it occupied.
Bryozoans are minute creatures living together as colonies. This specimen is quite common and one of the largest of its type. It grows in a colony to a size that’s very much greater than the individuals that make it.
What a whopper! This is an extremely large specimen of Dapedium. Its preservation inside a hard limestone nodule means that some parts, especially the head and jaws, retain much of their three-dimensional structure. The tail and fins lay outside of the nodule, and so were not preserved.
This squid is incomplete, and was found in a bed of soft shale, making it difficult to collect. It formed part of the collection belonging to the Philpot sisters, who often went out fossil hunting with the celebrated Lyme Regis collector, Mary Anning.