At the end of March a six year old boy from Walsall in the Midlands made national news when he found a fossil in his garden. Siddak Singh Jhamat, known as Sid, said, “I was just digging for worms and things like pottery and bricks and I just came across this rock which looked a bit like a horn, and thought it could be a tooth or a claw or a horn, but it was actually a piece of coral which is called horn coral. I was really excited about what it really was.”
We would not normally associate Walsall with fossils but Sid’s family were able to identify the find with the help of a local fossil group. After contacting Sid to congratulate him on his find, the Jurassic Coast Trust helped identify some of his further fossil discoveries. This led us to becoming involved in a BBC TV piece, and we were able to connect them to the team at the Black Country Geopark, which became part of the UNESCO family in July 2020 when it was awarded UNESCO Global Geopark status.
Wren’s Nest in the Black Country UNESCO Geopark
The Black Country Geopark and the Jurassic Coast are both examples of exceptional British geology that continue to make significant contributions to our science and its public understanding. The geology in the Black Country is very rich in minerals including limestone, ironstone, fireclay and coal, which created a mining revolution.
Within the Geopark lies Wren’s Nest National Nature Reserve, a classic geological site of exceptional importance for the quality and diversity of its fossils and mining heritage. Rocks and fossils here belong to the Silurian Period of the Earth’s history and are between 427.7 and 429 million years old. Over 700 different types of fossil can be found here; 186 types of which were first discovered and described here, and 86 of which are found nowhere else on earth. Similar to parts of the Jurassic Coast, fossil collecting is permitted from the loose scree that continually builds up at the foot of the rock faces, but is not permitted from rock faces.
