We were staying at East Runton, a mile from Cromer, where there are huge caravan sites. On an early walk we noticed where a landslip had toppled some caravan bases down the cliffs. We were glad that we were in a cottage, because those vans at the top can't be too secure.
All the time that we were out and about on the beaches of North Norfolk I was scanning for amber. I'd heard it said that you can just pick up pieces of Baltic amber from the beach. Now, the frustrating thing was that many of the pebbles were in fact quartz, but stained a kind of rusty orange, a bit like an amber colour. So I was constantly picking bits up and then dropping them again.
On our last day, we were just poddling along the beach at East Runton. Here the beach had patches of flint, some of it knobbly and misshapen.
I spotted a short pinkish object, like a piece of sea-glass - about an inch long. Then another similar, but with a hole through it.
Soon I had a number of pieces, one with a pointed end.
And then a longer piece, like a finger, but hollow.
I showed them to my husband, thinking that they were some sort of glass, abraded to opacity by the sea. Some sort of electrical fitment perhaps?
"I think it might be a fossil," my husband said. I was sceptical. However, it turns out that he was right.
It was a belemnite - the calcified skeleton of a prehistoric squid-like creature. And when I say prehistoric we are talking six hundred million years ago.
East Runton is apparently one of the best beaches for fossil-hunting because it has high chalk cliffs which are eroding on to the beach. Now we had noticed the layers of flints in the face of the cliffs, but we had not thought of them as fossils. That belemnite must have been buried in the chalk all those years.
All the time that we were out and about on the beaches of North Norfolk I was scanning for amber. I'd heard it said that you can just pick up pieces of Baltic amber from the beach. Now, the frustrating thing was that many of the pebbles were in fact quartz, but stained a kind of rusty orange, a bit like an amber colour. So I was constantly picking bits up and then dropping them again.
On our last day, we were just poddling along the beach at East Runton. Here the beach had patches of flint, some of it knobbly and misshapen.
I spotted a short pinkish object, like a piece of sea-glass - about an inch long. Then another similar, but with a hole through it.
Soon I had a number of pieces, one with a pointed end.
And then a longer piece, like a finger, but hollow.
I showed them to my husband, thinking that they were some sort of glass, abraded to opacity by the sea. Some sort of electrical fitment perhaps?
"I think it might be a fossil," my husband said. I was sceptical. However, it turns out that he was right.
It was a belemnite - the calcified skeleton of a prehistoric squid-like creature. And when I say prehistoric we are talking six hundred million years ago.
East Runton is apparently one of the best beaches for fossil-hunting because it has high chalk cliffs which are eroding on to the beach. Now we had noticed the layers of flints in the face of the cliffs, but we had not thought of them as fossils. That belemnite must have been buried in the chalk all those years.
.JPG)
1 comment:
WOW that is a wonderful find!
Post a Comment