Fossil hunting

The best thing about fossil hunting is that you never know what you’re going to find,” says Paddy Howe, walk leader and geologist at Lyme Regis Museum. He’s been searching for fossils along Dorset’s coastline for almost half a century and his enthusiasm remains undimmed. med. If you know where to look and what to look for, there are archaeological treasures to discover after every high tide along the Jurassic Coast.

Some are carried in by the waves, but the majority are washed down from the cliffs where the multiple layers of ancient blue lias rock, limestone and sandstone slowly surrender their secrets to the elements. Bad weather, it turns out, might rock a caravan at Wood Farm AS, but is also a harbinger of good fossil hunting.

As we wait for high tide to subside, Paddy takes out a selection of fossils from his rucksack to reveal the sort of thing we might find amid the sand and rocks. With the excitement of a schoolboy showing off a grasshopper in a matchbox, he passes round the vertebra of an ichthyosaur, a type of reptile once common in these parts; a selection of ammonites, spiralled like rams’ horns; and an echinoid, a stone with a fantastically-detailed image of a sea urchin etched into its surface.

“Anyone know what this is?” asks Paddy, holding up a shiny coprolite pebble. It’s a fossilised poo, complete with Jurassic fish scales. Contrary to popular opinion, here’s proof that you can ‘polish a turd’!

Scampering above the waves we begin our walk – we being a retired couple from Cambridge, myself, a young Austrian couple, and an elderly husband and wife from Florida. The Jurassic Coast is globally renowned for its rich fossil history. “This is the only World Heritage Site where you are actively encouraged to take away artefacts,” says Paddy. “Don’t try that at Stonehenge!”

In the footsteps of dinosaurs

The ethics of fossil hunting are straightforward – anything found on the beach is fair game to keep (if they’re not collected they’ll be destroyed by the sea), but you’re not allowed to hack away at the cliff. If you find a never-before-seen fossil you’re encouraged to have it catalogued and classified by the nearby Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre. There’s a chance the experts will name it after you.

Regardless of my caravan’s MTPLM, I’m secretly hoping to find a T-Rex jaw, pterodactyl wing or diplodocus spine, my dinosaur knowledge honed by Spielberg rather than text books. But this is not the place for such glamorous discoveries. Between 200 and 208 million years ago – “give or take a week,” says Paddy – this area was a warm, shallow ocean, so its fossils are of reptiles and sea creatures. Any larger skeletons probably belonged to dinosaurs washed down rivers by floods.

Scouring the foreshore for ancient treasure

With this in mind, my search moves from macro to micro as I scan the beach with the focus of a forensic scientist at a crime scene. My initial discoveries include a translucent pebble that turns out to be a fragment of a beer bottle rather than amber, and a piece of flint that I had been hoping would be a sea snail. Paddy lets me down gently and starts to point out clues to more promising places to search.

A cluster of rusted metal objects is an auspicious spot to look for golden ammonites, and sure enough a tiny, shiny, perfectlyspiralled fossil glints out of the sand. It covers barely a third of my thumb nail and is made from iron pyrite, otherwise known as fool’s gold, yet it feels extraordinarily precious – 195 million years ago it was bobbing around in these waters. The dates are bewildering, sobering evidence that our own existence accounts for the briefest flicker on Earth’s timeline.

The amazing Jurassic Coast

We saunter slowly down the beach; this may be billed as a fossil walk, but there’s not much walking involved. It is, though, utterly engrossing. I barely notice the lap of the waves or the cry of gulls as my eyes sweep backwards and forwards. It’s also rather alarming to see how such a lovely beach, on closer inspection, carries the detritus of human life. Spark plugs, metal pipes and rusting machinery nestle in the sand, alongside glass of all colours. Paddy points out a steam iron and quips, “Iron Age find?”

As we approach the far end of this out-andback walk, less than a mile from where we started, Paddy gathers a series of limestone rocks that he likens to giant Smarties and places them on an altar-like boulder. Removing a heavy geological hammer from his rucksack, he starts to crack the rocks. Some turn out to be solid limestone, but others open to reveal the beautiful calcite spirals of ammonites. Each stone feels like a Jurassic scratchcard; some are winners containing fossils, others are duds.

"It covers barely a third of my thumb nail and is made from iron pyrite, otherwise known as fool's gold"

My walk back to Lyme Regis Museum is unlike any coastal walk I’ve done before. Instead of gazing to where sky meets sea, I concentrate on the sand and pebbles at my toes, stooping to investigate the tell-tale signs of a possible fossil and trying to get my head around the fact that creatures lived here nearly 200 million years ago. Fossil walking is mind-blowing and addictive.