The cliffs are from the Jurassic period. The Jurassic period was 200 to 145 million years ago.
A fossil is the remains of an animal or plant that has been turned into stone by a process called fossilisation. Fossils are usually found in a type of rock called sedimentary rock. These are rocks that are made when sand or mud is laid down in layers. The layers get squashed under more and more layers and eventually turn to rocks. A fossil forms when an animal dies and its remains lie in mud or sand. The body decays but the shape of it remains in the mud. Over millions of years the mud is turned into stone with the fossil shape still inside it.
Lots of the fossils we found were
Ammonites. These are from the Jurassic
period. Ammonites were sea animals that had a coiled shell. They became extinct at the same time as the
dinosaurs.
We also found some Belemnites.
Most of them were still buried in the large rocks on the beach. Belemnites were also marine animals. They had
a body like a squid but with a hard skeleton that was bullet shaped in the
tail. Some people call them devil’s
fingers or devil’s bullets because of their pointed shape.
Some of the other fossils we found
molluscs or bivalves. They had a soft body but a hard shell and you can see the
shell shape left in the rock.
Ammonites
bivalves
