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This is the first time I'm adding a trip to this, and the second time through...time outs are a bummer. Anyway, Here goes...This was a spur of the moment trip to hopefully find more than 4 teeth. However, the ocean wasn't very cooperative as it had dumped a load of sand covering all of the gravel pits and teeth with a pretty hefty layer. So I switched to plan "B"...getting layer samples for a couple of friends. Having completed that, I was just walking around, looking at the cliffs since I had driven an hour and a half, I was going to try and salvage what I could of the day. I met a felow collector who guided me on where to look, and what ot look for in the Red Crag formation and in a short time, Wheee...the day was salvaged...4 Neptunia contraria - 2.5 million years old...and as you can see by the picture (Center 4 items), the have the opening on the right hand side...way cool. Pretty simple looking for large items in the Red Crag...you stick your hand in the material and start feeling around and "poof" when you feel something hard, you pull it out and look at it. Yep, could be useless, but you won't know until you clean it up...Wise words imparted to me by someone many of you at the BRF site may know..."Capt Tom" from Cooper River Diving..."Keep everything, sort it out at home or on the boat because you can't always tell for sure what you've got until then." So, using that info, I also found 2 Glycymeris glycymeris (2 on the lower right hand of the picture) and a few other odds and ends. The large item at the top of the picture was misidentified by a passerby...they thought it was Fossil Ivory...So I cleand it as best as I dared and the following weekend took it to London for identification. I learned something that day...Folks...don't take your fossils to the British Museum...they only look at ancient coins and artifacts, not fossils...So, the Wife and I had to hightail it across London to the Museum of Natural History before they closed where there was no one in the Earth Lab, however, they have a collection up there that would make you drool, as well as all kinds of equipment "available for use from Monday - Friday" Bummer...can't find a palentologist when you need one...However, one young fellow, was just as interested as I was, and tracked someone down...It turns out that the big lump at the top of the picture is either a crawfish or lobster burrow that, over time, filled up with spherical crystals of the mineral Glauconite. Well, we just keep looking.
Location Walton on the Naze, United Kingdom

ID711
Memberscubadoc
Date Added11/5/2006

  

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