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Upper Gilwern Quarry, Wales
Order Now22nd January 2023 – 11:00am
(£15 landowner fee payable on the day)
On the edge of the Brecon Beacons, Upper Gilwern Hill is a site long known for its well-preserved and complete trilobites. The hill is made up of rocks from the Lower and Middle Ordovician, and the privately owned quarry is accessible to parties staying at the onsite Shepherd’s Hut self catering accommodation. The trilobite fossils here are plentiful and the chances of finding a good number is very high. Please note: £15 non refundable landowners charge per person.
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Southerndown, South Wales
FreeOrder Now12th March 2023 – 11.00am
Southerndown is a Jurassic coastal location that closely resembles the classic Lias sites of Somerset. The early Blue Lias is mostly thickly bedded limestones, with thin shale bands. The limestones are full of bivalves, with occasional ammonites. They sometimes also yield reptile remains and fish.
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Lee-on-Solent, Hampshire
FreeOrder Now19th March 2023 – 13:00pm
On the lower foreshore at Lee-on-Solent, a diverse vertebrate fauna has been recovered from several levels within the uppermost beds of the Bracklesham Group. The fauna is particularly rich in shark teeth and the site has yielded over 30 species of selachians (a fish of a group that comprises the sharks and dogfishes.). Chimaeroids, also known as ghost sharks, rat fish, spookfish or rabbit fish are poorly known elsewhere in the Middle Eocene but are represented at Lee-on- Solent by five species. Teleost (ray-finned fish) otoliths (ear structures) are also extremely well represented in the fossiliferous beds. Finding the fosils requires little skill. The teeth can be picked up and merely require washing! Larger and more fragile specimens can be left in a block of sediment, to be extracted later.
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Penarth, Wales
FreeOrder Now7th May 2023 – 11.00am
Penarth is the most popular location in Wales for fossil collectors. This is down to both the site being very rich in fossils, together being a major built up area. This site can be over collected but you still should come home with some finds.
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Bracklesham Bay, Sussex
FreeOrder Now14th May 2023 – 11:00am
There are nearly always people collecting at Bracklesham Bay. Fossils can simply be found washed up on the sand, and you can normally come back with bags full of decent finds, especially sharks’ teeth. During scouring tides, the fossiliferous Bracklesham Formation form the Eocene is exposed and the beach can be covered with ray and sharks’ teeth, and also bivalve shells. Occasionally, you can find corals, but you will definitely find lots of the often overlooked, large, single-celled foraminifera (Nummulites laevigatus).