What a Great Day Out at the Cotswolds
I went yesterday with the kids. Dave wanted to stay home and watch formula 1 racing and used the inclement weather forecast as an excuse. Well, he missed a really enjoyable day. The weather was lovely, sunny, hazy some of the time, warm but not too hot.
We went to two sites. The first was Latton Quarry - floodplain gravels which were heaving with brachiopods - we all collected carrier bag-fulls. Towards one end of the quarry, Neville told us that some mammoth bones, teeth and occasional flint axe remnants had been found. After filling his bag with brachiopods, Stephen hot-footed it over there where he climbed up and down the heaps getting covered in grime. Esther found a lovely ammonite, a Macrocephalites macrocephalus judging by the pictures in the detailed handouts Neville gave us. Stephen just grubbed around finding belemnites which he took to the "trip leader" to find out what they were. Neville found part of the spine of a mammoth -possibly near the neck area. It was enormous, about 8 inches by 5 inches. The children really enjoyed looking at it and handling it.
We then moved onto the second site, (I forget its name). This was REALLY squishy and muddy and full of deep pits of water. Everybody rushed out with their hammers. I have still not got one so I decided to just wander around picking things up off the surface. Everybody was hammering away when Stephen trotted off and suddenly stood up saying "I’ve found an ammonite". Sure enough, he had a beautifully preserved ammonite in his hand. It was quite ironic that Stephen should have turned up a decent specimen so quickly when everyone else was working so hard to chip one out of the rock. The next thing he found was a nicely preserved fossilised bone. He was delighted to be told that it dated back to the last ice age and was part of a rib cage. He is convinced it is a human rib cage (gory little chap).
A short while later Esther trotted up and showed me an amazing collection of ammonites in her plastic bag. She said that she got them from what she called an ammonite graveyard. Sure enough, a couple of heaps further out where nobody but Esther had wandered, there were loads of ammonites in the rocks. Esther had collected all the ones that were lying around on top. We called Chris over who started hammering, soon to be joined by George. It was tremendous fun. They got out some of the more embedded ammonites.
When the children were tired of finding all the nice specimens, we went up to the meadow and they romped around, enjoying the hoards of dragonflies that would billow up, all the butterflies and the pretty meadow flowers. It was nice to see them playing hide and seek in the grass.
Before we left, I peeled Stephens sodden trousers off him - I think he had half the quarry stuck to them, and put him in one of the two spare sets of clothes had taken. I know what quarries are like, and I know what Stephen is like.
When I got home and washed out the finds (the trousers are still in a plastic bag - got to get your priorities right). I was a bit disappointed to discover that without exception, the children’s finds were FAR better than mine. All the ammonites I found were internal casts, missing out on the lovely external fluting of Esther’s collection. Esther had also found some nice bi-valves (mine were all squished) and Stephen had by far the best belemnites - one of his even had the pointy bit.
Also, a few of our brachiopods have little holes on the shells. Doing S260, you may have come across the bit where they describe how they believe that marine predators used to swim around attaching themselves to other shelly creatures, drilling a little hole in their shell and thereby eating the soft tissues within (gruesome). I knew this happened with bivalves, having read about it, but never realised that it might also happen to brachiopods. I have looked at the holes with a hand lens and they seem to have almost serrated edges, maybe grinding little teeth? I wonder.....
All in all an absolutely fantastic day out. The children got a lot out of the experience. Both are going to label their finds and take them into school to show their teachers and friends. Every time Stephen found something he would trot off to the "leader" and ask him what it was. Neville was very good at telling Stephen what things were in terms that Stephen could understand (describing a rather nice belemnite that Stephen found as the protective casing of a squid so that Stephen could visualise it). Stephen remembers everything he was told and delights in telling us about it (ad infinitum). It has really brought rocks "alive" for them.
When he arrived, George gave the kids some newspaper articles about fossils (I think, I haven’t yet seen them as the kids have squirrelled them away) which was really thoughtful. Certainly, the day has definitely sparked their interest in geology.
Gill Clough