After a rather tortuous drive to avoid the landslips on the Undercliff Road we met Paul Newton of the Isle of Wight Geological Society at the Buddle Inn car park . After introductions Paul whetted our appetites with some of his own specimens(all beautifully prepared )of Ammonites Nautiloids and Gastropods. He didn’t mention at this time the enormous ammonites attributed to him that we had seen in the Dinosaur Isle Museum on Saturday.
We had all arrived by this time and we set off down the lane towards the St Catherines Lighthouse and past Knowle farm where we took the footpath over the cracking Gault Clay to Rocken End arriving with a boot full of very soft grey Gault clay.
Paul gathered the group together amongst the big boulders on the beach and explained the general geology as to how we were at the base of previous landslips and that we were sitting on blocks from the Upper Chalk and the Upper Greensand that had slipped/slumped from the top of West Cliff several hundreds of meters to the North. Paul explained that the boulders from the Glauconitic Marl at the base of the Lower Chalk were the most fossiliferous and he demonstrated how to spot these particular rocks of glauconitic sand and silt with phosphatised and glauconitic calcareous pebbles and phosphatised fossils and fossil fragments.
Paul demonstrated the technique and those who had hammers were looking for the right sort of rocks and splitting them with “ gusto”. Beware, Chalk Marl can be confused with Glauconitic Marl but it is much less likely to contain fossils. Some boulders had ammonites showing on the surface, but all too often they were only pieces. However, most people found something - small ammonites, parts of nautiloids, sponges, gastropods and brachiopods and a nice sharks tooth (thank you Adrian).
We had our packed lunches in hot sunshine beside the sparkling blue sea (not bad for late October). Some slipped back to sample the comforts of the Buddle Inn and others followed the coast around to the West for more boulders, where once again Paul and Adrian (our own fossil expert) seemed to have the best ‘eye’ . From this vantage point we were able to see the whole succession down from Gore Cliff and the succession of Lower Greensand in the cliffs behind Chale Bay.( This was the site of the recent Television Dinosaur excavation Extravaganza)
Hammering with this ferocity can be dangerous and there were one or two sore hands, but no real damage. If you go again you will need a good hammer and a pointed chisel. We did leave some of the rocks well smashed, but it was only rocks that were waiting to be attacked by the sea - a much more powerful force.
During the day Paul told of the finding of really big ammonites that needed several men to manhandle the specimens up the cliff for conservation. We weren’t that lucky but it was good to have the local expert to show us how it was done and we all thanked him in the usual way in the garden of the Buddle Inn to which he returned us right on time to drive for our ferries - ours was late!
Peter Martin