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| Lulworth Cove, Dorset, England |
The next stop on our farther afield trip was the Jurassic
Coast. We visited a portion in a little town called Lulworth Cove; I chose it
so we could see the Durdle Door. Moving from Hampton Roads to Alpine Germany
cuts your beach time severely, and I was missing the coast.
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| The Durdle Door from the top of the Cliff. We hiked down to the shore. Dorset, England |
The name Jurassic Coast comes from the fossils found here
over the centuries. The Jurassic Coast stretches along 96 miles of beaches on
England’s Southern coast. The area is susceptible to land slips, and that is
how many of the larger fossils were found; a swath of the cliffs on the
coastline fell away revealing the fossils inside, including marine dinosaurs.
The fossils span 180 million year of history, and are not only from the
Jurassic, but also the Triassic and Cretaceous periods.
The whole Jurassic coast is a UNESCO World Heritage Site,
but you can still collect fossils if you follow certain guidelines. If you
uncover large or scientifically significant fossils, you must report your find,
and if you follow the rules, it is likely you will be allowed to keep it. Full details of the fossil code can be found here.
We found a few small fossils we were able to take without
violating the fossil code, and we didn’t see anything larger. The bigger, more
important fossils usually turn up after a storm when the landscape has changed
enough to uncover them.
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| England's unique coastline; grassy hills to the right, sheer cliff faces to the left. Dorset, England |
England’s coastline is not like a typical American coast
where you approach a nice flat beach and can see the ocean from miles away. The
English coast is made up of sheer cliff faces that crumble easily. When we
arrived in Lulworth, we were unsure if we were in the right place because the
landscape still looked like the countryside we had been driving through;
rolling, grassy hills. Once we climbed the hills, we were able to see their backsides,
the rocky cliffs, and climb down to the shore. It was beautiful and tricky. In
some places there used to be stairs and paths, but the land under them has
eroded, and the man-made stuff has crashed to beach below. Now it is a much
more authentic hiking experience; no handrails or pavements, just difficult
ground. Even the beach itself was unstable; the sand was coarse, more like
gravel, and it gave way under foot.
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| The beach and the cliffs near Durdle Door Dorset, England |
All difficulties in arriving were forgotten when we reached
the beach, and our fossil hunt began. The smallest pebbles in the sand we
largely ignored, though we did see some of the tiniest shells among them: about
2mm at their tallest. We looked for ammonites among the larger rocks and we
actually found something! They’re small, but since we didn’t bring a hammer and
chisel, they’re the best we could hope for.
The beach was gorgeous, I would love to spend more time on
the English coast, and maybe discover a much large fossil. The area is dotted
with small towns like Lulworth, and spending time in any of them would be a
very relaxing vacation. Jane Austen herself spent some time on the Jurassic Coast
in a town called Lyme Regis, and it later became the setting of one of her
novels: Persuasion.
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