Footpath Fossils

24th July 2020
Perhaps “footpath” overdoes it; anyway, a certain narrow track which runs below a crumbly outcrop often serves up fresh falls of small rubble, and somewhere up above must be a spalling fossil bed.
This stone, typical of what one finds, is 4 inches/100 mm long.

Re the fan-shaped shell fossil, this comes courtesy of Friends Who Know –
“They are Brachiopods, creatures that have a very long geological history (at least back to the Cambrian = up to 543 million years ago).  They preserve well because of the shells and so a lot of them got fossilized.  They are bivalves (shell in two halves) and superficially look like Molluscs but Brachiopoda is a different phylum.   Marloes is a rich source of Brachiopod fossils. Some of them survive to this day (e.g. Lingula).  After consultation with my resident geologist and several tomes we think these are of the genus Rhynchonellidae.  Probably from the Silurian period (418 – 433 million years ago).  That makes them even older than Chris.”