A Fossil I Found

A FOSSIL I FOUND

For this Steemit post I thought I would talk about this little fossil I discovered on the weekend.

I found it at Kilve beach, which is on the West Somerset coast. Kilve Beach is a really good spot for fossil-hunting. It is a very rocky beach whose cliffs are made up of shale. The sea has little problem in eroding the cliffs and so there is always new debris littering the coast. Much of it contains fossils, most typically ammonites, although usually they are contained in rocks too heavy to be removed and are not, strictly-speaking, the fossils themselves but the imprint they left.

This fossil I found is not an ammonite but some other kind of shellfish. If it was alive when ammonites existed it would be about 100 million years old. I don’t know what species of shellfish my fossil was. I do know, however, that locals used to refer to fossils like mine as ‘Devil’s Toenails’. I think the reason why is pretty obvious when you look at how it resembles a claw.