Another Trip to Rock-a-nore, Hastings, UK, Fossil Hunting and a Look at the Fossil Collection on Display at the Shipwreck Museum.

May 30

I managed to grab some more time at Rock-a-nore looking for fossils and getting some exercise. Being in a wild natural space, pretty much alone, it also does wonders for maintaining mental health.

Working rolling shifts means that I'm reliant on favourable tides coinciding with my rest days/time off which doesn't happen too often. When it does, I can sometimes get a couple of days hunting in a row.

The location is early cretaceous and the formations are known as the Ashdown and Wealden Beds and are around 140 million years old.

It wasn't great weather wise, fine mist with occasional showers. This doesn't put me off but I did wind up very damp and a bit cold after 3 hours. It also presents challenges when scanning a wet pebble beach, some detail is enhanced whilst other things can be obscured.

I didn't find anything to add to my collection which is often the case. At the moment, I think that the beach is fairly well trodden so I'll likely wait for some rough weather or sea activity to shake things up a bit before I visit again.

As ever, the cliffs were fairly active with the clatter of falling material. I did note a couple of larger falls (not big enough to warrant excitement) and these were the sandstone material that is often quite barren of fossils.

I took a few more photos this time, some things that I noted but left behind etc.

The aging punk in me gets a bit of a kick out of ignoring this signage.

When you get onto the beach, you can see a number of sections on the cliff which are likely to move soon.

Very murky looking eastward towards Fairlight. Not another person on the beach.

First find. A rock containing carbonised wood.

A second rock containing carbonised wood/plant material. Nothing recognisable though.

Tempskya tree fern trunk section, A nice little starter sample for someone to find and it looked quite fresh.

The waterfall at Ecclesbourne Glen. It seems to be calming down a bit. Many years ago, this was an access point to the beach.

Mineralised iron percolated through sandstone. This is an interesting feature found locally, it has been suggested that this may represent some form of algal activity or at least have been catalysed by the presence of some form of plant matter.

This is the only sample that came home with me. It peaked my interest as it appeared woody when I initially picked it up. I suspect that it started out as fossilised wood which then attracted some mineralisation and resultant nodular formations.

The surprise, on examining it at home, was to find that it has a sizeable cavity full of quartz. I've not encountered this in connection with plant material before other than Tempskya.

Coming off of the beach, I was pleased to see that I'd caught the Shipwreck Museum open and so decided to have a quick look at their local fossil display. It was quite nice to see that a nice larger Tempskya sample that I donated after a trip last year was on display (lower right).