Far From the Madding Crowd: The Very Old

Sunday, 11 September 2016

The Very Old

We went to Charmouth on Thursday, had a great day out. We did a bit of fossil hunting on the beach and found this 200 million year old pyritised Echioceras ammonite on the beach (I am not being clever here, I got this information on the internet) This find was a surprise because Charmouth beach is regularly combed by fossil hunters.

4 comments:

Richard Pegler said...: Hi Lin. That's a great find! How big was it?

Did you know that these pyritised fossils totally disintegrate over time in even a slightly damp atmosphere. There is a way to safeguard them. There is a plastic, specially used for conservation, called Paraloid B72. You dissolve it in acetone, then leave the item to soak in it for a while, then take it out to dry - hey-presto, you have a fossil, or whatever, with a microscopically thin plastic coating to conserve it - could be used on all manner of things, but I've only used it for Charmouth pyritised fossils (I've got just over 20 of them, and they still look good! I got my Paraloid B72 from:

Addlington Studio
The Old Bakery
Marshwood
nr Bridport
Dorset DT6 5QF

I guess this is not a million miles from you! Alternatively you could send me an SAE and I'd mail you enough B72 to do that one fossil.

BTW - make sure you thoroughly clean the fossil first to remove any trace of salt.

If you want any more information, e-mail me (address on my blog - under 'copyright' in the RH column)

Best wishes - - - Richard; 11 September 2016 at 10:01
Linda Yarrow said...: Thankyou Richard for the information, I did not realise they disintegrate, I will look into getting some Paraloid B72 to conserve it.; 11 September 2016 at 15:31
Richard Pegler said...: Just checked my Charmouth pyritised fossils - I'd obviously managed not to treat one from a couple of years ago, and the remains were already sitting in a pile of dust! Those from a couple of years before that are as bright and shiny as ever!; 11 September 2016 at 16:08
holdingmoments said...: What a great find Linda.; 12 September 2016 at 08:27

My Blog

I have taken the title of my blog from Thomas Hardy's fourth novel 'Far From the Madding Crowd' which he wrote in 1874. He took his title from Thomas Gray's poem 'Elegy written in a Country Churchyard' completed in 1750. Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset where he lived for most of his life and where he based the stories in his novels. The word 'madding' means frenzied and there is a sense of freedom I get being out in the countryside and being close to nature away from the frenzied atmosphere of the towns and cities. I live in Dorset and like Thomas Hardy, it is where I have lived for most of my life, my blog is mostly about nature in Dorset. I am a member of the Dorset Wildlife Trust. I will include my garden and anything of interest about the natural world in Britain.