LIFE BEFORE ERMS.

THE EVOLUTION OF AN ERMS MEMBER.

In 1987 I joined the Essex Rock and Mineral Society to nurture my interest in Palaeontology. Before that time I had a general interest in the story of life, both past and present, and that interest appeared in my early life and evolved with me as I grew up. These words hopefully illustrate that evolution.

From childhood I had grown up with a love of natural history, particularly of animals, and I have always had pets of some form around me. My junior academic years focused on the study of life sciences and that led to a 3 year study course at London University which culminated in the award of a B.Sc. Honours Degree in Zoology. I was not fortunate enough to secure a profession in my desired field of interest as back in those times it was not as easy as it is today to obtain a job studying animals. I ended up following in my parents footsteps and became an officer of the Metropolitan Police. That, as it happened, did enable me to study another form of life instead.

In the early 1960’s my parental family made regular annual visits to an area of the North Devon coast to enjoy our summer holidays. We always stayed at a caravan site near a venue called Croyde Bay, just to the west of Ilfracombe. Being an animal lover I spent many happy hours on the beach at Croyde Bay climbing over rocks and looking for examples of marine life in rock pools at the west end of the bay. Crabs were my favourite find. I had just passed the age of 8 and was ‘rock-hunting’ one day when I peered down a crack between the rocks and, in the shadows, caught site of what appeared to be a sea shell of some sort, but of a type that I did not recognise as being a regular from that locality. It appeared to be quite well camouflaged against the rock surrounding it so, out of interest, I reached down to try and pick it up for a closer look. It was a bit of a stretch but at last I managed to get my fingertips to it. It appeared to be stuck limpet-like to a piece of stone so I grabbed the whole stone in my hand to lift out. After having done so I then realised why the shell appeared to be so well camouflaged and why it appeared to have such a good grip on the rock. It was part of the rock itself! It was a fossil!

It had been remarkably well eroded out from the piece of rock in which it had been preserved. That rock was a small piece of shale that had fractured very cleanly around a major part of the specimen, revealing it to the environment. From a distance, at first sight and in the shadows between the rocks, it looked just like a solitary living individual sitting on a rock fragment but as it was of a type that I did not recognise I picked it up for a closer examination. I did not recognise it because it was not a living mollusc shell! It was a fossil brachiopod!

That general identification only came later because I was anxious to try and identify what I had found. Visits to a couple of libraries in the Croyde and Barnstaple areas were necessary before a general identification to Brachiopod level could be made. A visit to a local museum provided a more exact identification and suggested there may be more fossil material to find exposed in the rocks at that location. The venue itself is named ‘Baggy Point’ and the rocks exposed at the venue are known as the ‘Baggy Shales’. They are of Devonian age, (not surprising as I was in Devon!). Densely packed seams of brachiopods could sometimes be found exposed in the deposits and before the holiday was over, the rocks called out to me again inviting further investigation. So I investigated!

When looking along the exposed stratification divisions in the rock, concentrations of fossil Brachiopod shells were to be found amongst the modern barnacles, limpets and seaweeds. The fossils were all very slightly distorted as if compressed laterally and some were rather well water eroded! I realised that I was not going to be able to just pick some up and take them home so I went back to the caravan to get a hammer and chisel from dad’s tool box. On returning to the rocks, I spent a bit of time looking carefully at the fossil exposures and found a group that looked as if they were extending back between 2 slabs of rock that were sandwiching them. After a few belts with the hammer and chisel the outer layer broke cleanly away exposing a lovely clean cluster of brachiopod shells grouped together on the underlying layer. The next trick was to separate the piece of rock bearing the fossils from the surrounding mass of rock on which it sat. A few more belts with the hammer and chisel in some conveniently located surface splits in the rock matrix resulted in the acquisition of a lovely piece of palaeontology! And five decades later, I still have it. The species is illustrated in the Natural History Museum publication on British Palaeozoic Fossils, the illustration nicely displaying the effect of the geological distortion.

That was my first fossil acquisition. The second appeared in my aunt’s back garden. Living in Orpington, Kent as a child, my family relatives lived in nearby Chelsfield. This was nearby the Kentish North Downs and the soil was consequently very chalky with a lot of flints. My aunt was doing some weeding activities whilst I was playing in the garden with my cousin. Whilst digging in a flower bed she found a fossil shell embedded in a flint nodule which had fractured to reveal the fossil. She called us both over to have a look at it because of its educational value and I remember seeing a small, ribbed shell of what was another brachiopod, this time of upper Cretaceous age. And because of my love of animal life, I ended up with that specimen for my collection too.

The public library in Orpington had a small museum attached to it which displayed a lot of items of local interest. The Archaeological and Palaeontological displays amused me for hours. There was an impressive display of locally found fossils and I remember the Archaeology section displayed a selection of Stone Age flint tools that had been found in and around the local area. Being a regular watcher of ‘The Flintstones’, a children’s animated cartoon programme of the time, I remember it amusing me to think that Stone Age cavemen really had lived nearby to where I was living at that time. On the fossil side, my interest was most captivated by the Cretaceous chalk fossils that were displayed. There was a selection of more recent fossil material as well but, being young, it was the fossils from the Cretaceous ‘age of the dinosaurs’ that had the greatest appeal. A lot of the fossils displayed had been retrieved from local quarries and I knew of a nearby chalk quarry that I could easily get to on my pedal cycle. It was situated at a place called ‘Poll Hill’, just to the south of the ‘Badgers Mount’ roundabout on the old A21 main road leading into the Kentish Weald. It was a lot safer to cycle around in those days and a regular trip was made to that quarry on Saturdays or Sundays. The first trip was to see whether or not I could get into the quarry and, if so, to see if any fossils could be found there. The answer to both questions was ‘Yes’. The first fossil to be found was a broken specimen of the delicate bivalve shell ‘Innoceramus’. These turned out to be quite a frequent find and broken specimens were often to be seen scattered around the quarry floor. It wasn’t long, though, before a few intact specimens were obtained. It didn’t take long either to get together a little collection of molluscs, brachiopods and echinoids, the latter of which were represented by specimens of the genera Conulus and Echinocorys. I had really wanted to find a specimen of the ‘Heart Urchin’, named Micraster coranguinum, which was a fossil ‘classic’ to my eyes at that age. That, however, proved not to be for a long time, but the specimens I collected are still in my collection today. It would be nice to know if the quarry site still exists as well.

Another ‘holiday hotspot’ that became a family favourite for long-weekend breaks was a farm site near Hurn airport in south Hampshire by the Hampshire coast. The farm owner, a Mrs Kettletea who had a very friendly pet piglet called ‘Joey’, advised my parents of a nice beach area at Barton that would probably be worth a visit. The advice was taken and a visit made. Whilst playing at the top of the beach, I spied a man who looked as if he was trying to find something at the bottom of the cliff slope. I asked what he was looking for to see if I could be of any help and he told me he was looking for fossils and showed me some of the fossil shells that he had found. Well, that did it! After he had gone, I went round the area to see if I could find any for myself! I had noticed that he had not walked far up the cliff slope as it had looked rather wet and muddy in some areas. But, as I was only wearing swimming trunks and could wash off in the sea if I had to, that did not stop me. I was up and down the negotiable parts of that cliff slope without hesitation, often ankle deep in soft clay, but the rewards were well worth the effort! It was a messy venue because the sediments exposed were clay, a deposit named the ‘Barton Clay’ which was of upper Eocene age in excess of 40 million years old. Fossils were common! There were gastropods and bivalves to be found and the man had shown me some shark’s teeth as well. The shark’s teeth blew my mind at that age!They were not hard, stony fossils but had a soft, shell-like texture that was firm but easily broken, with no colour pigmentation. Regrettably many were broken but, with a bit of patience, some nice intact specimens were to be found as well. After a while, I noticed a sizeable piece of shell sticking out of the clay. With care I extracted a specimen of Clavilithes macrospira, a large gastropod about 5 inches in length and without any real damage. I remember my feelings at finding it. It felt like I had found a piece of gold! I remember thinking that it had really been alive and living in the sea at that same location, (barring the effects of continental drift which I didn’t know about at that age), about 40 MILLION years ago. That period of time was a bit beyond my comprehension at that age too. That specimen, together with others that I recovered on that occasion, is still in my collection today. The Barton beach site became well known, not just for its fossil yield, but for the effects of coastal erosion that was taking place on the clay cliffs with frequent slumping and collapsing taking place. The local authority, in its infinite wisdom, carried out some coastal defence work on the area which has now been completely obscured with a more resistant rock type making the deposit completely inaccessible for palaeontological study. A classic site now gone, making the fossils I collected there even more desirable! And all this fantastic work has done is to push the effects of erosion a bit further down the beach! Wow!

My grandparents used to live on the Isle of Wight in the village of Freshwater at the western end of the island. Once or twice a year we would visit them and I was often taken to different beaches around the island. A nearby one was at Alum Bay where exposures of an Eocene deposit yielded abundant specimens of a gastropod shell believed to be named Turitella, known locally as a ‘Turret’ shell. From memory only it has not been possible to identify the precise sedimentary beds from which they originated but the bay and the adjacent Headon Hill is quite rich in fossiliferous deposits. I remember a family friend of my grandparents, because of my interests, asking me if I would like to have some ‘old oysters’ and ‘some very old pond snails’ for my collection. A positive answer resulted in the acquisition of what proved to be some fossil specimens of a species similar to the familiar ‘Rams horn’ pond snail. They are named Planorbina euomphalus. An equally familiar pond snail of a different type was represented by specimens of Viviparus lentus. Also obtained were some oyster shells that proved to be of the species Ostrea velata. They had all been found on walking trips around nearby Headon Hill, a local walking spot, and they were considered to be ‘very old’ because they were of upper Eocene age and around 40 million years of age. When the description of ‘very old’ had been used I had expected to be given some shells that had been ‘pond pets’ in Victorian times and some oysters that had come from an old fish shop that had used to be in the village. Well, I was wrong in that expectation but still have those too.

My interest had thus taken root and, as time has proven, those roots ran deep. Fossils had to take a back seat for a few years while I ‘matured’ and established a family. The interest didn’t go away though and evolved to membership of the ‘Essex Rock and Mineral Society’ in 1987. That year saw my employment in the metropolitan police culminate in a transfer to Harold Hill police station. The society met once a month at a venue in Harold Hill back then and I first encountered the society having been called to investigate another matter nearby. I investigated a little bit further and that investigation resulted in a new membership application for the society.

My first field trip with the society took me to Beltinge Beach near Herne Bay in Kent to find shark’s teeth under the leadership of Les Lanham, who became a good friend and is sadly no longer with us. On that first trip I found over 400 shark’s teeth and finding those teeth bit deep! Other members were finding many teeth as well and when Les showed me a rather large, serrated, triangular tooth specimen of the shark species Otodus obliquus, I got hooked! Prior to that time, I wouldn’t have believed fossils were available to be found in such quantity. The ‘field work’ part of the trip was followed by a ‘tea and biscuits’ session at Les’s home address and members were treated to a viewing of his own personal collection. I was totally amazed by the variety of material that was to be found at one location. Apart from having a good time in general that day, I was actually educated as well, so membership of the society was already starting to prove beneficial. Overall my palaeontological and general geological knowledge has increased enormously since becoming a member of ERMS......................................... and I have made some good friends too, which was to be of great value to me at a time later in my membership! Regrettably, due to disabilities, I am no longer able to undertake field work. I have been unable to find and collect fossils for over 12 years now and a big part of my life has been taken away, I feel. One aim that I had in my evolution, though, was achieved. That was to discover a new animal species and have it named. It was a species of crab, my favourite find at the ‘seaside’ as declared above, it was found in the world famous deposit named the London Clay and it was named after me! Oh to be out in the field again!

The time in my membership referred to above occurred following a near-fatal road traffic accident which affected me whilst on the way to work one night in October 1999. I never got to see in the new millennium as I was unconscious for over 2 months. A 6 week spell in an intensive trauma unit was followed by time in regular intensive care, resulting in a total time of 7 months being spent as an in-patient at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. To advise those that are unaware, it was not expected that I would survive the first 48 hours following the accident. In fact I think I rather surprised the medical profession by actually doing so. The only part of my body that was uninjured was my left leg. I won’t bore readers with further details other than to say many operations were to follow resulting in the amputation of my right leg as healing was a property that it would not embark upon. Through all my problems I have still managed to attend monthly society meetings and through these I have come to realise the friendship that surrounded me. That has been of great value to me in my dark times. I can honestly say now that membership of this society has been of more than one value to me in this life. Thank you all!

Finally, despite all those problems, my interest in fossils, palaeontology and general geology did not whither. In fact it grew. Much time during recovery was spent in reading and my palaeontological/geological knowledge increased further as a result. Attendance at the annual shows was compulsory for me and one year this opened a gateway to a previously neglected aspect of evolution. At one show, I was standing beside a vendor’s stall considering what to add to my shopping basket when something caught my eye. It was an Acheulean stone-age hand axe, an example of the classic hand axe type that I had seen pictures of in text books when I had been reading. Having been a police officer for 22 years I recognised a piece of evidence when it was placed before me. That was evidence of evolution. A piece of evidence of the evolution of our own species, Homo sapiens ..... modern Man! I hadn’t realised such things were available so I bought it and so began another passion in collecting. I have been surprised at how much variety there can be in ‘stone-age’ tools and how readily available they can be. Life can be full of surprises. Life in ERMS has been too. I hope that my determination has been of some benefit to the society somehow in the past. If it has, then I can feel that I am repaying the society back for some of the pleasure it has given me in life which has given me another reason to live on!

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