Francis Hickenbottom’s Nature Notes.
3rd August 2011
I have been fond of plant fossils for many years, ever since my father would occasionally bring home small fossils at the end of a shift in the coal mine. One of those fossils is shown on the right and is probably of the genus Neuropteris. Neuropteris was a type of plant called a seed fern and this group of plants is now extinct.
The Neuropteris is just one of many fossils to be found in the rocks known as the coal measures, which were created from material deposited during the carboniferous period, approximately 300 to 350 million years ago. I was able to have a look at some of these fossils when Ackworth School’s Natural History Society visited Scremerston beach, in Northumberland, a few weeks ago.
Scremerston is interesting because of the number and variety of fossils to be seen
there. Large boulders litter part of the beach and Stigmaria -
The large plants referred to as tree ferns were actually giant quillworts, much larger
than their modern relatives. A common type of fossil shows the scars left on the
stems as leaves detached. The one shown below right was picked up by me on the spoil-
The fossil shown below was given to me by my teacher when I was about eight years old. I believe it is probably from a Syringodendron.
For anyone visiting Scremerston, there are many other fossils to see because the rocks at that location also contain marine fossils, preserved in limestone.
There are thousands of crinoids in the rock strata which run down the beach and there are fossilised corals. Some of the specimens in the strata are large and smaller ones can be found in pebbles. There also brachiopods in some of the strata.