News from the Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre

What a find!

Our very lucky seasonal warden Steffie Haynes came in from the beach on Saturday 5th of July with a fantastic find. Five large ichthyosaur vertebrae fused together, a section of the spinal column! Individual and worn examples of ichthyosaur vertebra are relatively common, it is very unusual to find several still stuck together, especially the size of the specimen that Steffie found. Her's are also in very condition. She discovered the fossil sticking out from the front of a mudslide that had flowed onto the beach after some heavy rain and rough weather. Only one vertebra was showing above the mud and she was suprised and very pleased to find that four more were attached.

 

LANDSLIDE!

A large landslide occured near Lyme Regis in the evening on 6th May 2008. A large 340 to 400 metre section of the lower cliffs broke away and slid towards the sea creating a large scree slope over the sea cliffs and onto the beach.

This slip is part of an ancient landslide system that may be reactivated as a result of this movement. At the moment only the lower part of the system has shifted but there may be more landslides from further behind during the winter.Members of the public are being urged to stay away from the landslide as it still poses a hazzard. Particularly as it contains debris from an old landfill site.

Landslides along this section of coast are usually met with excitement from fossil collectors. However, this new lanslide didn't bring any fossil rich layers of rock down to the beach. The slip came from a sequence of rocks known as the 'Shales with Beef', and these layers sadly do not contain any nice fossils.

An official comment of the landslide is avaliable from the Dorset County Council Website.

Picture courtesy of Dorset County Council and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.

 

STORM ALERT FOR SOUTH WEST ENGLAND!

The South West of England was warned to expect violent storms from Monday 10th March. The Charmouth Coast Centre is right on the foreshore at Charmouth and so had to suffer it's fair share of the rough weather, and a good pounding from the sea. The photo's below were taken in the morning of the 10th of March at high tide. The wind was gusting to force 11, violent storm (110 km/hour) but had even reached force 12 the night before. That's classed as hurricane force winds! It was very exciting to watch the waves crashing over the sea front but a little scary too!

***PLEASE NOTE, always check the tides and HM Coastguard advice before visiting the coast during periods of heavy seas.

 

Grey Seal visit

Between 8.00 and 9.00 on Friday 8th Feb we had a rare visitor just off the sea front. It was grey seal that had swanm into the shallows to eat a large fish it had caught. the pictures below show the seal's head bobbing out of the water as it tore chunks from the fish and swallowed them. A small group of gulls were following the seal to pick up any scraps of fish that were dropped.

Above: a close up of the seal. You can see it has a chunk of fish in it's mouth.

Right: This photo shows the seal tearing at the fish...
... it also shows a gull getting in the way of the camera!