I was disappointed that the first boast trip of the season was cancelled but we ended up staying Dorset anyway and made the most of the beautiful, but windy, Saturday morning by heading out with my boyfriend Gary to Kimmeridge Bay. By this time my student Clara Bolton and I had produced the Dorset diversity plot and it really has added a new dimension to the walking up and down the topography of the cliffs and thinking about the biodiversity under foot. There were amazing views west along the geological succession from the organic-rich clays (rich in dinoflagellates) through limestones and shales to the chalk cliffs towards Lulworth in the distance. We could also just about make out Portland on the horizon. To the east we walk along the Kimmeridge Clay and up the Jurassic succession. On the way back we picked up a few fragments of the dark, organic rich shales of the Kimmeridge units and bivalve mollusks as well as lots of ammonite fragments are obvious on the surfaces as delicate imprints. No chance of seeing microfossils with a hand lens in these rocks but they are there in abundance!
No comments:
Post a Comment