Well it was dead already

So I sawed it in half.



Took a while. Amazed at the amount of detail that has been preserved.

I'm guessing at 160,000,000 years since it died.

 

Lovely colors too!

 

We have loads and loads of fossils on our local beach, so many in fact that I remember when I was a kid, some organisation approached my school to get us kids to collect as many as we could find, and we'd get paid 1p for each one, and then this organisation would take them away for study.

It's never occurred to me to saw one up though. How did you do it? It seems to me that they are practically granite by now.

 

1p each ? they saw you lot comming. They probably got £2 a piece:DOH:

Tis only Calcium Carbonate, 3 on Mohs hardness scale, steel being 6.5 & Diamond 10.

But you do have to be carefull, about an hour with a hacksaw blade & then polishing with wet & dry paper.

 

It has crossed my mind since

But to be fair, everyone in my class was only 8 or 9 at the time, and it was best part of 30 years ago.

Also it was probably the school that stretched us rather than the organisation in question, in hindsight I have no doubt the school will have added their own markup.

And, we were probably unwittingly breaking the law, technically. I'm fairly sure you're technically supposed to have permission to take things off the beach. Mineral rights or something.

 

Good point, wonder who decided that they owned that particular bit of land and that no one else could touch it ?

 

You've got a 'rough' age on it Ziggy, just a bit older than me then, but have you worked out what it is?

 

I used to be under the impression that all the beaches were owned by the crown, but I recently found out that the stretch of beach in question is owned by one of the local lords, who owns a massive, massive chunk of our area. He can't be a bad chap though. Among his estate is an area of several hundred acres of grass land right on the coast, which his people look after but allow allow a lot of liberty that most councils would take away. For example, people are allowed to put their camper vans in the two carp parks their and stop over, the council were told they can't tell the kids not to ride their bikes down 'the dipper' (a little ravine that is all natural, but happens to be ideal for bicycle stunts), and when the council put lamp posts all along the road that runs through this stretch of land (they gave themselves planning permission to do it, much to the annoyance of locals who rightly claimed it spoiled the view), the estate pointed out to the council that they hadn't had permission from the landowner to put them there, and so the lamp posts had to be removed just a few weeks later.

I don't know that chap, but from his actions and rulings he seems like a good lad for rich lord type.

 

On the island we are not legally allowed to remove anything from the beaches, although it happens. The reason given.....it disturbs the ecological balance!

 

I can remember him at school, he always sat at the back.