200 million-year-old fossil discovered by nine-year-old in Wales

Posted on 1 April 2023

A nine-year-old boy in Wales came across a 200 million-year-old ammonite on a beach in Wales.

Eli Morris and his dad were out at Llantwit Major beach in Vale of Glamorgan when he discovered a preserved mollusc in a cliff face. The fossil is about 0.3m across.

He said, ‘I was just sitting here and looked up and thought ‘Oh my God, that’s big!’

The BBC reported that the young boy loves to collect fossils, and often goes fossil hunting with his dad. His father said that they are always on the coast, ‘usually down Gower way, but this was [their] first time [at Llantwit Major beach], so it was beginner’s luck really.’

The rocks along Llantwit Major’s beach and cliffs date back 200 million years to the Jurassic period.

The rock is a mix of mudstone and limestone, known as a blue lias formation. Dr Nick Felstead’s Swansea University physical geography lecturer said ‘the fossil Eli found is an ammonite, which was a type of mollusc closely related to octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish, which is a rare find at Llantwit Major.

‘We can see that the inner chambers that would have been used for buoyancy of the ammonite have been infilled with quartz during fossilisation, which is even rarer, and makes this one especially pretty,’ he added.

 

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