After being thrown off a cliff on Mount Snowden during an avalanche and being rendered unconscious while hiking, you’d be forgiven for thinking that choosing fossil hunting was to be a more sedate past-time.
But, when you are coming across extinct sea-monsters and lugging backpacks full of stones and boulders from remote and isolate beaches in backpacks with tools – it can be just as physically demanding.
It proved a therapy for Matthew Myerscough, inspired by childhood holidays spent in Whitby combing its beaches for treasures, just as millions of others do each year.
However, Matthew has gone from amateur to expert.
Finds include, the rear paddle from a plesiosaur, possibly a Thalassiodracon or ‘sea dragon’, in Somerset; an ichthyosaur fossil from the Lower Lias marine geological layers of limestone, shale, clay and mudstone from the Triassic and Jurassic periods; and a row of ichthyosaur vertebrae found in North Yorkshire, where he first hunted for fossils as a boy.
And Matthew returns to the coast tomorrow, as part of Whitby Fossil Day, a Yorkshire Day event at Whitby Museum celebrating the range of fossils found on the North Yorkshire coast.
In a talk he will recount fossil-hunting tales, share the secrets behind some of his most unusual finds and will offer practical advice for those looking to start on their own Jurassic journey of discovery and wonder.
His first book, In Search of Sea Dragons: A Fossil Hunter’s Odyssey was published in March and following the talk, Matthew will be signing copies.
Tomorrow’s day of workshops, talks and tours is aimed at all ages and will culminate in a talk from palaeontologist Dr Liam Herringshaw, Acting Chair of Earth Science Outreach UK, about some remarkable Jurassic fossils found near Whitby five years ago.
Dr Herringshaw explains: “Fossils from the Jurassic rocks of Whitby are world-famous; the museum has wonderful specimens of ammonites, marine reptiles, dinosaur footprints, and jet. Our ‘garlic stones’, however, are very mysterious, and we need people’s help in working out what they are.
“Discovered near Whitby in 2021 by two of my geologist friends, the garlic stones look like fossilised bulbs of garlic connected by tubes. We’re confident they are trace fossils – structures made by sea creatures in the muds of Whitby’s Early Jurassic seafloor – and we think they may have been made towards the end of a deadly period of climate change.
“However, we have only found them as loose blocks or cobbles in the beach, so we can’t yet tell their story properly.
“We’d love locals and visitors to keep an eye out for them. If we can work out where exactly in the Jurassic strata the garlic stones come from, it will improve our understanding of deep-time climate change and how life recovers from rapid global warming.”
