Fossils in t'hills

Don't you hate finding a bone in your fish supper? Be glad it's not like this one! This strange bone is from the pectoral fin of a Carboniferous fish Gyracanthus. These spines made this fish awkward for a predator to swallow. #FossilFriday 📍 Bradford 🏛️ Leeds Discovery Centre

Sometimes you can tell where you are in the rock record if you find certain fossils. There are lots of fossil-rich layers in the Vale of Pickering, but only one has lots of Paracidaris sea urchin spines. If you find these, you are in the Upper Jurassic Coral Rag. #FossilFriday

📍 Temple Newsam, Leeds 🏛️ Leeds Discovery Centre 📷 Stuart Robinson

It felt like the Ice Age this week in Yorkshire! Most Ice Age fossils from the region are actually from the warmer interglacial periods, so we don't find many of the iconic animals like mammoths here. This beautiful fossil is one of the few Yorkshire mammoths! #FossilFriday

Thanks to everyone who made a guess for our mystery fossil - we also found it a puzzle! After researching it, we believe this is Ulodendron. These are oval scars left behind by fallen branches of Lepidodendron. 📷 Seward 1898  Fossil plants: for students of botany and geology

Here's a curious fossil for you this #FossilFriday. See if you can guess what it is. It was found near Settle in the Yorkshire Dales, it's preserved in sandstone, and is Carboniferous in age. Thoughts in the comments and the answer will be revealed on Sunday!

Thank you all for your support this past year! We all have full time jobs in museums and science education and run Fossils in t’Hills on a volunteer basis, so it really means a lot that people enjoy what we do!

Shout out to all the many festivals, museums, schools, and local societies who we've worked with in 2024! Next year is already shaping up to be bigger and better - watch this space...

2024 was a very busy year! Here are a few of our highlights:  🐚 Becky's talk about ichthyosaurs at Whitby Museum - which naturally progressed out into the galleries to look at the specimens in person!

The rocks on Brimham Moor near Pately Bridge are some 320M years old but the gravity defying structures we know today were formed in the last ice age. This beautiful image is by talented Pontefract based photographer Tim Hill.

@McrMuseum Wishing all our followers a Merry Christmas!

This star might be too heavy to put on the Christmas tree... Despite being 165 million years old, this fossil is instantly recognisable as a starfish. The calcite skeleton has dissolved away leaving only delicate impressions in the sandstone. 📍 North York Moors 🏛️ @McrMuseum

People have been wearing antler headdresses since at least the Mesolithic period (11,000 years ago). These antlers were found at the famous site of Star Carr near Scarborough. @TheYorkshireMuseum - we highly recommend their Star Carr exhibition! #FossilFriday

Moving from left to right in this image is like speeding through time. This siltstone is slowly crumbling away to dust and taking this Scolicia trace fossil along with it. 📍Langthwaite #FossilFriday

Worried about getting coal for Christmas? It's not too bad, you might get a coal ball! These are concretions in the coal which protect the plant debris within them from being crushed. In thin section you can see well preserved fossils like this Lepidostrobus. #FossilFriday