Beach Profiles

11 Hrs. Dec 7.13 to 15 Hrs. Jan 14.14

Synoptic diagram showing position of usual measured upper beach profile between sand flat (S.E. left) and shelf of grassy blown sand (M.W. right) invaded by two surge tides in December 6 2013 (crossed squares placed above sand subsequently measured). Also shows the strandline position of the low neap tide of November 29 as a cross at -1.88 m within the usual box comparing the calm December 7 and stormy January 14 sediment levels around their similar -0.38 and -0.40 m strandline levels. Dotted area shows the rise in sediments on lower half of the beach slope worn down higher up on January 3. Horizontal scale from central datum in metres and vertical scale from +1.0 to -2.7 m.

14 Hrs. Oct 15.13 to 12 Hrs. Oct 28.13

St. Jude's Day storm, 0.52 m lower water than on October 15, similarly neap tide, beach gathering blown sand at top.

16 Hrs. Nov 3.13 to 16 Hrs. Nov 4.13

Two surge tides without much wind between these two times produced a transgressive sand slope with obscured gravel berms.

16 Hrs. Nov 6.13 to 10 Hrs. Nov 9.13

Spring tides coincident with smaller surges transgressed the grassland to +0.20 m in this interval before an ordinary windy spring tide redeveloped an upper beach pebble berm.

16 Hrs. Dec 5.13 to 11 Hrs Dec 7.13

Two larger surge tides in relatively calm and dry weather on Dec 6, followed by an ordinary recorded spring tide profile, with erosion of the upper beach dominant over deposition below since Dec 13.

11 Hrs. Dec 20.13 to 13 Hrs. Dec 24.13

Early Christmas Eve rain storm before final survey lowered the pebble area marked by squares in addition to the usual bare areas. Below the neap strandline, there is erosion above and deposition below by the sea itself.

14 Hrs. Dec 26.13 to 15 Hrs. Jan 2.14

Diagram includes Dec 28 profile that is nearly the same as the one measured after the Christmas storm and contrasts with erosion by the windy New Year's Day rainstorm during higher predicted tides.

15 Hrs. Jan 2.14 to 15 Hrs. Jan 3.14

Two spring tides with nearly dry S.W. winds on Jan 3rd produced major, simple pattern of upper beach erosion and dominant lower slope deposition from long shore drifting.

Shoeburyness East Beach erosion

Persistent south-west winds and rain have modified the macrotidal upper beach at the Boom in Shoeburyness (Essex, England) in the last half of 2013 and January 2014. Here the rail of the Boom and the onshore concrete 0.4 m square posts above it provide a basis for repeating measurement of sediment and strandline heights after corrections are made at each spot. The exact altitude of the datum line at the inshore end of the rail in 2013 is still unclear, but it is roughly 12 feet O.D. and 6.6 m above the local low water mark at -2.90 m O.D. used for tidal predictions at Southend Pier Head (6 km to W.S.W.). But the tidal range is likely to be less at the Boom where the Estuary is wider than at the Pier. There is a weather station at Shoeburyness which might be used to relate the beach observations to wind speeds and direction in a more exact way.

The Boom extends south-east from the beach at right angles to the general trend of it . Since it was built in its present form in 1950-51, a small peninsular of beach sand and gravel has developed under it, gathering more sediment by long-shore drift and wind saltation of the sand when a S.W. wind reinforces the strong ebb tide in the same direction. When the wind is from the N.E., as it was during the early months of 2013, long-fetch waves from the Netherlands produce erosion and drift in the opposite direction, often day to day. That needs to be considered as the partial explanation for the profile of the beach in early October 2013. The wide sandflats start 2.3 to 2.4 m vertically and 19 to 21 m laterally from my datum points.

But on a time-scale of a few years, there was a persistent ridge (or berm) of gravel built-up and resisting the predictable level of the highest tides (termed spring tides in a very confusing way since they occur every fortnight to some extent and not just in the spring as equinoxial tides). This was finally removed by predicted high tides with an unpredicted surge component to them, that also coincided with rain washing of the beach slope, in the night of November 3/4 and continued through November 5 and 6. These surges were not noticed by the press, unlike the two higher predicted tides with surge components also predicted by the meteorologists on December 6. It was interesting to note that the predicted spring tide of the previous afternoon was actually a neap tide at the boom, while the next one engulfed the grassy sand shelf to a negative distance of 15.54 m along the boom trend. Marked positions of the December 6 strandline wet sand limits were subsequently determined to be respectively 585 and 200 m above my datum vertically. But intermediate engulfed areas and the line of dead Sea Holly (Eryngium maritimum L.) rose to 646 and 696 mm there. The early November surges appeared to be roughly 9 inches (230 mm) above my datum in terms of water level on the boom but they only extended into the grass for a lateral distance of two metres. Judging from the profiles and observations of the actual beach as the transgressive tides in this relatively natural setting produce a sand slope of rather more even gradient.

The St. Jude's Day storm (St. Simon being unimplicated) on October 28 had the highest wind speeds of these events at Shoeburyness. They were coincident with the morning high tide and unlike most of the other events did not involve rain. It was, however, a very low predicted tide at the boom the impressive cliff cut into the lower beach gravel on the east side of Southend Pier was reduced to a slight notch partly obscured by blown sand by the time I measured the profile around noon G.M.T. The storm of January 3 2014 was coincident with the afternoon tide and made one think about the description by Francis Rogers of the same place viewed from H.M.S. Kingfisher during the real hurricane of December 7/8 1703 "all things appearing as dismal as death". The waves arriving at about 45° to the boom and the wind direction rose 400 mm below the boom datum. Each diagram of the upper beach exaggerates the slope by a factor of ten, the horizontal scale showing metres one to 20 from my datum and the vertical one 0.1 m units downwards from the boom rail inshore datum nearly to -2.3 m where the slope of fine sandy gravel flattens out (the fine graph paper squares being 100 and 10 mm respectively). The inshore tidal wet sand limit of the two tides are marked as horizontal lines which in reality would slope down offshore, to the south-east and the left, due to the ability of the sea to climb the slope as the waves broke. Vertical lines draw attention to places where no change in beach level took place between each pair of tides selected to bracket storms or surges. Where net deposition took place the space between the curves are marked with dots and where erosion or little change took place the space is left blank. Adding up the areas between the curves, without any vertical exogeration, one obtains a net area per unit shoreline length added to or lost from this part of East Beach. For the January 3 tides, this sum is 0.25 m2 lost from the retreating cliff, 0.55 m2 lost from the upper beach to the right of the neutral line and 1.59 m2 added to the tower part of the profile inclusive of an extension beyond it to the break of slope at 21.117 m on January 2 and 21.915 m on January 3 (4 pm) at much the same height (-2317mm). Presumably half the sand and gravel added to the lower slope had come from erosion the 0.5 km long open part of East Beach and the other half had just moved downhill.

Black-tailed Godwit at Southend

A Victorian book for bird egg collectors laments that the Black-tail Godwit Limosa limosa (L.) is "unrecorded as nesting in Britain since 1847 nearest nesting ground Iceland" and illustrates the egg on the same plate 16 as the actually extinct Great Auk Alca impennis "existent until 1840" (W. J. Gordon Eggs of British Birds). With a decline of egg collecting and shooting as hobbies, plus conservation of marshland habitats, the Black-tailed Godwit has returned to breed in England and I was able to see one stranded dead at Chester Avenue beach in Southend-on-Sea about 8 hours after the morning neap tide and the usual S.W. wind brought it in on January 24 2014. This bird species has or had a breeding range right around temperate grasslands. Since it also migrates south in winter, there is an interesting report of a skeleton preserved in ice at 4.9 km elevation on Mount Everest (Paul Geroudet 1954, Nos Oiseaux v. 22 p.254). Modern bird books tend not to want to describe them with the measurements required to identify these dead birds and yet it is important to record mortalities like that. I have therefore been trying to learn how to identify the birds seen on the Southend strandline and also record their positions for comparison with the orientations of dinosaurs etc. This particular bird had a remarkably long and straight bill of 100 mm length out of a total 140 mm head and bill length aligned with the bill pointing west on and along the Fucus strandline. The tip of the bill was black and the rest pale pin. Since the bill is made of keratin and originally used to probe soils for invertebrates, rather than conserved intertidal habitats, one can speculate that the black tip is harder and the straight bill less prone to bending or buckling failure than the curved bills Curlews Numenius arquata (L.) which I have seen stranded. May be the curlew uses the bill more like a device to push the grass apart, or in softer ground? Another question is raised by the plumage and dimensions of the rest of my find. It had stranded ventral-up with the wings half-folded and the grey legs and apparently unwebbed feet (the do have small webs however) extended straight south down the beach like the frog described earlier. The length from the top of the head to the tail with a black bar on it was 320 mm and to the tip of the feet 380 mm. The long legs and bill being bare are likely to have hung down more than they do in most birds buoyed by air in the feathers, and so acted like anchors or rudders during standing at a point where the tide moving east against the wind in Thorpe Bay reaches sand and a jetty on the west side blocks the wind. There was a small excavation in the anterior thorax probably made by a crow after stranding. Apart from that the feathers were intact and more brown, apart from the black wing and white bar, and grey areas on the head, than winter plumage illustrations suggest. It was therefore like the North American equivalent species or geographical subspecies the rare Hudsonian Godwit. However, the length when turned over and made straight was 17 inches (c. 430 mm), not the equivalent unstretched 13 inch tip of bill to tip of tail measurement given for the Hudsonian Godwit in Robbins et. al. 1966 Birds of North American, Golden Press N.Y. It seems likely that when retreated into the marshland habitat now favoured by conservation in Europe, the species became smaller in North America during the Ice Age/Ages when grassland was unavailable. It is remarkable how different the present bird fauna of eastern North America is to Eurasia at species or subspecies level and that can hardly be due to the Rocky Mountains when a bird like this can migrate each year over higher mountains to India.

Guillemot at Southend

I have been confused for some time about the black and white birds stranded at Southend which resembled the plumage and cited dimensions of Max Shearwwater Puffinus puffinus (Brünnich) more than the Guillemot Uria aalge (Pontoppidan). However, the latest find, at Hut 158 Thorpe Bay on the morning strandline of January 23 2014 showed the bill more clearly than the one in gravel at Shoeburyness on the afternoon strandline of September 30 2013. There was a nasal pore on the rear side of the upper bill rather than a tube nose in the middle of it and the tip of the bill was not curved into a hook. The first find arrived with a N.E. (112°) wind on a strandline trending 215° with the body and webbed feet behind it pointing towards 160°. It was largely ventral-up and facing S.E. into the waves, ab out 0.3 m from the wet limit of the strandline. The neck was however pointed inshore like the bill. When a flexible tape was placed along the resulting sinuosity, it gave an approximate tip of bill to tip of feet length of 16 inches (c. 485 mm). The plumage was entirely black and white, with a pale area around the eyes and a darker one on the tip of the head extending into the neck to some extent. The plumage of the latter find was the same and in that case it had nearly straight stranded dimensions on and along the strandline trending E.W., of 13 inches bill tip to tip of tail, and 16 inches bill tip to tip of grey webbed feet. They pointed west into the wind that day with the intact body again largely ventral-up. In The Seabirds of Britain and Ireland by Cramp et. al. (1974 Country Book Society) Guillemots are said to have an imperfectly known marine distribution in winter when their winter plumage illustration is similar to what I saw except that theirs shows a longer dark grey band under the eyes (pl. 1E). In their 1970 census, it did not return to breed anywhere nearer to Southend than the chalk cliffs of the Isle of Wight and Yorkshire. In summer, it is said to be brown with much less white on the head and evidently these feathers can be entirely molted before the end of September. In Brown et al. (2003, Tracks and Signs etc Helm Press, London), they are reported to molt from late June until the end of October in England.

Frogs stranded from sea

Frogs and other amphibians are absent from islands and prior to introductions by Man had a lower diversity in England than mainland Europe. Two dead frogs found stranded at Southend-on-Sea recently (Sept. 21 2013, Hut 249 Thorpe Bay; November 18 2013 Lynton Road Bastion 855 m to West) had respective stranded lengths of c.160 and c.130 mm consistent with them being adult Common Frogs Rana temporaria L. But it is possible that they were small individuals of the Marsh Frog R. ridibunda introduced into Kent marshes in 1935. Their dorsal skin was uniformly dark grey and both it and the grey and white mottled ventral skin displayed thickenings into sub-mm diameter spots seen on Marsh Frogs. It is also unclear if they had been flushed out of the habitat of those frogs, or the more general terrestrial and pond environments. The diagram shows the geometry of the bones and orientation in seawater of the clearly dried frog when refloated after another day in rising tides and about nine hours in a plastic bag on November 19th. When seen on the 18th, it had a ventral-up orientation parallel to the seaward side of the sandy berm of the latest morning tide, with the legs pointing west (or more exactly towards 280°, 110 mm South of the sand wet limit trending 269°). On the 19th it had much the same position except it was now dorsal-up and the strandline itself had moved 2.5 m up the beach. The skin was entirely intact but darker than on living frogs (presumably green) and thrown into longitudinal folds plus a few transverse doral ones behind the head. The length of the body (excluding limbs) was 60 mm. After being placed in a tank of seawater at 9°C (decreasing to 8°C overnight), the corpse developed a posterior-down orientation with the waterline level with the eyes. In this initial desiccated state the hind limbs were flexed and twisted so that they touched each other where the tibio-fibula joins the split astragalus and calcaneum bones. My measurements made via the glass tank wall in mm of the depth and horizontal distance after 3 and 13 hours are illustrated on graph paper with a cm grid. The 3 hour stage is on the left and the ventral side is facing the glass. The hind limbs returned to the more straight position seen on the beach and at least in the region around the femur had swollen into a more natural diameter. The hind limbs were found to have been more flexible than they ever were on the beach when the frog was finally taken out of the water after 16 hours (having then just sunk in the orientation seen on the 13 hour drawing). By contrast, the forelimbs remained in a relatively bent and stiff posture not fully explained by the ventral view. In an anterior view, the left humerus extended ventrally to a position 20 mm from the dorsal surface of the head, while the right humerus was raised above that level with the radio-ulna flexed back down parallel to it. On the left side, the radio-ulna was parallel to the median plane of the body and formed a right-angled joint with the carpus lying parallel to the body about 18 mm from it. On the right side, this region of the forelimb was directly pressed against the ventral surface with the metacarpals curving away from it. When vertical in the water they also curved downwards. Originally the water line had formed a chord that included the eyes, but after three hours this had been reduced to a dry elevation around 3.5 mm around the nose. A gas bubble was observed in the eye socket and suggested that air was slowly lost that way, while water entered via the skin rather than the closed mouth. After 13 hours, the displacement volume had clearly been enlarged by swelling of the torso and hind limbs, while dry emergent cords on the nose had a reduced elevation of around 1 mm. Therefore, although decomposition gases may well have been generated to permit the frog to strand and during refloation, the overall density must have increased by addition of water inside the skin until it sank at 1.026 g/m density. Initial drowning would involve water entering the lungs but there might also be osmotic processes operating via the skin that the kidneys of the non-marine and largely terrestrial adaptations of adult frog could not cope with. One would imagine that water would move out, or more likely salt would move into the living frog, and in this dead intact state any initial drying was clearly reversed, but evidently not far in seawater. The September 2012 find represented a more likely swimming orientation with both the forelimbs bent around the head and the hind limbs extending parallel to each other down the sand (pointing towards 224°, situated 180 mm from the wet sand limit trending 304°). It now seems likely that this corpse, which had a more realistically swollen region around the backbone, had arrived with the hind limbs hanging below a vertical axis like a dragging anchor.

Dead frog in seawater for 3 (left) and 13 hours

Lickey Quartizite – Bilberry Hill Quarry 1976-1987

The Bilberry Hill or Overfold Quarry in the Lickey Quartzite is situated 600 m N.N.W. of Kendal End, near Birmingham. It is currently (July 2010) being cleared of vegetation and enlarged as an exhibition site by Worcestershire Earth Heritage Trust, in a project managed by Evelyn Miles. Work done for B.G.S. by S.G. Molyneux, twenty years ago, yielded organic-walled microfossils of early Ordovician age. This suggests that the best correlation would be to the Arenig Stiperstones Quartzite with Scolithos Haldeman vertical burrows, rather than to the basal Cambrian Tuttle Hill Member of the Hartshill Formation with paired U-shaped Burrows termed Arenicolites Salter. Both types of trace fossil have no age significance above the Precambrian. Arenicolites is the trace fossil name for the lug worm burrows still made in the mud on Southend Beach by Arenicola. It would, however, be instructive to determine whether the burrows now potentially becoming available on large sandstone slabs in the quarry consist of pairs of shafts termed Arenicolites, or the single if often numerous ones termed Scolithus. In Arenicolites the seawater is passed through the burrow, often preserved as a pair of funnel-like entrances, represented by domes on the sandstone base above it. The west side of the quarry shows a continuous succession of bands of sandstone and thin shales in the lower limb of the fold. Measured sections look different due to the absence of distinctive beds The south-east corner of the quarry showed green, glauconitic shales, laminated with 0.4 mm muscovite and clearly separated from similar shales at the base of the continuous section by a fault. It trends nearly parallel to the overfold on the west side of it. The fold axis plunges at 20° slightly W. of true north, judging from measured bedding planes around it. They include an intertidal channel cutting out about 0.1 m of sandstone at the fold axis. Measurements made here in July 9, 1978 with respect to Magnetic North (presumably 7° W of true N.) showed a dip of 21° S on a strike of 134° E. of Magnetic N. on the channel margin paleoslope, compared to 5° Mag. N. on a strike of 49°on the level bedding plane above the channel.

The talus cone yielding the fossil burrows was on the opposite N.W. side in the lower limb of the fold. This face showed 3 mm thick bands of arkose granules in sandstone at the base (below the burrow finds) with dips of 14°N. on 92° E of Mag. N and 20° N of 69° E of Mag. N there. At the tip of that talus cone (above the burrows) there was a 100 mm thick conglomerate band in arkose defining a dip of 39° N on a strike of 82° E of Mag. N. A considerably thicker, 1.2 m thick conglomerate was situated stratigraphically above these sandstone in the N.E. corner of the quarry, probably 27 m above the lowest upper shale beds.

I first visited the quarry, in March 20, 1976 with assistance from W.G. Hardie, to look for small shelly fossils by the same method as I was finding them in similarly barren-looking sandstones and conglomeratic sandstones in the upper part of the Cambrian Hartshill Quartzite. With a later 4.6 kg sample from the upper 0.1m of the 1.2m thick arkosic conglomerate on the north-east side of the quarry, and 2.75 kg of pure white quartzite of one mm grain size from near Whetly Lane below the Silurian Rubery Sandstone, my sample of rock surfaces viewed under a binocular microscope at x17.5 magnification had a mass of 18.3 kg. It consisted of rock chips split on a fly-press used to sample Ordovician brachiopods to cuboids in the 2 to 3 cubic cm size range. They proved to be barren of fossils but it is instructive to calculate the freshly exposed surface area studied. Since all the chips consisted of the quartzite, rather than shale and mud, it is reasonable the divided the sample mass by the density of the quartz or feldspar (2.6 g/ml) to deduce the volume of the sample and hence the number of chips of a particular size studied.

18.3 kg/2.6 x 1000 = 7038 cm³

Therefore:

2350 chips of 3 cm³, 3019 of 2 cm³ etc.

Actual chips from the quarry sample were measured up in mm and these volumes were found to correspond to areas split parallel to bedding of 6.3 and 4.0 cm² respectively. Adding in the sides of the chips the total viewed area was about 3.5 m²

The lowest bed seen and sampled in the continuous section of March 1976 was a shale parting yielding chips of red sandstone split along planes of 0.8 to 2.0 mm muscovite. The average diameter of the feldspar was only 0.1 mm but this sample of 1.0 kg mass yielded one smooth ellipsoidal nodule or pebble of 3.5 mm length and numerous 0.2 mm rounded green grains which looked more like marine glauconite than altered volcanics.

The overlying sandstone bed of 390 mm thickness and 2.235 kg sampled mass had a parting 120 mm from the top and had a flat top covered by the next shale band reviewed below. This sandstone showed common glauconite grains in the 0.3 to 0.5 mm diameter range, rounded muscovite flakes ranging up to 2 mm in diameter and chlorite flakes of a similar size. The feldspar grain size was 0.2 mm. The mica produced a rather laminated rock, but in the field it looked massive with vertical jointing.


The overlying shale band of 70 mm thickness and 3.0 kg sampled mass was actually a complex unit consisting of an upper sandstone of about 10 mm thickness with a flat base and convoluted top bracketed by shale. Below this there was a thicker shale with a smooth surfaces on a lenticular 10 mm sand layer within it. When broken up the feldspar grain size was 0.1 to 0.3 and the muscovite and chorite 0.5 to 0.9 mm. Glauconite rounded grains were present at much the same size as the feldspar and scarce compared to the lower beds. There were white irregular patches, best interpreted as diagenetic veining rather than trilobite debris. The most interesting feature were grey shale clasts of 10 to 20 mm length, with a rounded lenticular shape in plane view and a thin flat sheet-like form in section. These mud flakes had evidently been ripped-up from a compacted mud layer and then rolled at their edges without distortion, producing skid mark lineations seen together with load casts in the sandstone at the top of the bed, and on the base of the overlying thicker sandstone reviewed next.

The sandstone above had an overall thickness of 900 mm before the next grey shale band was reached, but I only sampled the lowest 300 mm (4.0 kg) defined by a planar parting above and by an irregular, but less convoluted base below. The feldspar grain size was 0.2 to 0.3 mm, including some angular grains and scarce larger quartz grains of 1.0 mm were now present. The resulting rock was a pale red to grey quartzite, with very little shale or glauconite present. Probably this type of sandstone continues upwards in Bilberry Hill Quarry. The shale bands seen in the lower beds are rare above the channel. Towards the top they are associated with bands of coarser quartz and feldspar, as red distorted mud flakes from probable sun cracked intertidal mud flats. My upper samples consist of one of the grit bands (probably the one above the only talus cone yielding vertical burrows in sandstone) and the tip of the main conglomerate overlain by two metres of weathered rock and soil. The conglomerate included cm-sized volcanic clasts which were showed facets as in dreikanter from deserts and the distorted type of mud flakes. The grit band was composed of rather angular 0.5 mm quartz sand, with maximum dimension of 3 mm and larger volcanic fragments.

My collected sample of red burrowed sandstone was of lenticular shape with 0.2 to 0.8 mm diameter feldspar and muscovite grains, between two partings showing the vertical shaft to be at least 50 mm height. The lower surface showed the sandstone deflected downwards into a 7.3 mm diameter burrow, split at 4.4 mm diameter and 1.5 mm below the parting by a fracture of a sand-filled shaft. The upper surface was a saucer-like, 12 mm diameter depression, containing a pair of poorly defined central rings around the 7 mm shaft. This saucer appeared to have been truncated by a thicker but missing clay drape. It was not an Arenicolites-style entrance. There was no sign either of storm generated laminae in the host sandstone, or of the other shaft. But the distance of the shaft to the edges of the sandstone blocks were only 12 to 22 mm. This is not great enough to disprove the existence of the other shaft of an Arenicolites. In my sample from the Tuttle Hill Member, the enlarged entrances of 15 mm expanded diameter are spaced 22 mm apart in terms of the middle of their 5 mm diameter shafts. An identification as Diplocraterion can be discounted. The scarce occurrence of the burrows is itself a point of difference with normal Scolithos occurrences in Anglo-Welsh Ordovician sandstone. No others were seen outside part particular talus cone. Several doubtful paired shafts structures were observed, as well as considerably more common, subpolygonal ripped-up mudstone flakes from sun cracked surfaces.

Nautiloid shell calculations

Since the view of the middle whorl of the Cimomia shell from Kingsley Wood was tangential the breadth of 63 mm measured near the umbilicus is about five chambers and a quarter whorl beyond the smaller septum seen to have edges in the median plane of symmetry 21 and 45 mm from the axis of coiling. The whorl expansion rate W = 45/21 in 360° when converted to a natural logarithm and multiplied by 0.25, and then used as an exponent of e = 2.17 etc. will predict the subsequent increase in breadth and therefore the likely true breadth of the hidden small septum (i.e. it is 63/1.21 – 52 mm). By the same calculation, but going backwards for half a whorl, the radius 45 mm is reduced to 31 mm. The shell diameter is then 45+31 = 76 mm where the breath is 52 mm and the median height 45-21 = 24 mm. One can, however, see that the next whorl expands less and this can be measured as W = 97/63 more reliably than on the partly missing venter (r= 68 mm or more). Using the lower rate the breadth corresponding to a diameter of 76 mm becomes 56 mm or about 74%. Using these revised measurements the shell looks a more normal shape, but still develops a depressed and slowly expanding outer whorl with a more semicircular cross-section. The following museum specimens of Cimomia imperialis are of that variety, if clearly mature with more closely spaced final septa, with relatively pyrite-free calcite rim cements for probably Highgate material. The mature shell of 82.3 mm diameter and 57 mm breadth is labelled Highgate IPM B2155g in the Paris Nat. Hist. Mus. The only specimen, which I saw in Saffron Walden Museum, is almost certainly the one from G.S. Gibson (1818-1883) listed as “Nautilus centralis from Eocene Higate”. It showed a breadth of 59 mm at 65.5 mm. Oxford University Museum specimen 595/2 had no locality but was an old donation with measurement 63 mm at 80 mm. Other specimens from the pyrite-filled variety of Highgate septaria and Essex division E sites on the M11 and M25 are considerably larger, and become more not less compressed on the outer whorl.

Kingsley Wood Fossils Rayleigh

On April 6, 2010, I visited the cutting of the London Clay Formation near Kingsley Wood in Rayleigh on the Southend Arterial road (A127) for the first time as a pedestrian. My first memories of the site were provided by the moving ‘city coach’ from Grove Road in Woodford to Southend in the summer of 1953. Since I seldom went that way since and the novelity of the scene declined, the visual images must date from then. Looking from the north side of the coach, there was a succession of wooden posts supporting power lines beside the cycle track in the plain, which gave way to woods and a curved ascent below a bare slope with yellow sands at the top. Looking the other way, with more difficulty, the traffic returning from Southend was to be seen down below beside woods.

On July 7, 1966, on a school coach ride from Southend to Portsmouth armed with the British Geological Survey 10 miles to the inch map of England, I made the following initial comments in my notebook: “Eastwood London Clay, Progress Road,….Rayleigh Weir, Bagshot sands, farmland arable.’’

Before 1922, the Ordnance Survey mapped a lane rising from 144 feet O.D. (44 m) at a bend in the western plain mapped previously by B.G.S. at the base of the Bagshot Beds, past 164.6 feet (50 m O.D.) at the lowest corner of Kingsley Wood, where later B.G.S. maps mark the base of the revised boundary termed lower Claygate Beds (Bristow et al. 1980), to an eastern summit height of 228 feet (69 m) on the only part of this lane which now exists. It is now a footpath between the west end of Kingsley Avenue and the eastern end of the south cutting made in 1922-3.

It must have been here, where there is a modern O.S. spot height in the A127 road surface 60.4 m O.D., 110 m N.W. of the end of the cutting at the truncated lane, that Eocene fossils were dug up by spadework in 1922-3. The present south cutting, now mature woodland with soil cover, was made then by loading the clay directly on to narrow gauge railway waggons, transporting it along what is now the south cycle track to an embankment in the western marshy plain. According to the resident road engineer, Mr. Thomson, “all the fossils come from one thin bed which was encountered at the base of the cutting at the highest point of the road (200 ft. O.D.)” (Wooldridge & Berdinner 1925). This is not literally the highest point, which was at around 230 feet beyond the cutting where the unweathered partly pyritic and largely uncemented marine aragonitic shell would not have been preserved. However, it is also not at the Grid Reference TQ 7940 8986 cited for the fossils by Bristow et al. (1980), about 150 m to the N.W. on the upper slope of the north cutting.


A photograph taken around 1930 from the end of the truncated lane shows both cutting with a thin cover of grass and denser older vegetation on a 2 m bank starting at a lane on the west end of the south cutting (photograph 108 of Lane & FitzGerald 1991). That marks an old field boundary, since removed and on my visit consisting of a small extension of the cycle track with barren brown clay and bricks dumped in it. The opposite side of the road is seen in profile on the photograph slightly nearer to the camera as a steep rise, followed by a more concave grass slope rising at about 55 m O.D. into a more gentle slope still covered with a line of dense bushes then not removed. Above them was the power lines remembered from my youth and present in 2010 on replaced poles running across a cleared corner of the enlarged 1938 cutting (from posts 13 to 15 on the edges of it). Slumped orange sands and clays are present in that corner of the cutting rising to the 70 m O.D. contour line. It was made in 1938 to add a north lane and cycle track up to 2m above the south lane of the A127 on the curved illustrated slope, removing a lower part of Kingsley Wood (not appearing to have large trees on it in photograph) and the upper line of bushes running eastwards.

My interest in visiting these cutting started on March 17, 2010 when I was shown a Cimomia imperialis (J. Sowerby) aragonite nautiloid shell, collected there in 1922 by W. H. Borke. He worked for the Rayleigh Builder J. T. Byford rather than as part of the labour force travelling from London on this Government make-work-project. The outermost septum on three half-whorls of the internally unbroken, hollow phragmocone, had an undistorted breadth of 97 mm, an incomplete venter to coiling axis radius of 68 mm. The next whorl had corresponding dimensions of 63 mm breadth half a whorl beyond a 45 mm radius showing around one of about 8 mm blocked by grey claystone. There measurements are adjusted in my entry on nautiloid shell calculations a height in the median plane of 24 mm. The third whorl with a radius of 23 mm showed the siphuncle between a tangential view of the septa. The 18 mm diameter umbilicus was open.

Doubts had previously been raised about the stratigraphy of these fossils, said to come from the Claygate Member of the London Clay Formation in current B.G.S. nomenclature based on Bristow et al. (1980). In the Hadleigh (Sand Pit Hill) B.G.S. borehole, only three km to the south, the glauconitic sands defining the base of the Claygate Member were 132 m above the base of the London Clay, with both pyrite and calcite septarian concretions in clays around 135 m, and sands with iron pan cementation defining the base of the Bagshot Formation at 149.6 m (Lake et al. 1987, p. 70-71). But according to a reliable well record, from Burches Farm in Whitaker & Thresh (1916), marked on B.G.S. 1:50,000 series sheet 258/259 0.4 km west of the Esso station at the A127 opposite Kingsley Wood, the base of the pure London Clay at –68.8 m O.D. would only be about 120 to 140 below the Claygate Member and Bagshot sands mapped there. Elsewhere in the Rayleigh Hills, Eastwood and in the Southend cliffs, I had recognized from septarian calcite marker beds that mapped correlations based on similar-looking sand layers and spring lines were not correct when they opposed the well data in this way. In central Rayleigh there were three occurrences of septaria, 1) a sandy unlaminated variety weathering yellowish orange ( 10YR 7/6) around a darker brown core in the highest levels of Rayleigh Station Carpark, 2) a fine-grained claystone with an orange (10YR 8/4) exterior, around a rather dull-looking interior (10YR 7/4 – 10YR 6/4) contrasting with thick moderate yellow brown (19YR 5/4) calcite veins and dark olive grey (5Y 3/1) jointing, at 60 Love Lane, 6 metres higher than the lowest of the carpark fins and 3) septaria of intermediate grain size, with Chondrites burrows more strongly weathered out than at Love Lane and containing Teredolites borings in wood, in a thin clay layer close to the 217 foot O.S. spot height on the Hockley Road, in the new entrance to Rosedale Court. This entrance also showed dumped bricks etc. But when the adjacent field was excavated in May, it also showed Eocene clays at 66 m O.D. The Cimomia shell was only cemented by a thin film of locally hemispherical pyrite, covered by a 5 mm of grey fine-grained and internally smooth calcite rim cement, and like benthic shells seen in November 1991 in the Essex Field Club collection at Stock Street (West Ham) did not come from any kind of large claystone concretion at Kingsley Wood. However, it did seem worthwhile looking to see if the cited altitude corresponded to these markers or other features here.


On going to the area on April 10, I found that three different temporary excavations yielded samples of interest, near but not in the A127 cuttings. The highest level of Rayleigh Carpark had again been dug up and showed parts of the septaria seen before higher up the same bank with some sands and silts, above brown clays. Probably it’s this horizon which B.G.S. takes as the base of the Claygates on the A127, perhaps with a local increase in sand thickness there. I would correlate it with unit SH-11b of King (1984) and my MacMurdo Road bed. A clay ditch (less than one m) had been dug from the fence of the A127, 40 of my paces (0.84m) N. W. from the old field boundary with the clay dumped in it at 55 of my paces from the next old field boundary defined now by the edge of the Esso Station on a nursery exit. Exactly under the fence there was a relatively fine-grained and wet clay, yielding a large fragment of a septarium of the Love Lane type matching the colour of the host brown clays when wet and inconspicuous. A decayed pyrite nodule and a smaller similar fragment of probably the same concretion were found loose in the bank disturbed by the exit of digging machine. When dried the larger fragment showed a tabular exterior surface of 2-4 mm, diameter low Chondrites coloured greyish orange (10YR 7/4) like interior matrix surfaces between the open septarian cracks of 10 mm width, showing olive grey (5Y 4/1) jointing around harder 3 mm, fine-grained smooth white calcite rim cements. When broken open the claystone matrix was locally white and more generally coloured yellowish brown (10YR 6/4), with no obvious sedimentary lamination or macrofossils. The upper parts of the ditch, extending for 170 paces, was of interest in showing none of the sand layers seen slumped down below the top of it on the opposite slope.

A third sampled exposure was for new gas mains along Rayleigh High Road and included a shallower branch also of only about one metre depth into Weir Farm Road where the surface altitude can be deduced to be at 66 m O.D. from a spot height at 67.4 m O.D. on the adjacent yellowish orange (10YR 6/6) sandy ridge where Glassey Road joins the High Road. The lower excavation showed some of these sands and iron pan; but mainly consisted of a well sorted 0.1 mm diameter quartz sand, with abundant similar-sized black and scarce green grains of less altered glauconite, giving it a homogeneous yellowish grey (5Y 7/4) colour when dry, and locally black when dug up. This lithology looked like glauconitic sands at Springwater Road in Eastwood, which has previously been mapped a few metres above the base of the Claygate Beds, rather than just under the Bagshot Beds. Later in April 2010, I attempted to level across from the septarium site on to the opposite north cutting, where both loose septaria fragments and slumped overlying sand ridges were observed. The highest and most interesting concretion was three of my nominally 1.78 m eye levels about the septaria site and 59 paces from the north cycle track, about level with the lowest ridge containing sand at the higher of two bends in the Kingsley Wood boundary fence at power line post 15, five eye-levels and three sand ridges below the top of the slope along that fence trending W.N.W. – E.S. E. This septarium was stained green mainly by moss and by a decayed film of hemispherical pyrite. The claystone matrix had weathered into sharply defined one mm and 5 mm diameter burrows between thin pale orange (10YR 8/2) calcite veins. Where there was no green stain, the claystone had weathered light brown (5YR 6/4), between the greyish red to brown joint colours produced by pyrite oxidation (measured on dry clean joints as 10YR 6/6), 10YR 5/4, 5R 4/2 and 10R 4/6). When fractured the claystone matrix was still light brown and showed a section of an aragonite gastropod shell, without a pyrite cement, resembling the Scaphander polysarcus illustrated by Rayner et al. (2009) from Kent, but smooth. An adjacent fragment of a septarium matching the trace fossil preservation, but lacking the pyrite weathering staining, probably came from the same concretion. This fragment resembled the Rosedale Court septaria colouration being brown (5YR 5/2) to orange grey (10YR 7/2).

The approximate elevations of the Love Lane and lower A127 ditch septaria were respectively deduced from contours on the 1999 O.S. Explorer 1:25,000 series map 175 to be 50 to 54 m O.D. A third site outside 286 Eastwood Road in Rayleigh was estimated from spot heights along that road on the 1:2500 senses O.S. map to be one metre below the central road elevation there of c.52.0 m O.D. Other finds were in ploughed fields south of Bull Lane only rising to about 47 or 48 m O.D., some distance below the ridge and springs taken to be the basal Claygates on B.G.S. maps there. Putting this altitude data together, these septaria finds define a dip gradient around one in 282 to the north of a strike of about 113° E. of N., implying that they are about 123.3 m above the base of the London Clay when projected to the Burches well. The same type of septaria, separated by small decayed and haematite-replaced pyrite nodules in an otherwise barren 3m clay insitu face, occurs at about 24 m O.D. beside the Wilson Road Flagpole in Southend. Since that site was found my me first I have tended to call all of these septaria the Wilson Road bed and to try and deduce their elevation up the London Clay from a Southend well record of the base at –96.7 m O.D. The dip there is clearly to the S.E., but the angle is rather unclear near the potentially deformed old cliff. However, estimates from both areas around 123 m up the London Clay would place the Wilson Road bed within ten metres of the top of the London Clay s.s. at Hadleigh, in unit SH-12 of King (1984) in Kent, with the Kingsley Wood fossil bed right at the top of SH-12 if at 61 m O.D. as reported.

Further Reading

BRISTOW, C.R., ELLISON, R.A. & WOOD, C.J. 1980. The Claygate Beds of Essex. Proceedings of the geologists’ Association 91(4): 261-277.

KING, C. 1984. The stratigraphy of the London Clay Formation and Virginia Water Formation in the coastal sections of the Isle of Sheppey (Kent, England) Tertiary Research 5(3): 121-158.

LAKE, R.D., ELLISON, R.A., HENSON, M.R. & CONWAY B.W. 1986. Geology of the country around Southend and Foulness. Memoir for 1:50000 sheets 258 and 259, New Series. British Geological Survey vii + 85 pp.

LANE, E.H. & FITZGERALD E. 1991. Rayleigh a Pictorial History. Phillimore Chichester 124 pp.

RACKHAM, O. 1986 The ancient woodland of England. The woods of South- East England. Rockford District Council iii & 120 pp.

RAYNER, D., MITCHELL, T., RAYNER M. & CLOUTER, F. 2009 London Clay fossils from Kent and Essex. Medway Fossil and Mineral Society Rochester 228 pp.

WHITAKER, W. & THRESH, J.C. 1916. The water supply of Essex, from underground sources. Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, 1-510. Pl.1-4.

WOOLDRIDGE, S.W. 1923. The Geology of the Rayleigh Hills, Essex with a report on excursion Saturday June 23rd 1923. Proceedings of the Geologist’s Association, 34(4): 314-322.

WOOLDRIDGE, S.W. 1924. The Bagshot Beds of Essex, Proceedings of the Geologist’s Association 35(4): 359-383.

WOOLDRIDGE, S. W. & BERDINNER, H.C. 1925. On a section at Rayleigh, Essex showing a transition from the London Clay to Bagshot Sand Essex Naturalist 21: 112-118.

Mammoth bones from Southend Beach

My walk of May 19, 2009 was along all the Southend-on-Sea beaches at the latest high tide mark (relatively low 4.6 m predicted range). It started with the discovery of a fossil elephant limb bone fragment on East Beach near the Sea Life Centre. Although formal identification depends on the discovery of the teeth, it seems probable from the size and degree of secondary post-depositional dark phosphate cementation of the white bone, that it came from the Steppe Mammoth Mammuthus trogontherii Pohlia. Mammoth species are not generally as large as modern African Elephants, but this particular species was as large as the largest known specimens in the larger sample known to Big Game Hunters and culls in Africa. It was at least 14 feet (14.3m) high at the shoulder and yielded a more intact thigh bone (femur) from Mundesly Beach (Norfolk coast) with a length of 5 feet (1.5m) [A. Lister & P. Bahn Mammoths, MacMillan N.Y. 1994, p.24 x 68]. The East Beach fragment looks like the part of this femur, which is anticlastically curved as it expands into the base of the epiphyses. It has a transverse radius of curvature of 0.116 metres, indicative of a circumference approaching 0.73 m even on the narrower shaft. The axial length parallel to the trabeculae (spaced 1.0± 0.2 mm apart) is 125 mm and a width around 80 mm. The hidden thickness of the bone around the missing marrow cavity is 25 to 30 mm. It shows a transition from a smooth cortex to the pores with 0.3 mm sand, cemented by hydrated iron oxides. The Mundesly bone photograph suggests that a circumference in the unfolded anticlastic region near the epiphyses of around 0.73 m, is equivalent to a minimum shaft circumference around 0.55 m in a femur of 1.5 m length.

A second bone fragment came from the strandline between Walton and Lynton Roads, during a walk on June 26, 2009. This represents the more externally porous surface of an epiphysis with a radius of curvature of only 30 mm. Being less cemented it probably came from a younger Pleistocene deposits than the Cromer Forest-Bed yielding M. trogontherii and the straight Tusked Elephant Palaeoloxodon antiquus (Falconer & Cautley)[another possible source of large bone fragments]. This smaller bone fragment (63 by 38 by 34 mm dimensions) could easily be confused with the pebbles of aerated concrete building blocks often seen in the same strandline; but it differs from them in being denser than seawater and having elongated pores.


The reason why these bones occur at Southend is that gravel was dredged from the North Sea and pumped from the dredgers to reinforce the beach in a large diameter pipeline. The pipeline was moved west from St. Thorpe Hall Avenue to Southend East Beach during the summer of 2002. I visited East Beach showing underlying London Clay when this was going on in June 21, 2002. Due to the gradual process of deposition of new gravel (from east to west if my memory is correct) there are different fossils and concretions related to particular spots along the strandline, even though all of them have been dredged from the North Sea sites. One can deduce that the source seabed was a thin or partial cover of flint and sarsen gravel on London Clay containing concretions, some concretions were bored in the North Sea by the modern bivalve Barnea pendula Pennant. According to Jeff Saward, who collected from the Southend beach in the winter of 2002-3, this source area was “12 miles of Felixstowe” and yielded a mammoth tooth as well as mammoth bone to him then (see report on his talk of September 2003 by Roger Coleman on pages 3-4 of Essex Rock and Mineral Society Newsletter, Number 237, October 2003)

Outside the area between central Thorpe Bay and Southend Pier, gravel has been added from time to time by trucks from other sources, which do not appear to contain large fossils. Here the London Clay is still present on the beach and is still a source of the grey insitu finds still also available at East Beach in 2010.

Faking of Trilobites?

Preservation of Triobites

P. R. Sheldon (Lethais v.21, p293-306, 1988) notes that the genus Ogyginus from shales and also Llanvirn sandstones at Gilwern Hill Quarry are an exception to the local rule that trilobite pygidial width defines a normal or slightly bimodal unskewed distribution dominate by the final or holaspid stage of growth. According to him the Ogyginus corndensis (Murchison) from Gilwern Hill are “extremely abundant:, and in a previously collected museum collection of 463 intact specimens showed a maximum width of about 97 mm and some 335 specimens in the less than 13 mm width range of small holaspids and merapids (see pl. 138 in Trilobites by R. Levi-Setti (1993 Univ. of Chicago Press, the head merely being truncated during previous splitting of the poorly defined bedding planes). But the similar-looking, later Ordovician trilobite Pseudogygites latimarginatus (Hall)

Pseudogygites free cheeks, Craigleith

does look abundant on shell beds separated by four mm thick layers of barren oil shale of the Collingwood Member of the Lindsay Formation, on the beach at Craigleith Ontario. But in this case the largest specimens are so fragmented and separated into particular layers that they are not collected or illustrated like the 20 to 45 mm specimens seen in Levi-Setti (pls. 3 and 136), H.B. Whittington ( Trilobites 1992, Boydell Press U.K.) and R. Ludvigsen (Fossils of Ontario, Part 1: The Trilobites Royal Ontario Museum 1979) from that particular site seen on my own photographs. This one shows two separated free cheeks with glabella spires and a Isorthoceras from Craigleith.

Ogyginus corndensis Murchison posterior end, Wales

Weberides mucronatus (McCoy) Acre Limst

Calcareous shales overlying the Mississippian Acre Limestone, 300 m W.S.W. of Cullernose Point U.K. showed ten pygidia and one similarly disarticulated cranidium of Weberides mucronatus (McCoy) in a cluster with an equal number of brachiopods including still articulated, pyrite-filled Rugosochonites Sokolskaya, three small gastropods, one bivalve and four crinoid stem segments. Most of them are seen on the photographed half of the split bedding plane, which is probably the lower surface of the top judging from the greater oxidation of the pyrite on that side. The pygidium marked b was therefore originally being deposited concave-up like the adjacent relatively smooth glabella seen aligned parallel to it. These shales represent a relatively near-shore marine environment, the trilobites being absent in basins. The cluster was presumably formed by waves despite the probable concave-up orientations. The pygidium marked b has a width and length around 11 mm and has broken through the calcite exoskeleton of 0.08 to 0.10 mm thickness producing a rather poor preservation on both the part and counterpart. The other trilobites were of similar size as are the brachiopods, supporting the idea of current sorting. This would explain the absence of thoracic segments presumably decayed into long narrow strips before the storm.

Pseudogygites latimarginatus (Hall) & Isorthoceras tenuistriatum (Hall) Craigleith Ont.Fragment of pygidium of larger size of 0.3 mm thickness, with same 0.05 mm pits and marginal wrinkles.

Pseudogygites & Isorthoceras, Craigleith Ontario

Disarticulated thoracic segment of 40 mm width, with pleural furrows on pleural lobes flanking 10 mm wide axial lobe with 0.2 mm thick shell covered with 0.05 mm dorsal pits.


Isorthoceras tenuistriatum (Hall) of 0.4 mm thickness with 0.1 mm transverse growth ridges

Pygidium of 21 mm width, 0.08 mm thick

This and other shell layers of the Ordovician (Maysvillian) Linsay Formation on the beach at Craigleith, Ontario, are separated by three mm thick bands of relatively barren oil shale within the Collingwood Member. Two books entitled Trilobites by H. B. Whittington (Boydell Press 1992) and R. Levi-Setti (Univ. of Chicago Press 1993) and also R. Ludvigsen’s Fossils of Ontario Part 1:The Trilobites (Royal Ontario Museum 1979) illustrate specimens of Pseudogygites latimarginatus (Hall) from this site with widths of the tail-plate of up to about 45 mm, but one from Bowmanville in a slightly different facies is seen on plate 136 of Levi-Setti with a greater width of about 61 mm on the tail-plate and about 68 mm on the associated thorax. It would seem from my photographs that specimens of that size are common at Craigleith, but being more disarticulated are seldom photographed. Since it is possible that such breakage is due to cephalopod predation, followed by resedimentation into basinal shell layers, rather than by molting as Ludvigsen proposed for the samll molts there, it is instructive to study exactly what these fragments look like. The associated orthoconic cephalopod Isorthocreas tenuistriatum (Hall), revised from Geisonoceras by R. C. Frey (U.S.G.S. Prof. Pap. 1066-P, p, P59, 1995) is too small to have attacked the adult trilobites and is represented by a fragment of similar thickness (0.4 mm) to the tail-plate on the edge of the photograph with a similar width to the black separate thorax segment of 40 mm width.

Pseudogygites separated fixed cheeks on glabella, Craigleith.

This photograph shows a pair of head fragments consisting of the fixed cheek on one side joined to the posterior axial segments of the cephalon with the other fixed cheek broken off before deposition. The posterior border of the axial segment of the larger fragment appears to be distorted perhaps because it was bitten earlier in life or because it was not fully calcified when attacked. The axial lobe width suggests the head was originally about 60 mm wide. The notch in the edge of the fixed cheek is where the eye separated molting along the facial suture as proposed by Ludvigsen, but the separation of the head from the thorax, and the irregular breakage of the other fixed cheek are not due to molting in his hypothesis. The unusual feature is a posterior margin running at an angle to the segmentation of the head and not bending back at the mid-line.

A Fake Trilobite Definitely

Fake Calymene blumenbachii Brongniart, Dudley

Occipital ring with possible predation scar

The Dudley Locust Calymene was collected when the Wenlock Limestone was mined there and often sold with the disarticulated fragments glued with local rock dust as whole specimens were rare and more expensive. This one looks odd because it lacked the free cheeks and an attempt by the collector or dealer to expose them, or perhaps find others to add there failed. The pygidium has been added in a fake matrix, which now has microscopic cracks in it, these parts being relatively common. The thorax therefore shows ten not 13 segments, divided into two sets of five, which do appear to belong together despite distortion,. However, there is a better type of glue/matrix along the sides suggesting that the thorax was added to the interesting cranidium with a probable cephalopod bite mark in the occipital ring.

Pleurobrachia - Part 2

June 1, 2009

Given one change of the tank water from the sea on May 22, the Pleurobrachia continued to feed on the few available copepods until it was last seen alive at about noon on the 25th. Most of the time it lived at the surface with the two tentacles hanging below and then retracting, but when last seen it was moving down with the cillia beating and the tentacles extended below. On June 1st, the tank sediment was partly removed with the old water and appeared to preserve the corpse, which could not be seen before, as a grey triangular disc of 10 mm length extending upwards into a brown 60 mm filament in the water. It would seem that live Pleurobrachia remain at the surface by active swimming and then sink to die giving them some potential of becoming fossils despite being originally transparent and nearly all composed of water. When a Beröe cucumis Fabricus similarly arrived with the new water by accident on July 12, 2007, it was considerably more active, actively swimming up from the default position on the tank floor, where it presumably died within one day. That seawater did show flashes of light in the night, but they did not come from the moving Beröe and no light was seen at all in the Pleurobrachia water. Beröe are reported to appear later in the year because they eat Pleurobrachia, which can themselves live longer in the tank by feeding on copepods.

Thornback Rays stranding at Southend – March 26, 2009

The morning, stormy high tide at Chalkwell in Southend stranded a large ray on March 9, and the vertebra of this specimen, or more likely others, were found at Westcliff on March 11 and Southend on the 12th. The afternoon tide of March 16 stranded an undecayed specimen, curved and ventral-up on the high water mark at Thorpe Bay. It was a Thornback Ray Raja clavata lacking the yellow tag put on by Cefas for their Thames Ray Tagging and Survival 2007 - 08 study (‘’www.cefas.co.uk’’). After that the tides were generally at a lower level on the beach, but when the strandline of the afternoon tide of March 26 was studied at about the same height, the ray was found to have been converted into a curved skeleton which had moved 140 m to the east and over one groyne. It was ventral-up and showed the thin teeth of males in a head skeleton width of 125 mm, and a now partly preserved overall length of 0.5 m. Presumably it was eaten by gulls on the beach and then moved by the ides as they returned to the same elevation.

Hummocky Cross Stratification

Oct 7,2008

The photographs show a rectangular calcite cemented 0.15 m thick block of black laminated very fine grained sandstone interbanded with and cut by white bands and burrow fillings representing bioturbated clays deposited between offshore marine storms in the Eocene London Clay Formation. The block was dug up recently at a depth of 18 inches (c.0.5 m) in the front garden of Symonds Avenue in Eastwood, Essex, previously mapped by the British Geological Survey officer G.W. Green as basal Claygate Beds of Eocene age when it was a grassy field in 1972. More recently an excavation in the pavement there showed laminated orange sands and brown clays at the same depth and altitude (38 m above mean seal level). The occurrence of flint pebbles in the loose sands made it look like the local Quaternary Brickearth deposits showing similar banding elsewhere. Having a calcite cemented block of the sands, which include one 5 mm diameter quartz grain in the side, confirms the mapping of these sands as an uncontaminated Eocene storm deposit within the upper part of marine London Clay Formation. The way-up of the block was unrecorded and unclear, with fungal spores on the flatter side suggesting it was once on top in the soil and the cutting of the black sands by white clay-filled Eocene marine burrows (Chondrites and some larger ones) suggesting it is actually below. The other side of the block is absent and the adjacent part is fully bioturbated. It is probably the top of a rapidly deposited storm sand layer buried within offshore marine clays. The sandy sedimentary structures look like Hummocky Cross Stratification (HCS).

Profile of gravel ridge near dead gull in Thorpe Bay

Dead Gull stranded Thorpe Bay

Dead Common Gull, Thorpe Bay, Feb 8, 2008

Gull corspe stranded on East Beach

Gull bones with wing feathers stranded S. Side of Boom, Feb. 8, 2008

Western End of the Old Ranges Shoeburyness

View 600 m E. to Barge Pier of 1909 used to disembark first British atomic bombs June 5-6 1952 S Shoebury Common.

2007 Council notice viewed from S. on Central East Beach cliffs.

2005 Shoebury East Beach, Dale Knapping's Malm Burrs c.1860.

Shoebury East Beach 1930's signs on Rampart Road wall

1935-9 notices on local malm brick wall of c.1860, Old Ranges, Rampart Rd.

New Anti-Boat Boom of 1950-2 Shoebury East Beach

Looking along the New Boom at high tide.

The New Boom from Blackgate Road Shoebury.