Exhibition of fossils discovered in Street

A  Gardening Club friend had posted a link to the exhibition of 'Sea Dragons of Street' on Facebook.  I veer towards being an old fossil these days, and in an effort to combat this, I am trying to expand my interest and skills such as getting a grip with Facebook and websites.

I only joined a local gardening club a few months ago,  and it won't be a surprise to my friends that within a couple of months of joining the Henton and District Gardening Club, I had chatted about my previous club inputs and was soon invited to help out with my suggestions of a web presence.

 Being the friendly sort they are, a group of us met within days to discuss and then build the website. This was made possible with the technical, and practical help from the partner of a member, since made an Honorary Member, of course.  Since then I have learnt to manage the site and upload pictures and articles etc, and I also set up the Facebook Page which only members of the club may access and input to.

Through the exhibition I learnt that a large range of fossils had been discovered in Street when it was being developed by the Clark family for their shoe business.  As land was being cleared for housing and quarrying for stone took place, fossils were being uncovered.  They do rival those found around Lyme Bay where the same Jurassic stone is also found.

Here are a few of my pictures from the exhibition...

The Ichthyosaur fossils were amazing.  There were two massive one not under glass but in large fragments on tables open to view.

Perhaps my favourite fossils was this one where the lustrous shine on the shells was still vibrant, with several colours catching my eye.  I even liked the old labels, and I wonder when they were written.  The collection was gathered together by Alfred Gillect, and collection notes give an interesting description of how this collection formed the basis of geological museum set up in Crispin Hall, Street in 1887.

This got me back to thinking about Tracy Chevalier's Book Remarkable Creatures, which was such a enjoyable read a few years back, the many visits to the Natural History Museum when I was little,  my Open University Degree Modules on Geology, and my dusting book shelves and reading my Father's old copy of Darwin's The Origin of Species when I was about twelve years old.  The thread of fossils goes back a long way....