A man recently spent time picking up ‘nearly every single pebble’ on a beach in Yorkshire before picking up one he thought looked interesting – and inside was something truly amazing
Beaches can be real treasure troves if you spend enough time looking. One man who spends a lot of his time hunting for fossils on beaches recently spent time picking up “nearly every single pebble”, and finally found one that looked really promising.
After looking inside, he couldn’t believe his own eyes. Liam regularly hunts for fossils around his hometown of Whitby in Yorkshire, and shares them online on his @forgottenfossils TikTok page. A fossil is the preserved remains of a once-living organism from a past geological age – and while some are 10,000 years old, the oldest are believed to be 4.1 billion years old.
In a recent clip, Liam said: “I’ve been searching across the beach, checking nearly every pebble and then I spot this – a nice looking nodule with what looks like an ammonite peaking out of it.” According to Liam, a lot of the ammonites, which are probably the most well recognised fossils, cephalopods that lived in the ocean, he finds on this particular beach aren’t well preserved, so he wasn’t holding up much hope when he looked inside it.
However, after using a few blows with a hammer and looking inside, he was amazed, and said: “Now that looks very promising. It looks like it’s preserved really well.”
To make sure he didn’t damage it, he took the fossil home and prepared it using “special air tools”. After a lot of time he was left with an incredible “dactylioceras ammonite”, which he said had been “180 million years hidden inside a rock” and was “beautifully preserved”. They were believed to have lived by scavenging on the sea floor.
In the comment section people were amazed by the incredible find. One person wrote: “One hundred eighty MILLION years. Wow. Wow. We are nothing.” Another added: “It’s like opening a box of chocolates! WOW! 180 million years ago.” And a third commented: “Wow what an amazing find. Love this.”
The Yorkshire coast is probably the second most popular area in the UK to search for fossils, and recently another hunter found something incredibly special. Scott, who has been searching for fossils for over eight years, often shares his finds over on his @discovering_undiscovered TikTok page.
Scott, who lives on the Holderness Coast in Yorkshire, recently picked up a rock he wasn’t sure if he’d find something inside. The Yorkshireman then proceeded to split it open with a hammer, and he was absolutely gobsmacked by what he saw. Scott exclaimed: “Oh, no way! Look at that. That is insane.”
Inside he found a fossil. Explaining exactly what it was, Scott said: “A 190 million year old fossil ammonite called Eleganticeras. It swam in the sea back when the dinosaurs were around.”