Cotswold Urchins

[alloverover]

Not being derogatory to the people who live there but refering to these things , sometimes refered to as 'pound stones' in the local area so ive read because they normally weigh almost exactly a pound and were actually used to weigh out butter and cheese long ago, also known as 'Shepherd’s Crowns'.

It must of been a popular urchin hangout 170 million years ago, I found 18 of them, my buddy found about the same and the guys that dug the excavation we were working in had already found a load in an area roughly 25m x 25m, I enjoyed hunting for them and it certainly made the job more fun.

They are now residing in the garden, soaking up the sun after being buried for so long

[Dave The Slave]

Interesting find, something i have never heard of , the weighing bit. Must be lots more in that area.
Remind me of Hot Cross Buns with that pattern. No doubt someone would have mentioned rock cakes.
Cheers,
Dave.

[figgis]

Ah, not the thread with stories of snot-nosed street pickpockets I was expecting Always a thrill to find, ain't they, even though they're really quite common (the fossils, I mean, not the pickpockets). Alexander (Holtzhammer) found an absolute belter a few weeks ago, too.

[Blackadder43]

And from this day forward the home of Alloverover shall now be known as the Home of Urchins, long since departed

[Oxgirl]

I love those things! I’ve only ever found a couple and considering how many fossils litter my positions I’m surprised not to have found more. Not every day you find that many in one place. I wonder if they got squashed into a smaller and smaller pool over time till the water eventually just dried up and they perished?

Whatever the reason for the concentration of them I think they are a great find!

[alloverover]

I love those things! I’ve only ever found a couple and considering how many fossils litter my positions I’m surprised not to have found more. Not every day you find that many in one place. I wonder if they got squashed into a smaller and smaller pool over time till the water eventually just dried up and they perished?

Whatever the reason for the concentration of them I think they are a great find!

Cheers Cath, God knows why there were so many but they were all over the place, even when we thought we had found them all once we had walked around and disturbed the ground again there were more. From a place ive never heard of before, Guiting Power .

[stanslad]

Great haul there Phil,
Funny things happen over in them Cotswolds,
My mate lives there, he's got three kids, one of each!
Clint

[Ladybird66]

Great to find whole fossils. I was introduced to the pleasures of Cotswold chips’ quite a few years ago when we bought some to fill in between the slabs.
I wasted many a happy hour sorting through them looking for little fossils, which were in abundance.
I’ve seen there are some still in situ in the blocks that were cut for building. The only obvious fossils around here are me and the old man !

Maybe you could make a small beach feature in the garden and scatter them on a mix of sand and gravel.

[alloverover]

Great haul there Phil,
Funny things happen over in them Cotswolds,
My mate lives there, he's got three kids, one of each!
Clint

needs more than 3 to have one of each type these days Clint

Be good to catch up again sometime mate