A Lucky Slip of the Geologist's Hammer

At the end of the Museum's fossil walk on 21st May 2011, Museum Geologist, Paddy Howe split a rock for Vincent Wong, a visitor from Hong Kong. This exposed a small example of the most common ammonite found in Lyme Regis, Promicroceras, of which most specimens are 1.5-2cm across and a crushed specimen of a larger ammonite called Asteroceras.
As he was leaving Lyme early next morning, Mr Wong went to the workshop after the walk to have his ammonite cleaned. For a small ammonite close to the surface of the rock this normally takes just a few minutes. The fossil was cleaned, but the rock needed to be made smaller due to weight restrictions on the filght home. Paddy split the rock but it broke in a different way to that expected and revealed a second larger Asteroceras ammonite in the middle of the rock!
This took about an hour to clean, but the result was well worth the effort and Mr Wong was very happy with his find.

To see Mr Wong and his find together with other finds on our Fossil Walks click here.