The Yorkshire Dalesman Magazine (August Issue) - Fossil Hunters

Photography by George Hutton

Words by Cameron Hill

FOSSIL HUNTING 

The story of our coasts goes far back beyond fishing. 

The deepest of time is surface level here. Pick up an ammonite and you can hold something from 170 million years ago. Then, Whitby was a wide river delta merging into a warm, shallow sea. That fossil was a fossil when T Rex’s were still in their prime.   

Fossil hunting has become its own small seaside economy. Part profit, part education, part conservation, part just get the kids out of the house for a day at the coast. On the same tide where fishermen sail for shellfish, guides lead groups along the sand, searching for the creatures that swam here deep in the pre-crab sandwich era. Past and present of this this place sky-thin together. 

The coast is a rolling archive, constantly edited by tide and landslip. Each cove and bay holds different pasts, different species, millions of years appearing and disappearing with each seam of rock. A tapestry of time that runs through the foundation of the county, there, waiting.