Fossil Find!
One of our Fourth Class pupils, Eva, recently found an interesting stone in her front garden! When she brought it into school her classmates and teacher were fascinated by it. Nature expert Geoff Hunt was visiting our school on the same day and suggested that we should contact the Natural Museum of Ireland.
The next day the boys and girls composed an email, photographed the stone and sent it to Emily in the Natural Museum of Ireland. She forwarded our message to Dr Matthew A Parkes who replied to us with excellent information and advice.
A big thank you to Geoff, Emily and Matthew for their help and of course to Eva for discovering the fossil.
Here is some of the information that Dr. Matthew shared with us! For further information about Irish Geology please click here to download a pdf containing helpful links.
The fossil in your pictures looks very strongly like an ammonite fossil called Dactylioceras, possibly a species called Dactylioceras commune. It is very unlikely to be actually from the castleconnell area since the rocks there are Carboniferous Limestone from around 340 million years ago, whereas your fossil is from the Lower Jurassic Period, less than 200 million years ago. I suspect someone found it on holiday in Yorkshire perhaps (where they are quite common in the cliffs), or bought it in a fossil shop somewhere, and then lost it or threw it out in the garden.