A behemoth ammonite – not the fabled Jewish or Canaanite monster. At www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8414175/ … as sent in by Robert. An enormous fossil ammonite weighing over 200 pounds and 2 feet in diameter has been found by fossil hunting students on the Isle of Wight. No doubt they have been using lockdown to good use. It took them ten hours to extract it from the rock face. They say it goes back to the Cretaceous period – although ammonites are found in earlier strata. The Isle of Wight is chalk country – hence its name ….
… and later we are told it was pulled out of a Lower Greensand rock formation which is situated prior to the Cretaceous. In fact, ammonites are commonly pulled out of the ground in similar rocks in the Aylesbury Vale – and there are fields where ammonites are regularly ploughed up by tractors as farmers work the soil. This is Jurassic in date and similarly, ammonites are found along the Jurassic coast of Dorset, a few miles to the west of the Isle of Wight. The two students are members of the 'Wight Coast Fossils' group