Fossil wood

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Group – Plant
Age – Lower Jurassic, around 195 million years old

In the Lower Jurassic the nearest land to what would become Charmouth would have been South Wales, London or possibly Dartmoor. Rivers would have washed logs from dead trees out to sea, and these would have eventually sunk and become fossilised. On these tropical islands hard ferns, cycads and conifers would all have covered the landscape. There were no flowering plants or grasses because they had not yet evolved.

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Fossilised Wood

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These two pieces of fossilised wood are still brown in colour. Usually fossilised wood is preserved in grey limestone rocks, which protects the soft wood from decaying.