Charmouth is part of ‘The Jurassic Coast’, England’s first Natural World Heritage Site.
This 95 mile stretch of coastline between Exmouth in Devon and Studland in Dorset tells the story of 185 million years of Earth’s history. The rocks in these cliffs are an almost unbroken record of the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. If you walk along the beaches on this amazing coastline you can walk through time!
Our coastline is home to an incredible array of fossils, with a rich and long history of fossil collecting, home to storied fossil collectors like Mary Anning and William Buckland. In the words of David Attenborough, “it is here that fossil collecting became palaeontology.”
To this day, after some 200 years of fossil collecting, fossils are still found on our beaches every day.
The Jurassic Coast is also host to prime examples of geomorphological features. Walking along the coast offers a unique window into the processes that shape our coast and the physical processes interacting with our geology.
