RNLI fundraiser with the Fossil Hunter

Yorkshire Post

Fossil Hunter, Mark Kemp organised a charity fossil walk at Runswick Bay to raise funds for the RNLI

Transcript

00:00 Hello, so my name's Mark Kemp, I'm the Yorkshire Fossil Hunter and today we're at Runswick Bay

00:04 and we are raising funds for the RLNI. We've got loads of people out collecting fossils today,

00:09 they're going to come back shortly where we're going to do a raffle and some competitions

00:12 and I've also brought this large ickfusor skull that was discovered just around the corner.

00:16 So this is Andy from the RLNI, he's going to tell you a little bit about what they stand for.

00:19 Hi, I'm Andy Monaghan, I'm the Community Safety Officer for the RLNI

00:24 Stays and Runswick Lifeboat and we're absolutely delighted that Mark and his team are supporting

00:29 us today. We are a charity and we depend on every penny. These guys are very good at what they do,

00:35 we'd ask you if you're going to come, by all means do, but do it safely. The cliffs are very friable

00:40 at the moment, things are sliding down so just keep your eyes open and if you're in trouble,

00:45 phone 999, ask for the Coast Guard, tell them what's going on. Runswick Bay is just a really

00:49 iconic place along the North Yorkshire coast, it's really, really good for fossils. You don't

00:53 have to walk far, there's a Jurassic exposure just to the right of the get down on the beach,

00:58 so people have found some incredible fossils here over the year and at the end of the interview,

01:03 if you pan around and look to the left, the headland actually looks like a crocodile skull,

01:07 which is really fitting because this is a land of the dragons, so a lot of the big marine reptiles

01:13 and museums were discovered in this very location. So the majority of people, they've come down,

01:17 they've bought some raffle tickets, they've donated to the RLNI and then they've gone off

01:21 on the beach, they're going to find some fossils, they're all going to come back at a set time,

01:25 we're going to have a really good look, we've got some competitions for the kids and then we'll do

01:29 the raffle, but the main thing is today is to spread safety on the beach and let the families

01:34 find the fossils. Okay yeah, so we've found a couple of nice looking stones here, we've got a

01:39 classic Whitby mudstone nodule, which we're going to give a tap in a bit. We've also just discovered

01:44 a beautiful little ammonite, it's about 186 million years old and it's a Dactyloceros and then one of

01:50 the boys has also discovered this, a lovely Gryphaea or a Devil's Turnel as they're locally known as.

01:56 I specifically love where we can go fossil hunting before we book a holiday sometimes.

02:01 Perfect. First time fossil hunting at Runswick Bay. Right so this is an Ichthyosaur, which is a marine

02:07 reptile, so if you imagine like a modern day dolphin, but very very angry, it's got big teeth

02:13 and a huge eye socket, these swam in the seas in the lower Jurassic. This is about 180 million years

02:19 old and it looks a little bit misshaped because what's happened, all the vertebrae, all of its

02:23 backbone has crushed in on top of its skull. It's really quite dramatic, we've got a humerus sticking

02:28 out the back of its skull here, we've got vertebrae and ribs inside of its eye socket, it is missing its

02:34 rostrum, so it would have been very cone-shaped with loads of pointy teeth, but this is an

02:39 incredible discovery that was found just around the corner here. Yeah okay, so all of these fossils

02:43 were found on the North Yorkshire coastline. We've got some really beautiful ammonites, these are

02:49 eleganticeros ammonites, we've got a phylloceros ammonite, we've got a harposerus, we've got a few

02:54 little vertebrae from an Ichthyosaur. This is a really really cool piece, you can see the size of

03:00 these teeth here, so this is from a really really large Ichthyosaur, and then this is the best found

03:04 which we've already seen, the beautiful skull with some beautiful teeth preservation, and this is a

03:10 classic Whitby mudstone nodule, see it's nice and fat, skinny towards the middle, I often call them

03:15 donuts, and you can see a little bit of ribbon on the outside. We'll give this one a tap on the beach,

03:20 it's got a beautiful 180 million year old ammonite inside. Everything here was found on the Yorkshire

03:26 coastline, this is a glacial erratic from further down south, but it's still part of the Yorkshire

03:31 coastline on the Holderness coast. The dinosaur footprints are a little bit closer to Scarborough,

03:36 but all of the marine life, all of the ammonites and the icvisars were North Yorkshire.

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