It’s about 3′C outside, the wind is blowing and the seas aren’t exactly calm but Christmas to New Year is a popular time to find those newly exposed fossils for the dedicated fossil hunters.
The main reason why the Winter months are best has little to do with the lack of other people hunting, and more to do with the very mechanism which exposes the fossils every year – the raging seas. It is during these times that ideally between storms, you can go out and find newly exposed rocks and cliffs, and of course if you’re lucky some of those rocks will contain fossils.
The professionals have a little more than luck on their side including maps of where fossils have been found and the types of rocks they are likely to be found in, but even the amateur can stumble across something quite spectacular.
There are of course risks involved in this especially as the very breaking up of the cliffs which causes the rocks and fossils to appear also makes them more liable to collapse on the people below. So if you do decide to go out, do take note of tide times and any lose cliff signs but there are usually plenty of rocks simply washing up on the beaches after high tide.
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