Category Archives: Rocks and Fossils

Valentines in our collections

A bit of Valentine’s related history for February from our collections!

An invitation to a Valentine’s ball at Wimbish Village Hall, 12 February 1943. Miss McQueen was well-known locally she had a small farm at Rowney Corner from which people could buy fresh eggs and she also played the organ in the 1970s at the church in Wimbish.

We also have a selection of Victorian Valentines cards. These 19th century designs typically include floral decoupage, lace doilies, ribbon details and lace trimmings. Inside the cards are lovely little poetic verses.

In our Natural sciences collections we also have these amethyst gemstones associated with love and romance.

Amethyst is the birthstone for February, but as a symbol of love, St Valentine is said to have worn an amethyst ring so Christian couples in Ancient Rome could identify him. Valentine was a priest who carried out forbidden Christian marriages and married young couples, when the Roman empire persecuted Christians and preferred their soldiers to be unmarried men.

Lapis lazuli can represent truth and friendship, and in Christianity represents the Virgin Mary. With the blue of the sky and gold of the sun, it represents success in Jewish traditions, while beads found in the ancient town of Bhirrana from 7500 BCE are its oldest known use by people. The remains of Bhirrana are in the Indian state of Haryana.

Sapphires are popular for engagement rings, as used for Lady Diana’s engagement ring from Prince Charles. Sapphire is the traditional gift in the UK for a 45th wedding anniversary and can symbolise truth and faithfulness.

In Ancient Greece and Rome, the word sapphire was used for lapis lazuli, as sapphire was only widely known from the Roman Empire onwards.

Identification – Fossil sponge in flint

Some flints do contain fossils, or look like whole fossils. Fossils inside the flints are often sea urchins, or cockles or other small shellfish. Sometimes, the whole flint looks like fossil, and this may be because the silica that created it was forced into a hollow space in the hardening chalk filled by a sponge. The silica fills the gaps in the sponge’s skeleton, and over millions of years, the skeleton itself can dissolve away and be replaced by other minerals. This skeleton is a fossil, and the flint fills the spaces left by the soft parts of the animal after they rotted away.

A grey, funnel-shaped fossil on a wooden surface

Typical funnel-shaped sponge, fossilised in flint. © L Hodgson.

The shape of this piece of flint looks a lot like a small sponge that lived on the sea floor, and was fossilised in flint as the thick mud solidified into chalk. It may have patterns inside it that show the structure of the sponge’s skeleton. The wiggly line around the widest part of the flint shows the top rim of the sponge and the rough texture of the line is the surface texture of the sponge preserved as a fossil.

More info on flint and chalk in Essex in this post from 2020. https://saffronwaldenmuseum.swmuseumsoc.org.uk/identification-flint-fossil-sponge/

Object of the Month – February 2022

February’s Objects of the Month are minerals with connections to love and relationships, in honour of St Valentine’s Day on 14 February.

4 mineral specimens on a white background. Lines of shade cross the image.

Amethyst geode (top left), sapphire (bottom left), ruby crystals in sheet of mica (middle), lapis lazuli (right).

The deep red colour of high-quality rubies means it is associated with love and passion in modern societies. Throughout history it has been popular in Burma (Myanmar), Hindu culture and China as a protective gem in battle or to secure good fortune when put beneath a building’s foundations. In the UK, it is the traditional gift for a 40^th wedding anniversary.

Sapphires are popular for engagement rings, as used for Lady Diana’s engagement ring from Prince Charles. Sapphire is the traditional gift in the UK for a 45^th wedding anniversary and can symbolise truth and faithfulness. Ruby and sapphire are actually the same mineral (corundum), with different colours depending on small amounts of other metal atoms included in the crystal. Chromium makes the ruby red, while blue sapphires are coloured by iron and titanium.

Object of the Month – June 2020

June’s Object of the Month celebrates Volunteers’ Week. These fossils have been cleaned and recorded by two dedicated geology volunteers, helping to audit the thousands of fossils held in the Museum’s stores. The project is suspended at the moment, but we all look forward to getting back together when times are better.

These fossils are from the Red Crag layers, which are the reason Walton-on-the-Naze is famous for marine fossils. The sandy Red Crag rocks and fossils were laid down in the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene epochs between 3.3 and 2.5 million years ago, when a warm, shallow sea and bay covered most of Essex. The fossils have stained red-brown over time due to iron-rich water washing through the sandy rock.

The first fossil is a species of whelk, Neptunea contraria, which is still alive today (extant, rather than extinct). This species has an unusual left-spiral shell, hence the word contraria in its scientific name. Almost all species with a coiled shell have a right-hand spiral.

Neptunea contraria

Cardita senilis

Cardita senilis is a species of bivalve, a group which also includes oysters, mussels and scallops. These molluscs have a flattened body protected by two shells or valves joined by a hinge. A bulge near the hinge, called the umbo, is the oldest part of a growing shell, and is at the centre of the growth rings that can sometimes be seen on the surface.

Spinucella tetragona is an extinct species of predatory sea snail, in a group known as murex snails or rock snails. This species’ shells are highly ridged, but other extant species (such as Chicoreus aculeatus) have exaggerated and complicated patterns of spines on their shells, which makes them very popular with shell collectors.

Chicoreus a

Spinucella tetragona

Chicoreus aculeatus

Oyster: Ostrea species

Later Pleistocene fossils from Essex, such as the oyster, don’t really ‘belong’ here at all. They were brought south or churned up from older rocks by glaciers during the Pleistocene Ice Age, which lasted from 2.5 Mya to 12,000 years ago. They appear in glacial drift deposits left behind as the glaciers grew and shrank. This fossil of Chicoreus aculea is actually from the Jurassic period (201-145 Million years ago).

All images © Saffron Walden Museum, except C. aculeatus: H. Zell – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

Identification – flint, fossil sponge

In Essex and south east England, almost every pebble on the beach and in gardens is flint. It’s a hard rock found in the Chalk, a soft, white, limestone layer that is up to 200m (600 ft) thick in north Essex and Cambridgeshire. In north west Essex, this chalk is between 90 million and 66 million years old and lies just below the soil, north of a line running from Stansted to Sudbury.

Diagram showing bedrock geology of Essex

Diagram showing the main bedrocks across a section of Essex. Chalk appears as the bedrock across northern Essex. Credit: reference 1.

Chalk started out as a thick mud on the floor of a tropical sea that covered most of Britain and north west Europe. This mud contained the remains of tiny sea creatures (plankton) which grew shells of calcium carbonate. When they died, these plankton and their shells fell to the sea floor to form a thick mud, which compacted into chalk over millions of years.

As it compacted, it squeezed out the seawater containing dissolved quartz, or silica (which comes from the skeletons of tiny sponges, a very simple animal).This silica was pushed out into gaps, cracks and burrows in the chalky mud to form nodules or layers of flint. These flints have a white outer layer (cortex), and are black inside. They can come in very complicated, bulging shapes, or with spikes, holes and cavities. Because of this, they can be easily confused with fossilised bones.

An irregular flint nodule with a white cortex. Credit: reference 2.

Some flints do contain fossils, often urchins, or cockles or other small shellfish. Sometimes, the whole flint looks like fossil, and this may be because the silica that created it was forced into a hollow space in the hardening chalk which contained a sponge. Sponges are very simple animals which live on the sea floor. They still exist today, and the earliest known fossil sponges are 580 million years old.

The silica fills the gaps in the sponge’s skeleton and, over millions of years, the skeleton itself can dissolve away and be replaced by other minerals. This skeleton is a fossil, and the flint fills the spaces left by the soft parts of the animal after they rotted away.
Sponges are hollow tube or cone shapes and have no muscles, stomach, brain or nerves. They are filter feeders that catch bacteria and microscopic plants & animals from seawater that flows through tiny channels (pores) in their body. Sponges are open at the top, and water currents flowing across the opening helps pull in water through the pores and remove it from the centre chamber, like wind blowing across a chimney.

Diagram showing water flow through a sponge's body

A simple diagram of a sponge’s body showing the pores in the sponge’s body, and the direction of water flow (blue arrows). Credit: reference 3.

A living sponge, showing the typical hollow tube shape. Credit: reference 4.

The first sponge below is preserved in chalk and is a typical funnel shape. Some fossils may have a textured ring around the top, showing the rough pattern of the sponge’s surface and pores, like in the second photo.

Figure showing typical funnel shaped sponge

Fossil of a sponge (Ventriculites species) that lived in the Chalk sea. This sponge attached to the sediment with its branching roots. © SWM.

Figure showing rim imprint of a sponge's body in flint.

A flint nodule showing the imprint of the upper rim of a sponge’s body. Credit: reference 5

References

Essex Bedrock, Essex Rock 1999. GeoEssex.org, retrieved 11:36, 24.4.2020
© G Lucy. GeoEssex.org, retrieved 11:31, 24.4.2020
Adapted from: Porifera_body_structures_01 By Philcha – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
NOAA Photo Library reef3859 By Twilight Zone Expedition Team 2007, NOAA-OE. , Public Domain,
Flint rim print. flint-paramoudra.com, retrieved 11:47, 24.4.2020

Identification – Limonite

Limonite (pronounced “lime-on-ite”) is an iron ore similar to the more well-known iron oxides haematite and magnetite. It often forms as existing deposits of these other minerals react with water in an oxidation reaction, turning the iron oxide into iron oxide-hydroxide. This interrupts the regular crystal structure and opens up microscopic gaps that trap other water molecules in positions where they can’t chemically react and bond with the iron atoms. Water which forms part of the molecular structure of in this way is called ‘water of crystallisation’.

Limonite can be ground up to produce the pigment yellow ochre, famous from prehistoric cave paintings. This sample from the Museums’ mineral collection has yellow limonite on brown goethite, another form of iron hydroxide.
Image: © Saffron Walden Museum.

Scientifically, limonite does not meet the criteria of a ‘true’ mineral, which must have a consistent chemical formula and molecular crystal structure. Because limonite forms as a replacement for several other minerals, this means that the crystal structure is not consistent. Variations in the original mineral, the compounds dissolved in the water and the environment where it forms, also mean the relative amounts of iron oxide, iron hydroxide and water of crystallisation are not constant either.

These pieces of limonite were originally pieces of the gemstone garnet. Iron-rich water filtering through these stones replaced the original garnet mineral with limonite, keeping the shape.
Image: Eurico Zimbres FGEL/UERJ CC BY-SA 2.0 br (Wikimedia Commons)

Limonite may be any colour from a rich yellow to a dark brown, and was used historically to make the yellow ochre pigment which is still produced in this way in Cyprus. Despite this variation in colour, an easy way to distinguish it from haematite is the ‘streak test’. This can be used to separate many minerals which may appear similar to the eye, by rubbing the mineral along a piece of un-glazed white porcelain. Limonite will leave a yellow-to-brown streak, whereas haematite produces a red streak.

Two forms of haematite leave a rusty red streak on ceramic, central.

Two different forms of haematite both leaving a rust-red streak.
Image: KarlaPanchuk [CC BY-SA 4.0] (Wikimedia Commons)

Deep red botryoidal (grape-like) haematite.

This is an easily-recognised form of iron oxide, haematite. The rounded, bulbous form is described as ‘botryoidal’, meaning grape-like in Greek.
Image: © Saffron Walden Museum

– James Lumbard, Natural Sciences Officer.

Identification – Ammonite in sandstone

One of the most interesting parts of working in museums is helping people discover something new (and I usually learn something new myself). A really important way for museums to do their job as a welcoming public source of information is by identifying mystery objects that you might find on a walk, on a seaside holiday or even in your garden or attic.
Anyone can bring in an item for us to identify, for free, and you should have an answer within a few weeks. It might look a bit like this:

Ammonite in sandstone

[Show slideshow]

This piece of stone is a Jurassic fine-grained sandstone or sandy limestone, which may be from the Lias Group rock unit found on the Dorset coast, although it has a sandier appearance and rougher texture than the rocks usually found in this formation. If it is from the Dorset Lias formation, the rock is roughly 195 to 200 million years old, and the fossils it contains would be a species of Promicroceras ammonite, which are common along the Dorset coast.

Fossil of a Promicroceras ammonite.
Image: Ammojoe CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

The bristleworm, Polydora ciliata. Image: Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History [CC0] (Wikimedia Commons)

The surface pattern of pores in the rock was made much more recently. They were probably made by a species of Polydora worm, probably Polydora ciliata. P. ciliata is a small, rock- or shell-boring worm which can grow up to 30mm (1 1/8 in.) long, and is also known as a bristleworm.

P. ciliata burrows in stone. Image: Rosser1954 CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Bristleworms are thought to burrow into rock or shell by scraping away at the surface using specialised bristles on the fifth segment of its body, although it may also secrete chemicals such as weak acid to help. It digs a U-shaped burrow, which appears on rocks as distinctive small slots or a ‘sunglasses’ shape.

– James Lumbard, Natural Sciences Officer.