Fossil forest

How exciting! Thanks for sharing your great pics :))

Good heavens, I didn't expect the trees to be soft! Fascinating, it must have been a huge and ancient forest with trees that size, the hard fossilised remains are interesting too thanks for this x

i was amazed at how soft they are when i saw the ones on freshwater west...how does it survive in the sea? so many interesting things have been uncovered in the storms..

Amazing Stera, that 2nd photo looks like a huge turtle coming out of the water! Suppose it's the salt that has preserved all this??? Great blog. x

this happened to Seaburn beach in Sunderland in the 70's and it exposed 100,000yr old silver birch wood. I did take some as a kid and now its dry you can see some mineralisation. I vividly remember there was 8ft of sand missing and the sea bed was squidgy clay which was great fun to walk through.

There is a true petrified oak forest further north and sometimes you can find fossilized acorns after really rough sees. I never did though :o(

So interesting to see,Sue..I would love to see them and the rocks..Nature is surely the most amazing thing..:o)

Thanks for sharing Stera, great pics........

Thank you for all your comments. i'm wondering what will happen when the visitors start arriving as they may well walk about on them and break bits off. How long did it take for the silver birch one to get covered over again SBG?
Sandra there are a few more often visible at Abereiddy but I'm not sure if they are ancient ones or more recent as there is still woodland above the beach. Are the ones at Freshwater West recently uncovered or are they usually there?

Must confess I'd been expecting to see upright trunks - perhaps a bit naive really!

Click onto Flag Fen, near Peterborough to find how they preserve this type of water preserved wood for 1.5 years.

they pop up every now and then...the wreck that popped up with them went down in 1924..the phone line to Ireland popped up this time too...but the sand is taking it all back now...the boat was exposed about 2 foot above the sand exposing the bottom of the hull. but now only about 6 inches is exposed. its amazing how the beach changes every day.

That's interesting Sandra. Perhaps they will be covered again before too long then. Looks as though the whoe coastilne was forested at one time.
I said Abereiddy when I should have said Abermawr. (Or Aberbach, can never remember which it was but its the one you approach along a path through the wood.)

Diane - thank you for the link - very interesting. I think the coastal stuff is rather different though - for one thing it can't be moved - the sea itself keeps it wet. And secondly the wood is very much older (10,000 years rather than Roman times) - and come to think of it must have been exposed before after strong winds at spring tides as they others mentioned.. The explanation of why the wood is still soft was spot on,(PamG and Grandmage have a look at the link if you are interested) so thank you for clearing up that little mystery! It would be great to visit the Fen site though, I had not heard of it - pity its so far from us.