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Five year old girl discovers 160 million year old fossil

Like many kids, when I used to dig in the dirt, imagining that I would find a fossil or dinosaur bone, just right there, a few inches below the dirt where my stick would reach. Five year old Emily Baldry from the UK did just that. There she was, just digging away with her little shovel, when she hit upon a 160 million year old Rieneckia odysseus fossil from the Jurassic period. She named the fossil “Spike”.

The fossilised sea creature has a spiral-patterned shell with inch-long bristles jutting from it to ward off predators – and which inspired Emily to nickname it ‘Spike’.

It was encased in a block of mudstone when it was found, so Emily passed it on to geologist Neville Hollingworth for restoration. She was reunited with it on Sunday at the Gateway Information Centre near Cirencester, where Spike is on display. Emily, from Chippenham, Wiltshire, said: ‘It is so exciting to see him. I was very happy when I first saw him and now he looks very shiny.’

Her father added: ‘It is breathtaking how much work has gone into restoring Spike. After it has been displayed here we will bring it back home but it will be tricky to store because we have small children and it is very spiky.’

Emily, now six, made the discovery in March last year during her first archaeological dig. Dr Hollingworth, who spent a year restoring the fossil, said: ‘This is the first ammonite of this kind to be discovered whole in Britain. The rest have all been fragments.’

Via


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    You could be. Mother lives on some of the oldest exposed rock still rock that’s not in europe. And it’s not like there...
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    I wanna be this kid!
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