Large Madagascan Natural Unpolished Fossil Wood Section

Comprising irregular geode sections lined with lavender to dark purple amethyst crystals. 1.36 kg total, 40-84 mm



From Brazil. Ex Mineral Imports, London, UK. Gregory, Bottley & Lloyd (Gregory's), Harwich, UK.

A Knightia alta fish on a rectangular limestone matrix. 589 grams, 17.8 cm



From a Cambridgeshire, UK, collection.

In southwest Wyoming (and parts of Colorado and Utah) in the Green River Formation are found some of the world's most outstanding specimens of fossil fish. The Green River system was composed of three lakes: Lake Ulinta, Lake Gosiute and Fossil Lake. These Eocene lakes lay in a series of intermountain basins formed by geological events that uplifted the Rocky Mountains during the early Tertiary time. The climate was much different from the desert-like climate of this area today. Both the fauna (crocodiles, alligators, boa constrictors and some subtropical fish families) and the flora (such as large palm trees) indicate a climate much like that found along the Gulf Coast today. Large amounts of ash found in the sediments indicate that volcanoes were particularly active at this time.

Showing multiple sharp teeth and a section of well-formed, slender jaws. 270 grams, 10.6 cm



Discovered at Lyme Regis, UK, during the time of Mary Anning and her family. From an old English collection. Ian Wilkinson collection, Nottinghamshire, UK, formed since 1985. With an original early 19th-century handwritten identification label ‘Nose of a Saurian’, the original discovery of this fossil can be dated to the period 1800-1830.

Originally, ichthyosaur fossils were misidentified as ‘Saurian’ - being either lizards or forms of crocodile. The term 'Ichthyosaur' was first used in 1817 by the German naturalist Karl Dietrich Eberhard Konig, and he did not publish the name until 1825. By the 1830’s, the name Ichthyosaur was widely used. Having been discovered in Lyme Regis, this dates the discovery of the fossil to the ‘Golden Age’ of fossil hunting in the early 1800s (before the use of the name ‘ichthyosaur’) made especially famous by Mary Anning and her family, who collected fossils from the coast around Lyme Regis and who sold specimens, for additional income, to tourists as well as leading naturalists and fossil collectors from around the world.