Titterstone Clee – FOSSILS

The lower slopes of the Clee Hills are mostly made of rocks of Lower Old Red Sandstone age.  These are the only outcrops of this age in Shropshire as most of Britain was above sea-level at that time and so was being eroded.

Even in the Clee Hills area the deposition can be said to be terrestrial.  Sediment was brought into basins inbetween higher areas of land via rivers. There would have been some shallow lakes in which some of the more calcareous deposits would have formed along with the most interesting fossils which are those of early fish. 

This is one example of an early fish, scales of which might be found in the rocks on the slopes of Titterstone Clee

The climate at this time could be described as semi-arid. This environment can lead to the formation of 'fossil soils'. These are known in this area as cornstones. They often contain fossil fragments of fish that presumably died when the lake they were in dried up and the sediment also dried out forming a harder soil surface.

However the earth is constantly changing and for part of its history this area was beneath clear warm tropical seas where coral reefs grew. Over time these were fossilised to become Carboniferous Limestone (known locally as Oreton Limestone). These rocks still show some evidence of the animals that used to colonise the reefs - corals, brachiopods etc.

Due to earth movements the shallow seas became infilled with grit and sand from the land (now the Cornbrook Sandstone) which built up to form a delta where huge coastal swamps developed colonised by giant fern-like plants. The plant remains formed a thick layer of peat which changed to coal as the earth moved up above sea level.

Because of the conditions not all the plant material rotted away completely. Most of this material bears little resemblance to the living plants but occassionally you can find pieces of rock that will split to reveal very recognisable pieces of plant material - particularly the woody stems of ferns or occassionally the finer fern-like fronds.