Just past the end of the prom, Spittal beach merges into the remains of a Lower Carboniferous swamp forest. Scramble a little further and you’re into a three hundred million year old coral reef. White circles speckling grey stone are the branch ends of fossil coral buried in the rock. Interesting, once you’ve been told what to look for, but not very evocative. It takes a rock like this one to bring the ancient coral to life.
It doesn’t take so much imagination to picture primitive fish nosing through the branches of this coral in the swampy shallows of a tropical sea. This is an extinct species of Lithostrotian (formerly known as Siphonodendron) or Actinocyathus (formerly Lonsdaleia)
This kind is much less common on the beach – possibly a species of Aulopora. Seen from above you can start to get an idea of how the growing coral would have looked.
Click on any photo for a closer look.
With thanks to Dr Ian Killie of Northumbrian Earth for identifying the fossils.
Beyond the Window Box 
September 4, 2017 at 4:35 pm
The amount of times I was on that beach and never noticed anything like that. Amazing.
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September 4, 2017 at 6:07 pm
At first glance the rocks at that end of the beach don’t look very interesting. They don’t have the attractive colours and patterns of the water worn ridges further along and the layer of smashed rocks that have fallen off the cliffs means it’s not easy walking. Fascinating once you start looking closer though!
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September 4, 2017 at 5:22 pm
Ocean and beach life is so fascinating. Enjoyed the photos.
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September 4, 2017 at 6:08 pm
Yes, there’s always something new to discover on a beach.
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September 4, 2017 at 6:46 pm
Stunning and always fascinating.
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September 4, 2017 at 9:49 pm
I enjoyed this post Judith but also I’d like to ask you a question. With the photos on your post I can click on them and see another version where I get a magnifying glass to zoom in. Sometimes I’d like to do the same thing when I create my posts but I don’t know how! Would greatly appreciate it if you point me in the right direction – how do I do this?
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September 4, 2017 at 10:26 pm
i don’t know whether this works the same on all WordPress themes. (My blog runs on Baskerville) On the edit screen click on the photo and then on the link icon on the toolbar. The file name of your photo should appear in the link box. Click on link and save the alteration. That means that when someone clicks on the photo in the published they are taken to the file copy of the photo. Whether or not it’s then possible to zoom in depends on the size of the photo you uploaded. I use medium sized files which are an average of 1Mb each. That gives good detail for zooming in but it means I’ll run out of storage allocation in a couple of years and will have to start deleting. I hope this helps. Best wishes, Judith
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September 4, 2017 at 10:28 pm
Thank you so much! I use Baskerville 2 so I’m sure this will work. Really appreciate you taking the time to write this out for me !!!
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September 4, 2017 at 10:30 pm
You’re welcome!
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