On the one hand collecting in summer is very nice : You don´t have to wear thick waterproof clothes and heavy wellies, which easily takes away a few kilograms of weight that you don´t have to carry around with you (you add those again with your supply  of drinking water…), hours you can spend collecting due to available light are longer,

the general feeling is lighter and just – summery.

 On the other hand, there are more people around (allthough I usually hardly meet anyone when I go out collecting alone) – and finds are generally less frequent.

We´ve been meeting a few old friends again, made some new friends and some of them brought some truly, truly gorgeous ammonites for me to photograph.

I will not show them here, they´re for the book, but I can tell you there are some that I have not seen anywhere else in size, rarity and beauty ! (tease, tease…)

Adrian, Tracey & Bernie, David, Andy  : Many many thanks, you´ve earned your copy of the book, this is for you :

On a hot summer´s day I´ve been to Redcar for some collecting for the first time (only 1/2 hour quick search of the reefs : but I´ve found 3 identifiable segments of ammonites in this short timeframe which shows the potential of this place, I´ll be back…) and more photographing of local lias ammonites, but I was informed I could not use the photographs for the book when I had returned home, so this is for you (you know who you are !) :

Collecting wise, it`s been a mixed bag :

I´ve found many lower toarcian (unflattened) Dactylioceras tenuicostatum/semicelatum nodules, but a lot of them were disappointing when I opened them at home.
I found a rare D. clevelandicum, that another collector probably tried to beach prep and broke the outer whorl off, but I´m going to rescue the inner whorls.

I´ve been looking for the paltum subzone of the lower toarcian for some bedwalking and a chance of finding a Protogrammoceras paltum
(which I have not seen from the Yorkshire coast yet), but no success…

I picked up some puzzles like this close to 8″ Amaltheus stokesi…

One of the better finds this summer certainly is this 8.5 cm / 3.25 ” Eparietites , which nicely leads on to what´s up next :

The stage is set for the Asteroceratinae :

When I returned home from the holiday, temperatures were still very high, so when given the choice of photographing in my litlle study under the roof
at 30+ °C or prepping in the cellar at 20 °C, you know what I did…

It was just too hot and I guess this little live octupus I “met” sitting in a shallow puddle (the octopus, not I) while hunting for his ancestors felt just the same :

I tried to re-setlle it to a depper puddle since high tide was out for some more hours, but he stubbornly suckered itself to the ground and shot some ink at me
so I waved him goodbye and hoped the seagulls would not find him…

Temperatures are now back to normal at around 20 °C, so please excuse me, I´ve got some photographing to do…