This Easter holidays after 12 years i am returning to the Stainsby beck area where over 15 years i have excavated many ancient bones and artefacts, including human bones, from what is in my mind most certainly a prehistoric sacrificial site related to the exposure of the Cleveland Dyke. My findings after many floods will be posted soon after my visit. The two images below show the huge Cervus Elephus Antler piece and it excavation at the site from 12 years ago.
Hello Heath, as something of an amateur paeleontoligist, I was always surprised to find Jurassic fossils like Gryphea, Belemnites and various Brachiopods in the gravel along the sides of the river Leven and its tributaries like Brewsdale in the areas around Hilton, Middleton-on-Leven when I knew the underlying geology in the Tees Valley is Triassic Mudstones, Marls and various mineral deposits like gypsum. I assumed the gravel was deposited by Glaciers moving from the Pennines/Upper Teesdale in an easterly direction, so why Jurassic fossils from the Yorkshire coast I.e. the wrong direction!? The gravel beds as far as I can see in our area on the Leven start around Hutton Rudby and Peter out around high Leven, but this may just be that the overburden east of the points is too think to reveal the gravel. I’ve had many complete fossils out of this searches including a section of fossilised Jurassic Horsetail Tree!
ReplyDeleteHello and in reply to your comment, my own theory that is reported on this blog regarding the well preserved Jurassic fossils found above the Triassic bedrock of south west Cleveland is that the area was repopulated after the slow ice retreat 15 to 20 k bfp, i believe huge amounts of water was still locked in the valleys of the Cleveland hills by an ice dam at the mouth of the Esk valley, this dam breached causing a catastrophic flood to the north west, the excavations i have documented show the whole area is covered in a red impermeable alluvial clay and very bright red and blue clays with the gravel beds in between averaging 300mm not the Boulder clay Agar stated, the flood i believe resulted in the Stainton gravel beds containing both bone human and animal and the preserved Jurassic fossils and the top red alluvium that contains very little stone and no fossils in my work.
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