Liam Herringshaw

@fossiliam.bsky.social

360 Followers 241 Following

Palaeontologist for hire, based in York, UK. One half of York's Hidden History (https://yorkshiddenhistory.co.uk/) and co-founder of the Yorkshire Fossil Festival.

A 'Community Chest' card from the University of York version of Monopoly, reading 'Your assignment was handed in on time. Collect £100.'
A view into Bardon Hill Quarry, Charnwood, Leicestershire, showing red Triassic desert sandstones filling in palaeo-topography within Ediacaran volcanic rocks.
Graptolites from Charles Lapworth's Ordovician-Silurian boundary section at Dob's Linn, Scotland.
Axhund: a dachshund with the head of an axolotl
A column of Portland limestone, packed full of Jurassic bivalve shells, outside the front door of the Jane Herdman Laboratories, University of Liverpool.
A table comparing the attributes of fossils versus ghosts. They share many things - being the remains of things long-gone, often grey in colour, and very popular on social media - but there are some crucial differences, not least that fossils exist.
A museum-quality replica of the Sinemurian ammonite Oxynoticeras oxynotum, handmade by GeoEd Ltd in The Fossil Shop, Scarborough.
A photograph of the River Ouse, York, from the railway bridge, showing an enormous volume of mucky brown water flooding the riverside foot- and cycle-paths.
A fossilized Stigmaria clubmoss in the fern garden, York Museum Gardens, where the stigmata of the fossilized root are being filled by lichen.
A geological map of Redcar, showing the Staithes Sandstone Formation of Coatham Rocks and the Redcar Mudstone Formation of Redcar Rocks, along with a load of modern beach sand.
The natural rusticated texture of the sandstone used in the plinth of the Turner Mausoleum, Kirkleatham. The borings in the rock were made by piddocks, some of which you can see, still in their rocky home.
Early Jurassic fossil mollusc shells (mostly bivalves) in sandstone, part of the Turner Mausoleum, St Cuthbert's Church, Kirkleatham.
The Turner Mausoleum at St Cuthbert's Church, Kirkleatham, Redcar, built in 1740 from local sandstone, which has some very interesting structures in it.
DO NOT PARK YOUR CYCLES HERE, says a sign on a bank in central York. The sign is affixed to a block of Carboniferous sandstone, showing cross-bedding formed by migrating dunes in an ancient river system. York's time lord, John Phillips, recognized that these deposits provided evidence of ancient environmental cyclicity.
Me, Liam Herringshaw, with my hands on a large block of Jurassic sandstone, which just happens to be a sauropod dinosaur footprint. In the background, the sun shines on Scarborough's South Bay, including the (in)famous Grand Hotel.