No bones about it, brickworks site has prehistoric value

INTEREST in the future of Ashdown Brickworks has rocketed recently, but for one group of dedicated locals it's all about the past.

While most of the attention is on preventing the site from becoming landfill, a team of amateur palaeontologists, headed by local man David Brockhurst, are busy unearthing the pre-historic remains of dinosaurs, sharks and crocodiles.

The quarry, owned by brick manufacturers Ibstock, is now a hive of clay-related activity, but cast your mind back to the middle of the Cretaceous period.

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According to a study by geologist RJ Hayward, Ashdown was then a shallow freshwater environment, similar to parts of present-day Botswana. Dinosaurs like Iguanodon and Velociraptor roamed about north Bexhill, and sharks and crocodiles lurked in the waters.

Skip forward around 100million years to the early 1990s, and David, of Crowmere Avenue, stubbed his toe on something while working as a loader driver for Ibstock.

Much conferring later, and David realised he had found part of the forearm of an Iguanadon, lumbering hero of the herbivores.

"I have a boyhood interest in fossils and dinosaurs," he said. "In my spare time I took to wandering around the quarry trying to find more of them. When I first started looking I was finding pieces of actual rubbish, but over the years, we've found three productive areas in there."

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In fact, the quarry went on to produce the first teeth from the UK mainland of armoured dinosaur Polacanthus, and the only known toe bones of the same species from the mainland.

More than 100 Iguanodon teeth have been pulled up, as well as vertebrae, rib sections and skull-pieces of other dinosaurs, turtles, pterodactyls and ancient fish.

When found, all specimens are donated to Bexhill Museum, which works in collaboration with the Natural History Museum to help identify the usually small fragments.

In fact, the collection of finds means that Julian Porter, curator at Bexhill Museum, is aiming for a dedicated gallery room to house them within five years.

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"The bones we have are brilliant, and are significant finds," he said, adding wistfully, "we don't get whole skeletons though.

"David has donated plenty of objects to our museum, and we want to show them off better."

Anti-landfill campaigners, led by Nick Hollington, chair of Bexhill Against Landfill and Incineration (BALI) claim the site's palaeontological value is another argument against East Sussex County Council's (ESCC) decision to name it as first choice for their new waste plan.

"Not upsetting the fossil-hunters is an argument that only goes so far," Nick said.

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"If the site is used for landfill then access is likely to be disrupted or prohibited and important dinosaur remains covered with waste for all time."

A spokesman for ESCC said palaeontology would be considered as part of the development of their Waste Core Strategy, adding: "We are currently investigating the points that people have raised during the recent consultation on the Waste and Minerals Core Strategy, the successor to our current Waste Local Plan."

The quarry is a double-edged sword, as David Brockhurst points out. The gaping hole left behind is attractive to waste contractors, but the fossils were only uncovered because of the brickworks' excavations.

He also discouraged any prospective fossil-hunters from turning up with a shovel.

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"It's a working quarry. We cannot afford to have people looking for bones. There's too much machinery around."

And his favourite fossil? A Therapod tooth - the family of dinosaurs to which T-Rex belonged. "The Iguanadon was the cow of the pre-historic times," said David. "There were vast numbers of them. But finding your first meat-eater, that's quite special."