The Purbeck Limestone Group of Dorset, southern England

Abstract

The late Jurassic to early Cretaceous Purbeck Limestone Group of Dorset has been a focus for media and academic attention for the last 150 years. For example, The Illustrated London News in 1857 carried an article by the Revd Charles Kingsley, (of The Water Babies fame), titled ‘Geological Discoveries at Swanage’. describing fossil‐hunting endeavours of Samuel Husband Beckles (1814–1890; Fig. 1). Beckles had been encouraged by Richard Owen (1804–1892) to go in search of the tiny fossilized mammalian remains in these strata. Beckles rose to the challenge and at his own expense employed a team of workmen to carry out the excavations; in the process they uncovered a thin layer containing the numerous remains of diminutive mammals along with the remains of other vertebrates, including turtles, crocodiles and ornithischian dinosaurs. Since then, dinosaur tracks and related discoveries from these same strata have often caught the imagination of the press, inspiring sensational headlines such as ‘Builder digs up giant lizard fight’ and ‘Dinosaur graveyard in Swanage Bay’! 1 Contemporary illustration of Samuel Beckles’ excavation on the cliffs of Durlston Bay, from Charles Kingsley's account of the discoveries at Swanage which appeared in The Illustrated London News in 1857.

The ‘Goldilocks’ effect: preservation bias in vertebrate track assemblages

“…The bowl-like form of the Brachiosaurus pes ( figure 7) is reminiscent of a number of reported sauropod tracks (e.g. [59,60]). The simulations here indicate that such a bowl-like form is potentially characteristic of undertracks.…”

A new Berriasian species ofGoniopholis(Mesoeucrocodylia, Neosuchia) from England, and a review of the genus

“…Although thoroughly studied and reviewed (see Clements, 1993; Westhead & Mather, 1996; Ensom, 2002), many stratigraphical proposals have been adopted for the PLG. Here we follow the functional divisions of Westhead & Mather (1996), because of their basin‐wide mappability, and the bedding divisions of Clements (1993), which provide a comprehensive distribution of sediments in the area of collection (Durlston Bay).…”

Enigmatic Early Cretaceous ootaxa from Western Europe with signals of extrinsic eggshell degradation

“…Eggshell studied by Ensom (1997Ensom ( , 2002 and identified as of the dinosaur-spherulitic morphotype from different localities of the Purbeck facies (Berriasian) is here assigned to Mycomorphoolithus sp. This oogenus occurs throughout for most of the Early Cretaceous, coexisting with Krokolithidae eggshells, which are more similar to the eggshells of modern crocodiles.…”

“…The presence of incipient pore openings and dissolution pits in the eggshell surface suggest that degradation may have an important role in this process. Ensom (1997) in his initial studies in the Berriasian English materials previously reported Type 1 and Type 2 eggshells as a single eggshell type. We think that this interpretation is more plausible, and that Type 2 eggshells represent the final stage of pore development, as in the Iberian eggshells (category d), the eggshells reported as cf.…”