The eagle-eyed fossil hunter

We had an early walk among the dunes with the younger Talpids before the least Talpid headed off to Aberdeen to perform in the pantomime.

Whilst she was running down the dune she spotted a small piece of limestone which, much to our amazement, contained the fossilised impression of a shell. I have trudged across these dunes for years and years and I have never found a fossil and there are no limestone outcrops in this part of the world! A bit of a mystery.

My good friend Prof. Google was able to help us with this conundrum. A few miles to the North, near to Slains, there is an esker, a sinuous gravel ridge called the Kippet Hills, that was  dumped by a glacier at the end of the last Ice Age. The gravel contains numerous shell fragments and Permian limestone delivered by the glacier from far offshore to the southeast. At some point our fossil must have been washed down to us by the River Ythan.