Impressive. Many complete ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, and occasional isolated plesiosaur flippers. All on black matrix. All from the Lyme Regis area. All there on one long, high wall in the British Museum of Natural history. At least one of them even collected by Mary Anning. I was inspired enough to spend a few free days in Lyme Regis to see if I could find a few scrap bone pieces. This wasn't the first time a museum display had influenced me this way.

A small group of us were visiting the British Museum of Natural History in London. It was the beginning of an adventure to Niger with University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno to collect Cretaceous sauropods on the edge of the Sahara. Were we in the British Museum that day to do a bit of pre-Niger research. On the way out we all stopped to admire the wall of Jurassic marine reptiles.

We spent the next day loading four shipping containers' worth of our gear to Ghana (the types of freight containers you see riding on flatbed freight trains). Then we all had a few days of free time in England before heading to Ghana to collect our equipment. London was very expensive. It was said that outside of the city, things were a little less dear, to use the proper British terminology. The museum's display of ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs convinced me to go to Lyme Regis. I didn't give much thought to what I would do with a large chunk of rock with bones in it, should I be so lucky to find one.

The day after loading our gear, we joined thousands of our friends for a funeral ceremony in Hyde Park for one Princess Diana, who had recently been in a car crash in Paris. But that's a whole other story.

After checking out the bus schedules and prices to Lyme Regis, I had no problem deciding to hitchhike down to the coast, and camp out. Travel cheaply. The other expedition members all had various plans to go places in England for the few days.

I'd done a fair bit of hitchhiking in my day and considered myself pretty good at it, if one can be pretty good at something that is totally dependent on the kindness of strangers. I bought a map of the UK and asked for directions to the M4. The Brits name their expressways like that... M3, M4, etc. "M" is for Motorway, I suppose. I took the Tube (London's subway) and a double-decker bus to the M4, where I'd begin my adventure. I ended up walking at least an hour past the bus stop at which I'd been told; "This is a good place to catch the M4". Lesson learned (again); always ask for a second opinion when asking directions. My backpack and daypack got pretty heavy in this hour. The onramp at the M4 was not at all amenable to hitchhiking. You need a place where potentially nice people can see you from a little ways away and not be going too fast when they get to you and have space to pull over. This place had none of the above -- a bad start. I did the best thing I could think of: I looked at the map. My bad start got even worse. This was the wrong highway. I wanted the M3, not the M4. Ugh. My mistake, this time. With a few more directions from strangers and an hour's bus ride, I found the M3, which was much more hospitable. The first ride actually came pretty quickly, as did the next three.

Four easy and pleasant rides took me from London to my goal: the Dorset Coast. My last chauffeur actually knew a little about local fossils and suggested I try a town called Charmouth, rather than Lyme Regis: "Better fossiling at Charmouth". Charmouth is the next coastal town east of Lyme Regis. "My friend Nigel tends bar at the Charmouth House Hotel. He goes fossiling quite a bit. I'll take you up there. Go on in and introduce yourself. He'll be happy to help you out."

My bad start was getting better. As we drove through town, he showed me a few campgrounds. Charmouth is a small vacation town with one main street that runs east-west, parallel to the coastline. On the far end of town we climbed a hill and he dropped me off at the top. The Charmouth House Hotel was on the left. On the right I noticed a sign hanging over the sidewalk announcing the entrance to the "Olde Forge Fossil Shoppe".

"Thanks for the ride and the info. I'm gonna stop in here first," I told him, pointing to the sign and grabbing my backpack.

The entrance to the Olde Forge Fossil Shoppe was a long dark hallway that seems to have originally been the alley between two buildings, whose second stories had eventually fused together. I was intrigued to see what the locals had for sale here. Ichthyosaurs, I imagined. Slightly bubbling with excitement, I walked down into a small shop with shelves full of little calcite ammonites and a few big ones. A few Green River fishes jumped out at me among the other fossils -- a reminder of the state I had left but a few days ago. Nice, but where's the famous Lyme Regis stuff? A scruffy young guy and a more cleanshaven fellow sat in the back room talking, with English accents, of course.

"Howdy," I called out, feeling silly at the same time. I had been trying to break this habit, for out here, no one understood "howdy".

"Hi. If you have any questions, please ask," responded an Englishman.

After poking around the shop for a few minutes, I asked either or both of the guys, "Which of these are from here?"

The scruffy guy explained that the calcite ammonites were local and that he'd collected all the local fossils. Peering into the back room, I asked if he did all the prep work here.

"Yeah", and before long Chris Moore was showing me around the back room with his friend Richard. Lots of unprepared ammonites, a few fish and a slab of crinoids. A newspaper clipping taped to the wall caught my eye -- a picture of Paul Sereno and his Moroccan Charcharodontosaurus skull with Paul holding a human skull. The same photo appeared in the June 1996 National Geographic. I chuckled at the photo and explained/bragged that I was on my way to Niger with this man. Chris and Richard were intrigued. So was I.

Chris invited us next door to his house to see some really neat stuff -- obviously an opportunity not to be turned down. Richard had never seen Chris' personal collection either.

Chris had some truly neat stuff at his place. A local shark skeleton caught my eye, about 6-7 feet long. You don't see that too often. Nice ammonites, dinosaur bones (American and English) and a 5-foot long ichthyosaur skull. From high up on the shelves he pulled down a baby plesiosaur and a lobster, both local finds. The lobster was beautiful and well prepared. Chris admitted that as a commercial dealer, the lobsters are nice, but they take too long to prep for him to make any money on them. "But for someone who's willing to put the time into them, they're wonderful."

Chris told us that marine reptiles are hard to come by. "You really have to be here in the winter and walk the beaches after a storm." But he's got competition. There are several local fossil collectors, including his friend Nigel who works at the bar across the street. "Sometimes I think there are too many of us. It gets to where people have been digging into the cliffs to get fossils out. I don't like that."

Toward dinnertime, Richard offered to drive me around to find a place to camp. We stopped first at the Bed and Breakfast he was staying in. He showed me the fossils he'd collected in the past few days, and offered to drive me around the next few days to look for whatever I'd like. It's nice to run into fossilers who like to help out other fossilers. By this time I had changed my personal plans. Ichthyosaurs seemed like a long shot. "How about ammonites and lobsters?" I said to Richard.

"Tomorrow we'll do ammonites, then the next day lobsters." Cool.

He had heard there was a camping barn in town. "I've been out of the country for ten years and these things have popped up all over in that time. They're basically cheap rustic accommodations for hikers to get out of the rain." Anne who runs the B and B had heard it was up that hill, she said pointing to the street across the way. In Richard's car, it took a while to find it: about a mile up the hill with only a very small sign identifying it. The farmer in charge showed us into an old barn refinished with eight or nine wooden queen-sized bed platforms, bathrooms, showers and eating area. No kitchen; hikers carry stoves. I was a bit reluctant to stay a mile out of town until I asked the price. "One pound, fifty". I didn't even need to do any currency math in my head before asking slowly in disbelief, "That's...one...and...a...half...pounds? Per night?"

"Yeah". There was no way I was going to turn down a place to stay for two and a quarter American dollars. I could get to like this country.

Richard and I went back into town and ate fish and chips. So much for getting to like this country. Then off to the bar to meet Nigel. He wasn't in but I recognized him as soon as he did walk in. My last ride had described him as, "Looks a lot like you, big beard, only taller." I had noticed that there were very few beards in England. Over a beer we all decided to meet up the next morning to look for ammonites.

This was exciting. Much more than I had expected. A spontaneous trip with locals.

Cows, dogs and farm machinery were my alarm clock at the camping barn. I packed my collecting gear and walked into town. I Met Richard and Nigel and a couple other folks -- Mike and his girlfriend, who were friends of Richard's. We walked along the beach looking up at the cliffs and down on the beach.

The blue-grey Jurassic shale of the Shales with Beef and the Black Ven Marls erode to steep slopes along the coast heading east from Charmouth. I decided that the "Shales with Beef" must be the funniest name for a rock unit in the world. I later found out that the "beef" actually refers to layers of white calcite squashed in between shale layers that are said to resemble marbling in beefsteaks. The beds dip slightly to the east, so that at Lyme Regis, the underlying Blue Lias is exposed at sea level. This is where the reptiles come from. Above the Black Ven Marls lie the Belemnite Marls. Fossil hunters must enjoy a rock unit named for the fossils in it. Above that at Charmouth are the Green Ammonite Beds. These produce big calcified ammonites more than a foot in diameter. The Cretaceous Gault and rusty colored Upper Greensand cap the cliffs between Lyme Regis and Charmouth. The lobsters come from the Upper Greensand, but it is pretty darn inaccessible here, so you must search the beach for fallen fossils.

So there we were, walking the beach east of Charmouth, looking up at the cliffs. I didn't know what we were looking for. Richard explained that the big calcified Asteroceras ammonites come from up high in these cliffs. The smaller calcified Promicroceras come from a layer near the base in large flat concretions called flatstones, or "flatties" in local parlance. Nigel spotted an "aster" way up in the cliff and tried to climb up to it. All I could see was the edge of a large concretion sticking out of the shales way up there. Nigel was carrying an anchor, but left it with us on the beach and spent 20 minutes attempting to scale the soft, not quite vertical slope, only to be kept back by an increase in slope. As he climbed he warned us of quicksand anywhere there are flat areas on the cliffs. He gave up the climb and returned to our group on the beach. He looked at the American who had previously asked, "Why the anchor?"

"Now you'll see what the anchor is for."

Anchor in tow, he walked back towards town to a place where the cliff was obviously climbable, and did just that. A hundred feet above us he headed back toward us. His friends down below motioned and yelled at him to guide him until he was just above the "aster" concretion. Nigel lowered his anchor down on a rope, and again with coaching from below, placed the anchor just under the concretion's protruding edge. Then he pulled up. The aster wouldn't budge. After several more tries it became apparent that this one was not quite ripe yet.

Nigel returned to us. "We'll have to keep an eye on that one in the next few weeks," he told no one and everyone at once, then headed in to work the lunch shift.

Mike's girlfriend was less interested in the fossils than the rest if us were. She was out beachcombing, so Mike, Richard and I continued down the beach. We stopped at a spot where Mike told Richard, "I got a flattie out right here last week, and another one right there earlier," pointing to two areas about 30 feet apart. "So," pointing to right between these two spots, "there ought to be one right there." Mike had been carrying some serious digging tools and he put them to good use here. I thought of Chris' comments on cliff digging. Within a half hour he struck a rock that was much harder than the surrounding shale. "There's our flattie," exclaimed Mike proud of his prediction. In another hour, a 3-foot roundish, flat rock, about eight inches thick, lay on the beach.

We attacked it with hammers and chisels along the obvious bedding planes. This was tough work, but proved to be quite rewarding. Numerous beautiful one to two inch wide Promicroceras were exposed -- "Prommies" in local parlance. (These guys were full of nicknames that ended in "-ies"; reminded me a lot of the Aussies). Sometimes the rock would split right through an ammonite leaving a mess of glasslike calcite crystals, but mostly it would split along the edge, exposing a nice specimen. We each ended up with some nice little ammonites. Mike kept the larger ones for himself. Months later, at home, I found that they clean up very nicely with an airscribe under the microscope.

I also found a fish skull in our flattie, which still lies unprepped in the Jurassic portion of my collection. Fish are not unknown in flatties, but they are preserved as black bones, rather than calcite.

Mike and his girlfriend decided to call it a day. Richard proved to be an excellent guide. We headed to Lyme Regis. We would visit the rock shops the next day, but today we visited another friend with an impressive collection of fossils. Then he took me to Monmouth Beach, which I have since tried to locate on my map, but to no avail. I found out on the way that Richard lives in Brazil, but as his accent suggests, he is English. He works offshore oil rigs and collects fossils and birdwatches while he awaits being called out to his rigs. He was in the UK now waiting to be called out to the North Sea. I expressed my interest in birds as well, to which he replied, "When we get to the Black Ven, we should keep our eyes peeled for peregrine falcons that live there." Cool.

The rocks at Monmouth Beach are amazing. It's not much of a beach. There is very little sand, but many rocks and some more resistant flat-lying limestone benches are loaded with huge ammonites that have been cross-sectioned by decades of tidal bashing. There are also large cobbles with large cross-sectioned ammonites in them. I collected large ammonites with the camera.

Back in Charmouth, over dinner, Richard and I planned the next day's trip.

"There's a brittle star I know of about five miles from here. We could go collect that." Sounded good to me, but I also wanted to search for lobsters. Brittle stars are found in the Jurassic Eype Clay, east of Charmouth. But it was not to be. As we left, Anne from the B and B came running up to us.

Excitedly she called out, "Richard, I've been looking for you all afternoon. Your boss called and you have to be on a plane out of London at 6 A.M."

This was all kind of normal for an oil rig man on call, so he drove me back to my camping barn and headed out. "It's a three hour drive to London. I have time to pack up, get a bit of sleep, and drive to Heathrow. It's been a good day." Indeed it had. We exchanged addresses and hoped to meet up someday, and collect fossils and go birdwatching in one or the other's home turf -- Brazil or Wyoming.

The camping barn alarm gave me a good early start to the next day. I decided to go out in search of lobsters like the one I'd seen in Chris' collection. The walk into town was invigorating; downhill all the way. I stopped at a cafe to break my fast and ran into Chris, who was out walking his dog. He gave me some advice in my lobster search: "The best place is in along the beach below the Black Ven." I walked westward along the coast to Lyme Regis, maybe a mile and a half. I picked up and turned over many rocks on the way. I found a few pyritized ammonites and some calcified ammonites in concretions. There were more of the large ammonites in larger rocks near Lyme Regis.

Lyme Regis is a small, quaint tourist town with hilly, narrow, winding streets. I found two rock shops there. One of them was the main store for Chris' Olde Forge Fossils Shoppe. This was a large, clean, spacious, well-lit store with many fine fossils from Lyme Regis and the rest of the world. The other was a shop full of character. Small, dark, dusty, crowded with stuff everywhere, fossils as well as historical and nautical stuff. You had to squeeze by other customers in the aisles, declaring, "excuse me," to get by them. They had some marine reptiles and a few lobsters. They were badly lit so I couldn't see what the matrix looked like. (I hadn't looked too carefully at Chris'.)

After a quick lunch, I headed back east on the beach toward Charmouth. I decided to explore the Black Ven. The Black Ven is an area between Charmouth and Lyme Regis where the cliff is less stable and has slumped considerably. Erosionally speaking this is the most active part of the Dorset coast. It's a messy area, geologically and quicksandily. It was said to be tough going as it has quicksand and brushy thickets. It was a challenge to get around in; quite a thrill, actually. I found the thickets, but not the quicksand. I was pleased to find an area with countless belemnites that also yielded one small ichthyosaur phalange. This was exciting. I put it in a film canister, labeled it and took a few field notes. From a high vantage point that I had scrambled to, I was thrilled to see a peregrine falcon fly by. Being satisfied, I continued my trek back to Charmouth. I collected two rocks with something inside them that could have been lobsters -- just a black something in a rock.

In Charmouth, I stopped by Chris' to ask him about my potential lobsters. He laughed. "Didn't you see the big rocks under the Black Ven with seaweed on them?" -- his voice implying that this is where the lobsters hide, not in my rocks.

Sheepishly I answered, "uh... no."

Our Niger expedition was to finish in London in January. I told Chris I'd return then to try again. He said he'd take time to help me and offered me tea.

"What! No milk?!" Then with a roll of his eyes and a chuckle, "... Americans." The phone rang; I drank tea without milk. Chris chatted with someone about the prices of fossils in dollars. "I've got an American here on his way to Africa," he said to the invisible participant. After he got off the phone, he sent regards from a fellow I had spoken with the week before, in the States, about doing some prep work for him. Small world.

After the mile hike back up the hill, I took a cold shower. Only afterwards did I figure out how to turn on the hot water. I spread out my finds on another one of the queen sized boards (I had the place to myself), and began sorting. I needed to minimize my weight for the trip back to London. I was happy with my finds: calcite, pyrite and flattened ammonites, a piece of Prommie mass mortality, fish skull, one beetle elytra, belemnites, a piece of a sea urchin and one ichthyosaur phalange.

The hitchhiking back to London was much less enjoyable than the trip down; it took me all day. I had also run out of cash, so I ate only a chocolate bar I had somehow acquired and blackberries I picked along the roadside (I don't even like chocolate). At one point, I was offered a ride by a guy in a Jaguar. Wow. I've never been in a Jaguar. As a rule, people in expensive cars do not stop for hitchhikers. I had to turn him down as we looked at the map and feared that the spot our paths would diverge looked like a bad spot to hitchhike.

In London, I sent my finds back to Wyoming, which proved to be a rather costly venture. Months later, when I returned home, I found that one of the packages never arrived -- the one with the film canister labeled "ichthyosaur phalange". Dang it.

This was all back in the fall of 1997. I've seen Chris a few times, at the Denver and Tucson shows. He's told me that it is illegal to dig into the cliffs in the Lyme Regis area. The area from Lyme Regis to Charmouth is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), as designated by the crown: no digging allowed. But the cliffs east of Charmouth are not part of the SSSI. It is not illegal to dig there, but it is frowned upon. I guess it's best to stick to the beaches. In the UK, beaches are public property, but the cliffs belong to whoever owns the land above them.

Chris and I also talk about my desire to find a lobster and his desire to hunt dinosaurs in the Lance Formation. I never did make it back to Charmouth, but that's another story. I plan to return soon to look for lobsters and an ichthyosaur phalange... and maybe even ride in a Jaguar.

If you want to know a bit more (these are available from the British Geological Survey Office in London, but I don't know if they do mail orders):

Eyers, Jill, 1998. Fossils and Where to Find Them. High Wyncombe, UK, 52 pp.

Coram, Robert, 1989. Finding Fossils in Lyme Bay. British Fossils, Wimborne, Dorset, UK.