Marine Fossils of Beith and district
26 June
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Crinoids, corals, and brachiopod spines
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Trearne Quarry
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Dockra Quarry
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The Living Fossil Tree
The area around Beith is famous for the well preserved fossils that are found in marine deposits of limestone mainly dating from the geological era known as the Carboniferous, circa 300 million years old. Trearne Quarry is the best known site, however Dockra, and even Marshalland yield specimens.
The marine conditions were quite calm when the organisms died, giving relatively undamaged and intact specimens, and in addition the degree of compaction has resulted in good three-dimensional preservation.
Fossils frequenly found include solitary and colonial corals, crinoids and brachiopods. Brachiopods lived attached to the sea bed by a stalk and the another very common group, the crinoids (stalked starfish), are mainly represented by their coin-like stalk sections. Rarer specimens include sponges, jellyfish, bryozoa, blastoids (stalked-startfish), sharks teeth and trilobite cases. One species of two-valved brachiopod molluscs, Promarginifera trearnensis is named for the Trearne Quarry site.
Pseudo-fossils, such as the burrows once made by burrowing crabs, are also found. Gateside Primary School has a fossil garden of well weather specimens, created by its pupils and the NAC Garnock Valley Ranger. A local enthusiast has put together a framed display collection of the very best specimens. The main quarries are not normally open to the public.
An example of what is known as a 'living fossil' exists at the Spier's Old School Grounds, being a Dawn Redwood Tree (Metasequoia glypostoboides), possibly the oldest in Scotland, that until the 1940s was only known from fossil evidence. Living specimens were discovered growing in China and somehow one sapling made its way here to be planted as the central feature of the 1953 Coronation Garden.
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