The Tingle Factor Box

It Looks Like Sandstone - Fossilized Shell

Imagine, you are wandering along a beach, looking at the shells. There are so many different, pretty colors, but you notice one which is a little strange. It looks funny, more a like rock than a shell and when you pick it up you realize that it is far too heavy to simply be a shell! You wonder, did somebody carve it, or is it a fossil, a shell like the ones you might have seen wandering along the beach thousands of years ago.

So How Did They Work It Out? - Fossilized Shell

Imagine, you are wandering along a bush track when you look down and see a shell. You wonder what it could be doing here, how it got here. After all, you're a long way from the sea, and there aren't even any rivers nearby! When you look closer though, you see that it isn't a shell at all, or not a shell like the ones you find washed up on the beach. This one is huge, and it's full of rock. You realise it is a fossil, and where you are walking now, must once have been underwater!

It's Very Elegant - Fossil Jewellery

Imagine, you are a young woman. You, like so many of your friends, love to get new pieces of jewellery, but you always want something a bit different, something which will stand out from the crowd. Having 'normal' jewellery is simply no fun! Recently, you saw a beautiful piece in a shop, a piece made with a fossil. You hadn't seen a fossil like it before - it was shiny and colourful and sparkling. You simply had to have it. You'd never even thought you could make fossils into jewellery before now.

It's Like A Prehistoric Puzzle - Trilobite

Imagine, you are an avid collector of the weird and wonderful in the 19th century. Some of your favourite things to collect are fossils. To be able to see creatures from so long ago in such detail is amazing. You have a new specimen arriving today, and you are so excited to see it. It is a trilobite, and apparently it is an amazing specimen. You can even see it's eye lenses! These fossils are truly amazing things!

So It's Smushed Up Fossils? Coal

Imagine, you are living in London in the 1850s. It is winter and the streets are cold and wet. You are lucky, as you have enough money for coal to burn, and can stay warm, but there are so many people out in the streets in the cold. All they have to comfort them is the smoke from the coal fires. Sometimes the smog around London is so thick it is hard to see or breathe, and you know the fires are part of the problem, spilling smoke into the air, but you wouldn’t be without one!

Oh Yuck, That's Gross! Fossilised Dinosaur Poo

Imagine you are a scientist studying dinosaurs. You are out hunting for fossils that will tell us all about life at the time of dinosaurs, and so far, all you have found are dinosaur bones. Then, something really exciting happens. You find a huge coprolite, a magnificent specimen of dinosaur poo! It's a wonderful find, and a beautiful fossil and hopefully, you will be able to find out all about what the dinosaur which made it had been eating!

When I took this small piece of coprolite to show the children, their reactions were hilarious. At first, before I told them just what a coprolite is, they thought it was a rather beautiful piece of polished stone. When they found out it was a piece of dinosaur poo though, I was very pleased that it is now made of stone as it went sailing across the room. The children were horrified that they had been holding a piece of poo and, even though they knew in their heads that it was now stone, they were reluctant to touch it again. They were fascinated to discover that things like poo actually do become fossils though!

So, other than gathering snickers and gasps of horror, why is fossilised dinosaur poo important? Coprolites are one of the rarest forms of dinosaur fossil to be discovered. They belong to a group called 'trace fossils' and other types of fossils in this group are fossilised dinosaur vomit and cololites (dinosaur poo which hasn't yet been passed). Although fossilised dinosaur bones, especially skulls, may be more famous and romantic, such 'icky fossils' as the children called them, can tell us a huge amount about the life led by dinosaurs and the time when they lived.

Fossilised poo may be less glamourous than other types of fossils, but within these coprolite fossils, there are fossilised remains of what dinosaurs ate, which can tell us about what the diet of dinosaurs was like. These fossilised remains can also tell us about what the environment was like. Bits of bone, tiny fossilised marine animals, fur, plant matter (including seeds, pollen and plant stems), fish scales and other things dinosaurs ate may be contained in the poo. This not only tells us what dinosaurs ate but sometimes scientists can even tell what kind of dinosaur produced the coprolite. It also tells us what types of things were around for the dinosaurs to eat. On top of this though, there are insect remains which become trapped in the poo which scientists can study. From the larve of insects to the actual burrows of dung beetles, coprolite preserves it all! To find out more about dinosaur poo, click here.

It Looks Like Something We'd See Today - Fossilised Sea Urchin

Imagine, you have gone to England to visit family and are enjoying a stroll along the beach. This particular beach, in Norfolk England, is fascinating, scattered with bits of carnelian rocks and fossilised belemnites. You have never seen anything on the beach as interesting as what you found today though! A sea urchin, lying just near the edge of the water. You thought to throw it back, after all it wouldn't survive out of the water, but when you picked it up you discovered it was made of rock, a fossilised sea urchin!

It's like a fairy cave . . . no, it's where thunder is born - thunder egg

Imagine,there you are, walking through the bush. You know the area you are walking through used to be volcanic, in fact there is a mountain  close by which is an extinct volcano! You spy a funny rock while you're walking and pick it up. It's a odd shape, very round, but also a bit of a strange colour. Perhaps, if you're lucky it's a thunder egg!

Wow, it's hard as a rock! Fossilised Crab

Imagine, you are wandering along a beach. You are looking at the shells and the rocks that have been washed up, and playing in the water. You see a crab washed up on the beach, but you don't think much about it, after all, you've seen many crabs before! This one is a bit bashed up, but you have a closer look anyway. You expect it to be pretty delicate, but when you look closely you discover that it is actually as hard as a rock.

Are they real? As in Really Real? - Pearls in an Mollusk Shell

Imagine, your job is to swim. Swim hard, and swim deep, all the way to the bottom of the ocean! You have to collect mollusk shells for your boss, bringing them up to be opened and hopefully, a pearl will be inside! Hopefully you will also make it back to the boat, or shore safely, but there are no promises. Luckily, now pearls are farmed, and people don't have to dive for mollusks in the same way anymore, but we still love and value the pearls they might contain just as much.