PBDB Collection

Cliff End bonebed [Fairlight Cliffs, near Hastings]: Early Valanginian, United Kingdom
collected by Revs P. Teilhard de Chardin and F. Pelletier 1911

List of taxa

Where & when

Geology

Taphonomy & methods

Metadata & references

Taxonomic list

Mammalia - Multituberculata - Eobaataridae

	Dipriodon valdensis n. sp. Woodward 1911	2 specimens
	BMNH M10480 (holotype tooth), M10481 (m2, 'probably of the same species')
see common names

Stratigraphy

Geological group:	Wealden	Formation:	Wadhurst Clay
Stratigraphic resolution:	bed
Stratigraphy comments: "Fairlight Clay" Clemens & Lees 1971 (E.R. Shephard-Thorn, pers. comm.): 'Careful study of the cliff sections, and examination of material brought down in cliff falls and exposed in temporary sections between 1965 and 1970 has prompted a revision of their stratigraphy. Briefly this starts from the recognition of a 1m band of dark shales and thin interliminated siltstones with a 10cm clay ironstone band at the top as the equivalent of the basal Wadhurst Clay (traces of the Top Ashdown Pebble Bed (Allen, 1949b) occur beneath it). A massive unit of well-jointed, fine white sandstone, 10 m thick, forms the upper part of the cliff at Cliff End; it is capped by another thin pebble bed. Dark grey shales with thin siltstones, calcareous Tilgate Stone and nodular clay ironstone occur above, in a densely wooded and landslipped "undercliff"; the bone bed lies within these shales about 2.5m above the top of the 10m sandstone. The bone bed is lenticular in horizontal extent and appears to be well-developed between the faults at Haddock Cottages and Cliff End. Cliff falls are fairly frequent at this locality and usually originate from the undermining of joint-blocks of the massive 10m sandstone by marine erosion. The overlying shales containg the bone bed are often involved in these falls or subsequent slips and thus provide the intermittent supply of slabs of the bone bed to the beach, from which they have been previously recorded erroneously as in situ. Support for the revised stratigraphy outlined above has come from examination of the ostracod faunas of shale samples, collected at CLiff End by Dr F. W. Anderson of the Institute of Geological Sciences. He confirms the equivalence of the 1m band of shales with siltstones and ironstones to the basal Wadhurst Clay and assigns the bone-bed to the approximate horizon of the Lydd "S" phase of the Cypridea Beds (C. paulsgrovensis Zone) of the zonal scheme her has recently put forward for the Wadhurst Clay (Anderson et al 1967)'

Lithology and environment

Primary lithology:	wave ripples,coarse,quartzose calcareous conglomerate
Includes fossils?	Y
Lithology description: "coarse sand-stone between 2 and 5 in. thick (5 to 12.5 cm), with its upper surface ripple marked. The sandstone is made up of angular grains of quartz...The cement...is calcareous." Clemens & Lees (1971): Allen (1967) has noted that the Cliff End bone bed and the Telham pebble bed can be distinguished lithologically from all other Wealden bone and pebble beds. Both are '...dominated by unstained sub-angular pebbles of "vein" quartz and grey or white quartzite, including types not known elsehwere (Allen, 1967:262)'. The lithological similarity suggests that the Cliff End bone bed was formed as part of the Telham pebble bed. However, the Telham pebble bed is a unit within the lower part of the Wadhurst Clay while the CLiff End bone bed was assumed to be part of the underlying Ashdown Sand or Fairlight Clay. Now Shephard-Thorn has accumulated considerable evidence indicating that the upper part of the cliff section at Cliff End is made up of a coarse facies of the Wadhurst Clay. The Cliff End bone bed is one of the uppermost strata in this coarse facies.
Environment:	estuary/bay
Geology comments: "deltaic or estuarine origin"

Country:	United Kingdom	State/province:	England	County:	East Sussex
Coordinates:	50.9° North, 0.7° East (view map)
Paleocoordinates:	34.2° North, 20.9° East (Wright 2013)
Basis of coordinate:	based on nearby landmark
Geographic resolution:	outcrop

Period:	Cretaceous	Epoch:	Early Cretaceous
Stage:	Valanginian	10 m.y. bin:	Cretaceous 1
Key time interval:	Early Valanginian	Zone:	Cypridea paulsgrovensis ostracod Zone
Age range of interval:	139.8 - 132.6 m.y. ago

Modes of preservation:	body
Degree of concentration:	-bonebed
Size of fossils:	macrofossils,mesofossils
Preservation of anatomical detail:	good
Fragmentation:	occasional
Spatial resolution:	parautochthonous

Collection methods:	selective quarrying,chemical,mechanical,field collection
Reason for describing collection:	general faunal/floral analysis
Collectors:	Revs P. Teilhard de Chardin and F. Pelletier	Collection dates:	1911

Database number:	122797
Authorizer:	R. Benson	Enterer:	R. Benson
Modifier:	M. Carrano	Research group:	vertebrate
Created:	2012-01-05 23:46:24	Last modified:	2025-02-22 15:12:02
Access level:	the public	Released:	2012-01-05 23:46:24
Creative Commons license:	CC0