Fossils and Geology of Marloes, SW Wales. Fossil Collecting & Geological Guides

Marloes Sands Fossils and Fossil Collecting
Your SW Wales Geological Guide and Geology Info

Marloes Sands is a stunningly beautiful location managed by the National Trust. The scenery is fantastic, the geology is breath-taking and there are many fossils to find, corals brachiopods, trilobites and much more.

Marloes Sands - SW Wales
Last updated: [16/07/07] last visited 2007

Silurian

Written by Joe Shimmin

(Marloes Sands, 2007)

Location Information

This location, like much of the Pembrokeshire coastline is an SSSI. This means that the cliffs and larger rocks must not be damaged. There is plenty of scree to look through, so finds should still be plentiful. Fossils can also be observed in situ.

(Suitable for Children)

There is something for everyone to do at Marloes Sands. There is a massive sandy beach with crystal clear water and many rock pools for kids to enjoy; as well as beautiful scenery, geology and fossils for the adults. The location is an ideal one for a weekend picnic.

There is plenty of parking at the Marloes Sands National Trust car park. From here there is an 800m walk down to the beach. Once on the beach there is a huge area to explore.

Cliff and Foreshore

Once the right rock layers are found, fossils can be observed in situ or can be collected from the large amounts of scree present.

ACCESS
RIGHTS

National Trust Property, SSSI

There is unrestricted access to the beach and the cliffs. The location is protected however and is an SSSI.

Please follow our national fossil collecting code

Other Locations similar to Marloes Sands

This is an excellent location for corals, other similar locations for Silurian Corals in the Shropshire District are; Mortimer Forest, Wenlock Quarry, Upper Millichope , Llanymynech Quarry, and Shadwell Quarry . In Scotland, you can also find corals at St Monans

For trilobites, further locations in Shropshire are Vinnels, Mortimer Forest, Hillend, Wenlock Quarry,Hope, Betton Dingle, Upper Millichope and The Onny Trail. In South West Wales, you can also find Silurian Trilobites from Marloes Sands and Abereiddy. In scotland you can find Carboniferous Trilobites and tracks at Aberlady.

You can also collect carboniferous Corals from; Portishead and Weston-Super-Mare in Avon, or along the South West Coast, you can also collect Devonian Corals from Torquay along Hopes Nose and Daddy Hole and Castleton, Parkhouse Hill,in the Derbyshire district..

For Corals from Younger period, the Coralline Crag at Ramsholt makes ideal collecting.

! IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTES !

Marloes Sands is a generally safe location. As with all coastal sites, however, care must be taken to avoid falling debris from the cliffs and the possibility of being cut off by the tide.

Stone Tumblers (Lapidary)

Microscopes

Test Sieves for Particle Analysis

Stone Tumblers are used for tumbling and polishing rough rock, stones and pebbles including those found on the beach and glass.

Whilst collecting fossils, on those days where you come back empty handed, you could collect rocks, stones and glass from the beach and tumble then at home.

These are all high quality machines to give a professional finish to your samples. The tumblers can be used with a variety of grits, most commonly Silicon Carbide Grit and Cerium Oxide. We have a wide range of rough rocks for sale too.

Microfossils are much easier to collect because they are so small that the vast majority of collections only concentrate on large finds. These small finds can simply be found by taking small samples of sands, crags, clays and soft rocks and examining them under a microscope.

We have a wide range of microscopes for sale, both for the study of fossils, but also educational and professional for use in the laboratory. We have Stereo microscopes, Compound Microscopes, Polarising Microscopes and Monocular Microscopes.

We have thousands of Test Sieves for Particle Analysis.

Endecotts Sieves: For accurate dependable results you can't buy a better test sieve than Endecotts. At every stage of manufacture each test sieve is individually inspected.

High Precision Tecan manufactures precision apertures as small as 3 microns for a wide array of applications such as filtering, sieving and nozzles. Its high-performance, ASTM/ISO compliant test sieves satisfy the most demanding fine particle grading requirements.

Marloes Sands Fossils and Fossil Collecting Your SW Wales Geological Guide and Geology Info

Marloes Sands Fossils and Fossil Collecting
Your SW Wales Geological Guide and Geology Info