Young country diary: Searching for remains of a vanished world | John

Grafham Water reservoir, Cambridgeshire: While a red kite looks down on me, I scour for precious fossils with icy fingersWould the dam hold? Blustery waves challenged it while sharp blasts of ice-cold wind whistled along its length. Wind turbines whirled but solar panels caught only faint glimmers of the winter sun. A red kite circled majestically on the thermals. I too circled, my eyes scanning the ground. I was hunting for something so still, inert, ancient, that it hadn't changed for millions of years.Where I stood, a tropical ocean was once swarming with life. In the shallows, trilobites scuttled and burrowed in the mud. Above them swam gelatinous, translucent belemnites which are like our present-day squid. Hard to imagine on this winter day. But the droughts last summer left a larger expanse of shore here, so there was hope, even for our icy fingers, of finding the stony remains of that vanished world. Sifting the gravel, I felt a stubby object, tapering to a point. Continue reading...