- Durlston Bay
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Durlston Bay from Durlston Head
Durlston Bay (also known as Durdlestone Bay)[1] is a small bay next to a country park of the same name, just south of the resort of Swanage, on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, England. It has been a renowned site for Lower Cretaceous fossils since the initial discovery of fragments there by Samuel Beckles in the 1850s.[2]
The Jurassic Coast stretches over a distance of 153 kilometres (95 mi), from Orcombe Point near Exmouth, in the west, to Old Harry Rocks, in the east.[3] The coastal exposures along the coastline provide a continuous sequence of Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous rock formations spanning approximately 185 million years of the Earths history. The localities along the Jurassic Coast includes a large range of important fossil zones.
See also
- List of places on the Jurassic Coast
- List of Dorset beaches
References
- ^ "Feather Quarry, Durlston Bay (DB102)". Paleobiology Database. http://paleodb.org/cgi-bin/bridge.pl?action=basicCollectionSearch&collection_no=52254. Retrieved 2011-7-13.
- ^ Durlston Bay page on the Jurassic Coast website
- ^ "Dorset and East Devon Coast". UNESCO World Heritage Centre. 2001. http://whc.unesco.org/pg.cfm?cid=31&id_site=1029. Retrieved 2007-01-14.
External links
- Durlston Bay; Introduction and Upper Purbeck: Geology of the Wessex Coast by I. M. West, 2005.
Coordinates: 50°36′04″N 1°56′55″W / 50.60111°N 1.94861°W
Categories:- Isle of Purbeck
- Bays of Dorset
- Beaches of Dorset
- Jurassic Coast
- Swanage
- Dorset geography stubs
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