Folkstone Monday 8th

Hello everyone, hoping to pick your brains again if you don't mind!

Managed to pop down to Folkstone for a couple of hours yesterday evening. I found some little ammonites and a few other bits



I like the little crab shell - can anyone tell me what the pyrite thing is to the left?



Also are these below possibly bits of turtle shell?



Finally I also found this,  it was wedged under one of the boulders on the shoreline.  No idea what it is - fossil or otherwise. At first I thought it was something man-made,  but it looks to me like some sort of shell material.

Its quite big, about 8inch by 6inch, and thin - it has the appearance of a big oyster - any ideas?

the fossil on the left is a seed.

on the 3 pieces that could be turtle shell, the one on the right is part of a crab. The other two maybe turtle shell

Hope this helps?

A seed, of course!

Great help thank you. Any ideas about the thing at the bottom?

I found 1 very similar to the seed on Saturday at Folkestone, also a couple of small ammonites and gastropod. Where abouts do tend to search there? I tend to stick close to the cliff.

It's only the second time I've been, first time the whole family went and we only got as far as that concrete tower at Copt point, this time i got to an area about 100 yards or so further round to the east where there was noticeably more stuff. I was pretty close to the cliff too, searching amongst the pebbles that gather amongst the large boulders.

Usually with turtle shells if you look along any of the sides (I.e. not the two large flat surfaces) you'll usually (not always, you might have part of the edge of the shell like an edge piece of a jigsaw!) see the bone texture cross section. I've got a good couple of pieces that show this but I can't get pictures of them as they're currently in the midst of a huge pile of boxes of fossils that came back with me from uni that still need sorting out.. That said, the two on the left (as Craig said) do look like turtle.

The cliff face between the point and Folkestone contains gypsum crystals, I found 3 in one visit. Not managed to find any from the point heading west.

What is it that distinguishes the piece of crab as crab?

I'd be interested to know, short of doing a palaeontology degree, what's the best way of learning about all this stuff?

Probably just reading technical books and then trying to get into papers and journals. The books are usually fairly big and a bit costly but they're generally good. If you search Amazon for 'Life of the Past' that's a really good series of technical books by palaeontologists around the world on their specific areas of study.