Discovered beneath a field grazed by an ancient breed of English Longhorn cattle, the roughly 183-million-year-old fossils are stunningly well preserved, as if they were frozen in time.
Contained within three-dimensionally preserved limestone concretions, the remains of fish, ancient marine reptiles, squids, rare insects and more have been revealed for the first time by a team of palaeontologists.
The fossils come from an inland rock layer that was last exposed in the UK more than 100 years ago and represented a unique opportunity to collect fossils from a time when this part of the country was deep underwater. The newly found site is at Court Farm, Kings Stanley near Stroud, Gloucestershire, and was discovered by Sally and Neville Hollingworth, avid fossil collectors who recently uncovered the remains of mammoths in the nearby Cotswold Water Park.
The Hollingworths explained: “These fossils come from the Early Jurassic, specifically a time called the...