A simple EarthCache which requires you to visit the location given, make some observations, answer some questions and log your find.
There is a boundary chain round the memorial so sorry but it's not quite wheelchair accessible.
Bourton-on-the-Water is an Ancient Parish in the county of Gloucestershire. Other villages such as Clapton and Lower Slaughter are also chapelries of Bourton-on-the-Water. The Parish church of St. Lawrence town registers of births and deaths begin in 1654 This is a very popular tourist town and usually free parking is difficult.
This EarthCache is based on the stone and fossil remains on the river side of the memorial. Much of the stone used is smooth with a few fossils showing either as weathered remains or holes in the rock. There is however one particular stone on the ground, with a horizontal face (that you might sit on), in the middle of the memorial platform, on the river side, which shows many many fossil traces and this is the stone I'd like to look at and compare with the rest.
Fossils
Most fossils are found in earth that once was underwater. They usually formed from the hard parts of sea creatures—such as shells or bones—which were once living. After the living thing or things died, they sank to the bottom of the sea, the soft parts of its body decompose leaving the hard parts, like the skeleton and shell, behind. Layers of earth and the remains of other living things built up on top of it. This becomes buried by small particles of rock called sediment. Over time, compression of the weight of these layers turned the sediment, shell and bones into rock.
As many years of time passes the bones then start to be dissolved by water seeping through the rock. Minerals in the water replace the bone, leaving a rock replica of the original bone and shells called a fossil. This process is very slow and can take millions of years.
How to identify two types of fossil.
Bivalves
Bivalves, which belong to the phylum Mollusca and the class Bivalvia, have two hard, usually bowl-shaped, shells (called valves) enclosing the soft body. The valves are the parts usually found as fossils, but decay of the elastic hinge tissue that joins them means that they are rarely preserved together. There are different types which include oysters, clams, cockles, muscles and scallops but all have the same basic structure of two matching shells and a muscle holding them together with relaxes to open the shells for feeding, propulsion and upon death. They can live in saltwater or freshwater.
If you are looking at Bivalves fossils you will be able to identify the cup shaped shell structures. There may be a multitude of remains but you should be able to measure individual shells, which you will need for the questions below. Depending on the type of bivalve the size could range from about 0.5mm for Condylonucula maya to over 60cm in the case of some giant clams.
Nautilus
The nautilus is a marine mollusc of the family Nautilidae. The nautilus is the sole extant family of the superfamily Nautilaceae and of its smaller but near equal suborder, Nautilina
There are still six living species in two genus of Nautilina, showing their resilliance since fossils of this type of anumal date back several million years. All living Nautilus are protected. Depending on species, adult shell diameter will between 100mm and 250mm depending on their age at time of death.
Nautilidae, both extant and extinct, are characterized by involute or more or less convolute shells that are generally smooth, though can be ribbed with compressed or depressed whorled sections creating the typical curved shell. When they are cut in cross section they display a helix shape of many chambers. Having survived relatively unchanged for hundreds of millions of years, nautiluses represent the only living members of the subclass nautiloidea, and are often considered "living fossils".
The word nautilus is derived from the Greek word ναυτίλος nautílos "sailor", it originally referred to a type of octopus of the genus Argonauta, also known as 'paper nautilus', which were thought to use two of their arms as sails.
If you find Nautiluses here you will find coiled well defined shells which stand out from the rock, they will be a minimum of 10cm across each and could have smooth or ribbed shell surfaces. It will be easy to identify individual shells from a few feet away even if they are numerous.
So to a couple of questions.
Remember you are looking at the horizontal surface of a stone on the ground , on the river side which is crammed with fossils and comparing this with the rest of the smoother stone on the memorial cross.
Q1 Please describe the surface of the stone on the memorial, tell me about the colour, feel, consistency and how the main focus stone of the cache compares with the rest of the stones on the structure.
Q2 Please tell me, from the choices above, the types of fossil remains you have found on the surface of the focus stone. Please explain your choice and include some reasons for your choice.
Should you wish to do so you are invited to include a photo and a story with your log and of course you may send your answers via email or message at the same time as logging your find.
Thanks for making the effort to attempt this cache, I hope you found it informative and enjoyable.
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If anyone would like to place a War Memorial Cache of your own then please do so. We would ask if you do so please contact Just-us-Two through their profile page or on email at
justustwo1013@gmail.com</ so they can keep track of numbers
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*****PLEASE NOTE IMPORTANT *****
****PHYSICAL CACHES ARE NOT ALLOWED TO BE PLACED ON THE ACTUAL MEMORIAL OR WITHIN THE
BOUNDARY OF SUCH MEMORIALS AT ALL TIMES TREAT LOCATIONS OF MEMORIALS WITH RESPECT. ****
TreboR