NEN Gallery

What do you think these objects are? They were found in Essex. The coin is there to show you how big they are.

55 million years ago South Essex was part of a shallow tropical sea. The London Clay, which lies beneath Basildon, stretches across from London to the coast, and contains fossilised shark’s teeth like this one. Much later, about 500,000 years ago, glaciers covered most of Britain; the area where Basildon is just missed being under up to a kilometre of ice, but the average temperature would have been minus 9oC. Mammoths and woolly rhinoceros roamed the area. Humans have been around in this part of the world for up to 150,000 years; early people used flint tools like the one shown.

Initiate a discussion on fossils and how things are preserved.