Shifting Sands and Devil's toenails: The Lower Jurassic stratigraphy of Redcar (NE England)
Dr Jed Atkinson, University of Leeds
Beneath the shifting sands of Redcar, the oldest Jurassic succession on the Yorkshire-Cleveland Coast outcrops. Several projecting scars containing high numbers of the bivalve Gryphaea (see image) , the Devil’s toenail, rise above the sands but the intervening softer lithologies are seldom well-exposed. This has led to this succession being overlooked, even though it represents an interval of time significant in the story of recovery from the end-Triassic mass extinction. Winter storms of 2018 removed much of the sand cover providing an opportunity to study the section in detail. Here I will present the results of facies analyses and fossil diversity counts from this unique location, placing Redcar into the context of mass extinction recovery and marine conditions within the Early Jurassic epicontinental seas.
Jed Atkinson completed his undergraduate, PhD and a postdoctoral research position at the University of Leeds. Over the seven years he spent with the department Jed specialised in recovery following mass extinction events. His research focused on detecting patterns in diversity, ecology and body size during the rebuilding of sea-floor invertebrate communities.
Jed was awarded a grant from the YGS Research Fund in 2018/19.