I just returned from a camping holiday in North Yorkshire and a couple of days of this was spent on the remarkable beaches there; much of the coastline includes jurassic limestone, shale and clays, so we did find a few fossils, including ammonites, belmnites and a beatiful sea-worn boulder of some hard, deep red red stone that was uniformly studded with perfect bivalve shells - unfortunately, this was so large it could only just be moved by hand, so I was not able to bring it home.
Anyway, we spent the last day at Reighton Sands, right in front/on top of the famous Speeton Clay - my son found an excellent ammonite imprint, and there were many people hacking and digging at the cliffs - mostly pulling out fairly soft, crumbly specimens and destryong them in the process - I confined myself to searching the beach and foreshore. I returned with a number of interesting pieces, but here are a few that I can’t quite identify.
Specimen 1: front and back
I’m aware that certain nonliving mineral growths often give rise to ferny or feathery formations and this may be simply one of them, however, it is quite a substantial formation within the stone; the ‘stalk’ part runs right through the piece and forms the small semicircular shape on the back
Specimen 2: front and end
This one looks more impressive in real live than as depicted here; it’s a hard greyish pebble that, when viewed from the end, bears a very regular, perhaps even concentric, pattern of polka-dots, however, the worn sides of the pebble show that these dots are in fact the ends of cyclindrical structures that go all the way through the piece.
Specimen 3: front and end
At first glance this one looks just like a piece of sedimentary rock, however the striations within it are quite regular - more like woodgrain or the tooth of a large herbivore, especially on the end view. Plusthere was nothing else remotely like it nearby. It may just be a bit or innocent rock though.
Can anyone assist with identification of these? Particularly the first two.