News — Just for fun

We now have advance copies of our forthcoming title: A Guide to Fossil Collecting in England and Wales, written by Steve Snowball and Craig Chapman of UKAFH (UK Amateur Fossil Hunters - the UK's largest fossil hunting organization), so we decided to give it a field test by visiting one of the sites described in the book that was local to us here in Rochdale. The site we visited was Newhey Quarry, which we found easily following the directions given in the book. This is a Carboniferous locality famous for its plant fossils with a four (out of five) star...

OK, so we live in a digital age and ebooks are becoming more popular. However, I recently had an experience with a traditional hard copy book that I do not believe would have had anywhere near the same impact, had it been with an ebook. The book in question was: Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Reptiles – Mighty Monsters of the Past, written by Jane Werner Watson and illustrated by Rudolph F. Zallinger. The book was published by Hamlyn in 1966, just two years before I was born. It was without doubt my favourite book as a child and I remember...

Many of you will be aware that the Tucson Fossil Show in Arizona is one of the largest events in the palaeo calendar. Fossil dealers and collectors come from all over the world to marvel at the incredible wealth of material on display.   A nice Ceraurus trilobite on display at the show (photos by Phillip Isotalo) Although we have not yet made it to the show in person, several of our our titles have done so, courtesy of various different dealers from the UK and the USA. Cindy Howells from National Museum of Wales, with a couple of our...

It was very nice to meet up with one of our authors, Dean Lomax, during his recent research visit to the University of Manchester and Manchester Museum last week. David Penney and Dean Lomax examining ichthyosaur specimens at the University of Manchester Dean is currently researching ichthyosaurs, but also chatted about other fossils from Whitby, one of his favourite collecting sites and for which he wrote the very popular guide book: Fossils of the Whitby Coast (click the cover for more info about this title). Dean's book along with some fossil fish from Whitby Dean discussing extinct marine reptiles with...

Spiders are one of the most diverse groups of animals on Earth today. Indeed, they are exceeded in terms of described numbers of species, only by the five largest insect orders (Coleoptera = beetles, Hemiptera = true bugs, Hymenoptera = ants, bees and wasps, Lepidoptera = butterflies and moths, and Diptera = true flies) and the Acari (mites and ticks). However, it should be remembered that spiders are ALL obligate predators (they all hunt and kill other organisms for food), whereas all the other aforementioned groups encompass multiple feeding strategies (e.g. predators, herbivores, detritivores, parasites, frugivores, etc.). Hence, the global...