Hello Spondylos Spinosus

Its amazing what you can find in the garden. This little fossil is embedded into a lump of flint which was obviously a soft blobby lump at some time when it settled over this shell which is not much different from the ones you find today on the beach.

Specimen of a fossil bivalve, Spondylus spinosus, collected from the Chalk Formation of Late Cretaceous, Cenomanian - Campanian age from Kent (SE England). In life, the shells of these typical Cretaceous bivalves shellfish had long spines attached at right angles to the shell, hence their name spinosa. The stubs of these spines can be seen on the fossil shell. The spines helped spread the weight of the shell and prevented it sinking into very soft seabeds. The bivalve lived in a shallow tropical sea and fed on tiny food particles that it filtered out of the sea water. The specimen was found in Kent. It is from the Cretaceous period (144 - 65 million years ago)