Jumbles Fossil Tree

There is a fantastic 3 metre tall fossil indentation of a carboniferous plant – probably Calamites – that can be found behind the old Jumbles Quarry together with it’s abandoned viewing platform.

This fossil plant would have lived in the Carboniferous period around 300 million years ago in a tropical swamp and would have been like a giant version of the horsetail plants we can still find today – but much larger like a tree. Calamites probably grew in “forests” – before there were any trees as we know them today – and is one of the plants that formed coal in the West Pennine Moors area, Luckily for us this particular plant was preserved in its upright state unlike most of the others that were crushed on the forest floor. At the time, the land where the plant grew would have been somewhere near the equator.

The fossil is situated behind some very boggy ground so take care when visiting, the overgrown gate can be found at the end of the modern concrete bridge beside the old, flooded quarry and the fossil found a little further on.