Wee Beasties

WEE BEASTIES

A rallying call to OUGS members from Ed Jarzembowski to help in the collecting and documentation of fossil insects

Ed Jarzembowski is well known for his work on fossil insects and in this capacity he was invited to talk at the 2002 Symposium of the OUGS. His talk, titled ‘Insects – a group beyond census’ challenged OUGS members to get out there and help find them. For London and the South East we have a two-fold challenge:

There are insects to be found in the Lower Cretaceous, Wealden Beds and in the Upper Carboniferous waste tips from the Kent Coalfield.

If anyone out there hears of other trips to the Wealden claypits or the coal tips, please get in touch with our webmaster and we will add the details. It is hoped that any insects found will be given to (or at least shown) to Ed who works at the Maidstone Museum & Bentlif Art Gallery, St. Faith’s Street, Maidstone, Kent ME14 1LH e-mail: edjarzembowski@maidstone.gov.uk. Make sure you take a handlens as most of the Wee Beasties are very small! You will also be required to wear high visibility vests and hard hats in the quarries.

For those of you in other Branches of the OUGS, you will find your challenge detailed on p.39 of the Symposium Edition of the OUGS Journal (2002, Volume 23/2).

We are hoping to keep this page up-dated with information on trips planned to these sites and more information of where and what to look for. In the meantime, here are some pictures of insects that Ed has sent to whet your appetite. They were collected at Clockhouse Brickworks near Horsham (TQ175385), close to the Surrey/Sussex border, from the Lower Weald Clay. Clockhouse has yielded the largest number of insect remains in the Wealden. They occur in lenticles or domes of siltstone, usually well-cemented with cross-bedded laminations internally and sole markings on the under-side. The details on small fossils are best preserved in a pale yellow, fine-grained siltstone but a coarser, blue-grey siltstone is worth splitting for larger specimens. Other pits in the area are Auclaye (TQ170388) and Smokejacks (TQ115372). More details can be found in two papers by Ed Jarzembowski in the 1991 edition of the Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association (Volume 102, part 2 pp. 83-92 and 93-108).

Scale line = 1 mm

Beetles (Coleoptera: new genera and species) The elytra or wing cases may be smooth or ornate including lines and pits.	Cockroach (Blattodea: Elisama molossus). The veins with bases are typical of Wealden wings
Leaf hopper (Hemiptera: 'Jassites' new species). Triangular area defined by vein CuP(as in all bugs) and 2 'A' veins separated as in leaf hoppers.	Damselfly (Odonata: Cretacoenagrion alleniI). Note cellular wing venation
Insect-bearing lenticle at Clockhouse Brickworks	Valdaeshnab surreyensis (male- see colour pattern) from a lenticle at Auclaye Brick Pit.

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Page updated: 07/07/2007