Bugle Quarry

Also within

Buckinghamshire County

Condition (Natural England)

Geology & landscape

Mining / Industrial: Quarry · Geological Period: Jurassic

Description

Area, 0.08 hectares 0.2 ac Description Commercial excavation at bugle Quarry ceased in the early 1950s. By 1958 the site had been completely infilled and levelled to create a pasture field for stock grazing. In 1984, however, a new 30 metre long section was dug to re expose the strata. The site shows a sequence of late Jurassic sedimentary rocks including the topmost marine Portland and basal, partly non marine, Purbeck Beds. The site has been known to geologists for approaching one hundred and fifty years and has been the subject of numerous published accounts on its stratigraphy, faunas and palaeoecology. The site has yielded an important sequence of ostracod faunas which typify the Portland Purbeck junctions and the environmental changes from sea to land which occur at this major lithological and faunal transition. A classic Jurassic stratigraphic locality. Several dinosaur teeth have been collected from the site. These are important largely because of the rarity of Portlandian dinosaurs elsewhere in Europe. The sauropod teeth Pelorosaurus sp. are the only known remains of sauropods of Portlandian age in Europe. The carnosaur teeth Megalosaurus sp. are the only typical specimens of this genus from the Portlandian of Britain. Comparable material to the megalosaur teeth is known from the Portlandian of Portugal. Sauropods and carnosaurs of this age are known elsewhere only from Tanzania and the United States. The bugle Pit represents a very important Portlandian dinosaur site, both for Britain and Europe.