Church Hill Quarry

Also within

Herefordshire County

Condition (Natural England)

Geology & landscape

Mining / Industrial: Quarry · Rock Type: Limestone

Description

Area, 0.8 ha. 1.9 ac. Description This quarry, on Church Hill, known as the ‘Starfish Quarry’, was the site where the earliest known heterostracan agnathan vertebrate from the Welsh Borders was found in the 1850s. This event was historically important because it proved that ‘fish’ existed in rocks underlying and thus older than the Ludlow Bone Bed. Archegonaspis ludensis remains the earliest known British heterostracan and it is extremely rare, with only a few fragments found in slightly younger rocks near Ludlow. It occurs here in marine rocks, and is of great importance internationally because the species has frequently figured in discussions concerning the environment in which the early chordates originated. The early Ludfordian Leintwardine Formation here contains a famous well preserved invertebrate fauna, notably containing echinoderms ‘Starfish’ which gave the quarry its name. Graptolite bearing shales are associated with derived blocks of Aymestrey Limestone as the infilling of a Ludlow age submarine canyon. Church Hill has also produced a great many eurypterid specimens over the years, including numerous type and other important specimens, from its Lower Leintwardine age sediments. The eurypterid fauna is not known, at the species level, elsewhere in the Welsh Borderland and is thus unique. The xiphosurans are of immense interest, Limuloides is unique and Pseudoniscus is known from only a few specimens throughout the world. Necrogammarus is of historical interest; originally grouped with eurypterid species, Salter later referred the specimen to the Crustacea; then the myriapods, until finally it was recognised as part of a large pterygotid eurypterid.