Tantalising glimpses of ammonite fossils, still deeply embedded in rock – rather than the complete, perfect, and separate specimens that you frequently see featured in books and displays – are the types most likely to be encountered by someone simply walking along and enjoying the beaches of the Jurassic Coast. Many characteristics of these ancient cephalopod mollusc shells are preserved and visible in these embedded fossils but the most evident one is the coiled, compartmented, and ornamented shell which invariably describes a natural spiral pattern.
Revision of a post first published 18 January 2010
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Jessica's Nature Blog 
What variety! I don’t know if I would have had the eye to pick out all of them while walking along the shore as you have.
Are those tiny barnacles in the creases on the third one?
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I discovered these fossils over a series of visits to the beach, mostly Kimmeridge Bay in Dorset. Yes, there are small barnacles on the third ammonite. I don’t always attach a great deal of information to the pictures but it is possible to see a caption for each image if you roll your cursor over the photographs.
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