Itinerary
| Catamaran leaves from Harbour Station (The Hard) | 08.20 |
| Train to Ryde Esplanade if you don't want the walk | 08.42 |
| Coach departs for the field from Ryde Esplanade | 09.00 |
| Coach journey to Hanover Point via new Isle of Wight Museum | 10.00 |
| Hanover Point, Wessex Formation | |
| Depart Hanover point for pub lunch | 12.30 |
| Depart pub for Shepherd's Chine | 14.00 |
| Depart Shepherd's Chine for Ryde Esplanade | 16.00 |
| Train to Pier head (or five min walk) | 17.00 |
| Catamaran to Portsmouth Harbour Station | 17.20 |
| Amve Portsmouth Harbour Station (for London Waterloo) | 17.40 |
Hannover Point
Hanover Point is situated on the southwest coast of the Isle of Wight and is a prominence of the coast, the result of relatively hard sandstane channels within the 1argely argillaceous Wessex Formation of the Wealden Group. The locality has become famous in British Geology as the site of an accumulation of large fossil logs of fir trees, known as the Pine Raft. In addition, some of the clays, and especially the thin sandstones yield an abundance of large, deep dinosaur footprints, attributed mainly to the large ornithopod Iguanodon. Also of note are thin beds of silt with a high abundance of plant material known as Plant Debris Beds. The plant debris beds are one of the main sources of dinosaur, crocodile and turtle bones.
This locality is visited by hundreds of school parties during the year, and yet, because of the continuous and often dramatic coastal erosion, new, and often spectacular discoveries are made all the time.
The cliffs and foreshore at Hanover Point display a series of variegated clays with thin channel sandstones, relatively continuous sandstone beds and plant debris beds rich in limite. The sequence at the point lies within the Wessex Formation, but as you go westwards along Compton Bay higher beds of the Vectis Formation reach the foreshore. Even further the Aptian and Albian Greensand sequences and the chalk form the cliffs in the distance. The Vectis Formation is altogether more shaley, and yields abundant ostracods. Thin (10-50 mm), fine sandstone lenses frequently are rich in vertebrate debris in their lower parts. Some of the tin shelly limestones rich in the bivalve Filosina also yield derived Jurassic fossils (Radley and Barker 1998).
Shepherd's Chine - Atherfield Point
Exposures of the upper part of the Wealden Group here record the Berremian/Aptian marine transgression onto the Wessex Basin coastal plain. At the Chine itself, the upper part of the Vectis Formation, the Sheperherd's Chine Member, beginning just a few metres above the Barnes High Sandstone Member, comprises a series of silty shales, thin iron-rich shell beds and nodule horizons, with laminated silts and thin, fine sandstones. Of particular interest for vertebrate palaeontology are the lenticular sandstones with lags of vertebrate material. These frequently contain sufficient vertebrate remains, to constitute a bone bed. They are typically small gutter casts with bone rich bases, overlain by fine cross-laminated silty sands, the upper layers of which are sometimes rich in lighter plant material. These probably formed at the front of a silt-dominated delta situated only a short distance to the north, probably where now is the Portsdown anticline. Evidence for this comes from coarser derived material in the shelly limestones which contain derived Jurassic ammonites and other shelly fossils. Jurassic strata are unconformably overlain by later Cretaceous sediments north of the Isle of Wight flexure.
Also within the Vectis Formation are large numbers of irregular pyrite nodules, usually most easily collected from beach lags at low tide. The nodules, and also the gutter casts, have yielded articulated and partially articulated pterosaur remains. At least two species are represented, one in which the dentition is lanceolate, the other in which the dentition comprises well-spaced, needle-like teeth.
Nodules within the Vectis Formation have yielded articulated plesiosaurs. This is also the locality where Hooley excavated a near complete Iguanodon atherfieldensis from the Vectis Formation (then called the Wealden Shales).
The Vectis Formation is dominated by sediments deposited in brackish and freshwater environments, and has a restricted fauna of invertebrates dominated by the ostracod Cypris, a few small species of gastropod, including Paragaluconia, and the bivalve Filosina in profusion. Dinosaur footprints of high fidelity occur occasionally on the underside of the Filosina shell beds.
Above the Vectis Formation are the Aptian Lower Greensands which here begin with a shelly sandy limestone called the Perna Bed. This horizon is fully marine, and yields ammonites, nautiloids, oysters and occasional worn bones of plesiosaurs.
Figure 7. Detail of southwest coast including Shepherd's Chine.
