Claudia Hildebrandt

• Master of Science
• University of the West of England, Bristol

The cliff and foreshore sections at Blue Anchor Bay, north Somerset, provide a detailed picture of the transitional Triassic–Jurassic succession. The site has been recorded as a location for fossil fishes for over 200 years, and yet the assemblages from the bone beds have not been described. Here, we present new observations on the two bone beds an...

Rhaetian seas in the latest Triassic transgressed from west to east over the southwest of the UK, reaching parts of South Wales and the North Somerset coast first. Evidence comes from marine conditions in the pre-Rhaetian Williton Member, a unit not seen further east. Here, we confirm this hypothesis with reports of diverse, Rhaetian-style fish fau...

Theropods originated in the Late Triassic and their relations and early evolution are still topics of discussion. Within Neotheropoda, coelophysoids represent their earliestworldwide radiation and include most Triassic theropods, but their internal relations remain volatile. In this paper, we discuss the significance of a coelophysoid femur from th...

The Rhaetian (latest Triassic) succession of Doniford Bay, North Somerset has been noted as a site of fossils for over 200 years, and yet has never been described in detail despite its importance for palaeontology, for knowledge of a classic Triassic-to-Jurassic transition sequence, for structural geology, and as a venue for field trips. There are...

Westbury Garden Cliff has been a noted site for Rhaetian bone beds for over a century. It is known especially as a source of excellently preserved bones of the small marine reptile Pachystropheus as well as other reptiles, and fishes. Further it is the type locality of the Westbury Formation, the lower half of the British Rhaetian (Penarth Group)....

The famous Rhaetian bone bed (Late Triassic, 205 Ma) is well known because it marks a major switch in depositional environment from terrestrial red beds to fully marine conditions throughout the UK and much of Europe. The bone bed is generally cemented and less than 10 cm thick. However, we report here an unusual case from Saltford, near Bath, S.W....

Coprolites from the Rhaetian bone beds in southwest England can be assigned to crustaceans and fishes. Here, we report crustacean microcoprolites, including Canalispalliatum and Favreina, the first records from the British Rhaetian, from Hampstead Farm Quarry near Bristol, evidence for diverse lobsters and their relatives not otherwise represented...

One of the most dramatic environmental changes in the Mesozoic history of Europe was the switch from terrestrial to marine deposition marked by the Rhaetian Transgression, 205 Ma. Beginning with this event, the Mendip Hills, composed primarily of uplifted and folded Lower Carboniferous limestones, were flooded in a stepwise manner from the Late Tri...

The Late Triassic and Early Jurassic fissures around Bristol and South Wales are famous as sources of excellent fossils of early mammals, dinosaurs, sphenodontians, and other tetrapods. However, the ways in which these fissures filled with sediment have not often been documented. Moreover, systematic faunal sampling up a working face exposure has r...

The famous Aust Cliff section, on the east bank of the River Severn, S.W. England, includes one of the first documented successions through the Rhaetian stage (latest Triassic) and a classic Triassic-Jurassic boundary section, and, historically, the first ever mention and description of the Rhaetian bone bed, dating back to the 1820s. The larger fo...

Rhaetian bone beds have been described from many locations in south-west England, around Bristol. One site that has never been reported is Stowey Quarry, some 13 km south of Bristol. This quarry yielded Lias, and revealed thin Rhaetian units in the quarry floor, including two bone beds, the basal Rhaetian bone bed, and a second, higher bone bed, al...

The Late Triassic Rhaetian stage is perhaps best known in south-west Britain for the bone beds of the Westbury Formation, but there are other fossil-rich horizons within this and the underlying Blue Anchor Formation. Samples from a borehole drilled at the Filton West Chord, and collected from exposures near Bristol Parkway railway station, have yie...

The Rhaetian marine transgression, which occurred across Europe in the latest Triassic, 205.5 Ma, famously deposited one or more bone beds. Attention has generally focused on the basal bone bed alone, but here we explore this bed, and a stratigraphically higher bone bed at the top of the Westbury Formation, and compare the faunas. The Rhaetian at H...

The Rhaetian (latest Triassic) is best known for its basal bone bed, but there are numerous other bone-rich horizons in the succession. Boreholes taken around the M4–M5 motorway junction in SW England provide measured sections with multiple Rhaetian bone beds. The microvertebrate samples in the various bone beds differ through time in their composi...

Microvertebrates are common in the basal bone bed of the Westbury Formation of England, documenting a fauna dominated by fishes that existed at the time of the Rhaetian Transgression, some 206 Myr ago. Two sites near Chipping Sodbury, south Gloucestershire, Barnhill Quarry and Chipping Sodbury railway cutting, show differing faunas. Top predators a...

The Middle to Upper Ordovician siliciclastic succession in Central Bolivia provides excellent exposures of up to 1 m thick massive sandstone beds produced by liquefaction-induced sediment remobilisation. These fine-grained massive sandstones occur in shallow-marine nearshore facies that were deposited above storm wave base. Vertical to steeply incl...