NICE DIGS

Fossil Hunting Husband and Wife Used Google Earth to Make Rare Find in U.K.

Neville and Sally Hollingworth spent their lockdown in the Cotswolds scanning imagery to find Britain’s largest collection of Jurassic starfish fossils.

A husband and wife team of amateur fossil hunters have been credited with making the rare discovery of around 1,000 “scientifically significant” Jurassic starfish fossils using Google Earth technology. Neville and Sally Hollingworth, who appropriately met under a Gorgosaurus skeleton at a science fair in 2016, scanned imagery to pinpoint where they thought the massive fossil field might be near their home in the Cotswolds in the U.K. They called London’s Natural History Museum which, due to COVID restrictions, had to delay the dig until last month. But what they found was worth the wait. The collection of rare fossils dates back some 167 million years, and includes starfish, brittle stars, feather stars, sea lilies, sea cucumbers and echinoids, according to the New York Times. The site is being kept secret out of concern fossil hunters might pilfer it while the museum studies and scans the artifacts.