Area: 0.79 hectares.
Other Information:
A new site. A Geological Conservation Review (GCR) site.
Description and Reasons for Notification:
This site consists of a small disused quarry 500 metres south of the village of Poxwell and 1.5 kilometres east-north-east of Osmington.
This small exposure in the Lower Purbeck Beds has yielded a fauna of earliest Cretaceous (early Berriasian) insects. The insects are preserved in a micrite (fine grained limestone) with halite and gypsum pseudomorphs assigned to the Worbarrow Tout Member, Lulworth Formation.
The insect fauna includes over twenty species assigned to the orders Odonata, Blattoidea, Hemiptera, Coleoptera, Diptera, Trichoptera, Orthoptera and Neuroptera. These include forms not previously known from other Purbeck localities.
Such faunas are extremely rare; Poxwell is therefore a key locality for research into Cretaceous insect taxonomy and evolution.