Stories of Sea and Stone
Open Country
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The Jet Black Stone
Jet was formed here in Whitby specifically because of the very distinct climatic conditions during a period of the Jurassic so about 183 million years ago. We don't fully understand how jet is jet-anised or fossilised at the minute but what we think happened is we've got drifting wood so floating logs and when they eventually sank into the sediments there were no bacterial decay on them. The same rocks do out crop elsewhere in the Fitchy Shells so we've got outcrops in Scotland and we do find jet there but not in the quantity that we find it here in the Whitby area.
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