Meet Micraster, 'small-star', a sea-urchin that became extinct about 60 million years ago.
These fossils are very common and they are beautiful. It's a five-pointed star but also heart-shaped. I still have one I was given over sixty years ago.
But a couple of days ago I handled the one you see above, and it was special.
Something I didn't know is that these sea-urchins were often placed in Saxon graves, as this one had been.
No, we don't know why. These fossils have been found as grave goods in other times and in other places, and there are records of them being called various things in folklore; for example "Shepherds' Crowns" or "Fairy Loaves".
So were they placed in graves for their beauty? As food for the afterlife? As religious symbols? To ward off evil? Or just as a custom, whose origin everyone had forgotten? Or in my fanciful thought, because they looked like hearts, the seat of the emotions?
But these are just stories. Whoever put this fossil in that grave, more than a thousand years, had their reasons. We can guess and feel, but never know. But I was privileged to handle it and wonder.
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