* Astronomy

A spiral of rock almost three metres long that looks like a giant snail but is a mystery.


Dinocochlea Ingens (terrible/huge unknown snail)

No one knows what this bizarre object is. It, and a few others like it, have been found in East Sussex in southern England, in rocks that are about 135 million years old. We can be sure it is not a snail as there is no trace of shell and there are no growth lines. It's just solid rock. The coils are uneven and spiral in one direction in one specimen but the opposite in another. For now it will remain one of the many mysteries of the natural world.
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Ed ~ There are no traces of any external or internal shell material.
It is thought that 135 million years ago a tiny worm made a spiral tunnel in the bottom of the ocean; sandstone concretions then formed around the spiral. The giant corkscrew shell was discovered in 1921 during road works in Wadhurst Clay in  the Hastings Sand.