That rocks! Huge 115-million-year-old fossil which weighs at least 24 stone is found in a fallen boulder on the Isle of Wight

• Jack Wonfor, 23, found the 115-million-year-old specimen on the Isle of Wight 
• The epicheloniceras ammonite is thought to weigh in at at least 24 stone 

It’s not the usual sort of seaside find you’d skim into the waves, or chuck in a bucket.

And despite it weighing at least 24 stone, fossil hunter Jack Wonfor wasn’t going to leave this 115-million-year-old specimen behind in the shingle.

The 23-year-old recovered the huge epicheloniceras ammonite, an enormous shelled creature as big as a car wheel, on the Isle of Wight.

It was so heavy it took a week’s worth of efforts – including using a scaffold pole and rope, and rolling it like a tyre – to transport it almost a mile back to his car on the island’s southwest coast.

The fossil guide isn’t actually sure how much it weighs, as the giant discovery exceeded the 24-stone limit on his scales.

Fossil hunter Jack Wonfor wasn’t going to leave this 115-million-year-old specimen behind in the shingle

It was so heavy it took a week’s worth of efforts – including using a scaffold pole and rope, and rolling it like a tyre – to transport it almost a mile back to his car on the island’s southwest coast

Mr Wonfor, who has been fossil-hunting since the age of four, said it was his ‘best ever find’ after he unearthed the monster from a fallen block.

‘I was fossil hunting with my friend when I saw this impression in the rock,’ he said. ‘I thought, ‘That’s annoying, the ammonite’s gone’.’ But then Mr Wonfor saw an exposed edge – and spent the next six hours chiselling it down to a more moveable weight.

He explained: ‘I knew that it was going to be big, but it just kept coiling around and around as I chiselled it out. It was a really cool feeling.’

Mr Wonfor will prise away the surrounding rock to reveal the rest of the fossil before donating it to the Dinosaur Isle Museum in Sandown. Ammonites are extinct sea creatures and part of the mollusc family.

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