Inspired by an ammonite in a wall at West Bay

A chance boyhood discovery of an ammonite led to Robert Chandler becoming an internationally recognised expert. Bob’s discovered his first ammonite in a collapsed stone wall on West Bay Road during a school trip. He even recorded the precise time of his find as 18.00 on May 30th 1967. This visit begun a lifelong interest in the ammonites of the Inferior Oolite Formation. The ammonite, Garantiana longidens which has been on display at the Centre is also shown below.

As soon as he could Bob formed a school club and later a society dedicated to ammonites, Robert and his colleagues are known as the Wessex Cephalopod Club and have published over eighty works based on Dorset fossils.  Their collection numbers  thousands of specimens and is of international significance to palaeontology and is destined for a national museum.

Robert collaborates with Natural England and the Jurassic Heritage Trust. Now retired he is a volunteer researcher at the Natural History Museum in London and has been our special advisor on our Buried in Time exhibition that ran from 19th March – 30th October 2022 and attracted over 23,000 visitors. When are our exhibitions are taken down we collate all of the information and images into an information folder avaliable at the centre enabling our new visitors to discover more about our past exhibitions too.