Dorset and East Devon Coast

The Dorset and East Devon Coast, known as the Jurassic Coast, was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2001 under the geological criterion (viii), and was the first natural property in mainland England.

Its value lies in the continuity of the record: along some 155 kilometres of cliffs the strata dip gently eastwards, so that walking the coast amounts to travelling through 185 million years of geological history, from the Triassic to the Cretaceous. It is one of the most complete and accessible Mesozoic sequences in the world, and the constant erosion of the sea renews the exposures and continually releases fossils.

The coast is where much of modern palaeontology was born. Mary Anning, who began hunting fossils as a child at Lyme Regis to sell to visitors, found there in the first decades of the nineteenth century the first complete ichthyosaur and plesiosaur skeletons and the first pterosaur found outside Germany, discoveries that transformed the understanding of the history of life and that were made from a social position that denied her the scientific recognition of her day. The coast also includes spectacular formations such as Durdle Door, a natural limestone arch, and Lulworth Cove.