photo #7235182

The stretch of coastline in southwest England from Exmouth in Devon to Studland Bay in Dorset is known as the Jurassic Coast. It was here that nineteenth-century paleontologist Mary Anning collected samples of Jurassic marine fossils that were to shape scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of our planet. If you dig rocks, you'll dig Dorset, but the hilly coastal terrain and big skies mean the coast is good also for cloudspotting. Here, Jim Jutton (Cloud Appreciation Society Member 52,371) spotted strata of Cumulus and Altocumulus stratiformis opacus over the region’s Lulworth Cliffs as the layers of cloud echoed the stratifications of rock in the terrain below.