A leaf fossil from the Archaeopteris-tree found in the Old Red Sandstone near Glanmire Road.
There were other quarries in this area; however most of them are now covered up. One important site described as Tivoli Quarry has yielded some impressive local fossils! Casually looking for fossils in Cork City’s Late Devonian Old Red Sandstone is a futile effort. The rock does contain fossils, but they are rare: complex life on land was not as plentiful in the Devonian Period as it is today, and the sediments of the semi-arid land areas were not ideal for preserving plant or animal material. However, thanks to the patience of both rock experts and amateurs there have been fascinating discoveries made. In fact, amazing evidence of prehistoric forests and complex life has been found in the Glanmire/ Tivoli areas. Fossils of prehistoric trees such as Archaeopteris have been found and, as seen in the illustration above, these were quite different from trees that we know today. The fossilised bark from another prehistoric tree has also been found in this area. Also due to the discoveries of important fossils of plant and pollen spores in the rocks, geologists have been able to say a lot about how the area of Cork City was like back in the Late Devonian. These fossilised plant particles are so small that they are not visible to the naked eye and must be studied under a microscope. But they are incredibly important in interpreting the conditions back in the geological past and they help scientists determine how old specific rocks are. Without these tiny discoveries, we would know significantly less about this lost world. There are likely many more amazing discoveries to be made, but currently most of these former fossil sites are covered by human infrastructure. In other areas of the country, other amazing fossils have been found. For instance, the Iveragh Peninsula in Kerry has many locations with amazing fossil sites from the Old Red Sandstone. Perhaps most spectacularly, in Kerry, on Valentia Island, footprints of Late Devonian four-legged vertebrate animals can be seen. These were likely amongst our first land-dwelling ancestors. In the same Old Red Sandstone layers, there are also traces of early centipede-like animals and fish and plant fossils. Overall, the rocks from the Old Red Sandstone of Ireland are part of a larger setting and time that saw many interesting changes on Earth: vertebrate organisms were starting to live on land and plants were rapidly taking over the surface of the Earth, changing the atmosphere, waters and surface of the entire planet.
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