This short YouTube documentary chronicles the career of Dr. Fiann Smithwick, a paleontologist whose career was sparked by a chance childhood encounter. Now, he walks Britain’s Jurassic Coast with his dog, searching for fossils.
The film opens with a brief introduction to Fiann and a much longer introduction to Tia, a mixed-breed rescue. Beginning life abandoned on the side of the road in Romania, Tia is now Fiann’s companion to his fossil hunting.
Tia was only two months old when she was abandoned in the snow. Photo: Screenshot
Lyme Regis, Fiann’s home, is, as he describes, “the Mecca of fossil hunting in the UK.” Down on the beach, the waves batter the cliffs and pull away layers of rock, revealing a wealth of fossils.
Picking his way through the surf, Fiann turns to the camera, explaining his methods. Taking a fist-sized rock, he demonstrated how its shape and the sound it makes when tapped can suggest hidden fossils. He breaks the stone open, revealing tiny ammonites.
Searching the beach for fossils. Photo: Screenshot
A healthy obsession
As a child, Fiann was fascinated by the fossils he found lying on the beach or buried in his garden. But he had stopped fossil hunting by the time he was a teen, when he was diagnosed with post-viral chronic fatigue.
For several months, he was housebound. To build his endurance back up, he began going on small, slow walks, incrementally increasing the distance. Eventually, he was able to pick his way along the beach. When he found a fossil, he says, “It sort of re-sparked something, reengaged something in my mind.”
His growing passion kept him active and engaged, and he believes it helped him recover from the ailment. He decided to turn it into a career, becoming a paleontologist.
Small pyrite ammonites frequently wash up in the area and can be up to almost a meter across. Photo: Screenshot
Tour of a fossil hunting town
Small ammonites and fossilized wood are common finds, but the really exciting finds are the ichthyosaurs. At the local natural history museum, the Charmouth Heritage Coast Center, Fiann shows us an Ichthyosaur he found in 2013. When he saw the rows of teeth peeking out of the rock, he felt the “adrenaline and elation” of an exceptional find.
Fiann found this fossilized ichthyosaur skull sticking out of the cliff. Photo: Screenshot
After leaving the museum, Fiann shows us a statue of Mary Anning, one of the first fossil hunters in the area. Anning was a pioneering paleontologist from the early 1800s who found many of the first complete plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs at Lyme Regis.
The story ends with Fiann, accompanied as always by Tia, becoming engaged to his partner, Flora, an ultramarathon runner.
The brief film leaves the viewer considering how its different, connected threads complement each other: the abandoned mutt turned fossil hunting companion, the sick teenager recovering through a rediscovered passion for paleontology, the small town of fossil hunters, and the beauty of the natural world preserved in stone.
