Boulby Quarries is a 40.3 hectare

Hectare

The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...

 geological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Cleveland, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 notified in 1989. It is located close to the coast and the village of Boulby.

In England SSSIs are designated by Natural England

Natural England

Natural England is the non-departmental public body of the UK government responsible for ensuring that England's natural environment, including its land, flora and fauna, freshwater and marine environments, geology and soils, are protected and improved...

 and Boulby Quarries is one 18 SSSIs in the Cleveland area of search. The site is identified as being of national importance in the Geological Conservation Review

Geological Conservation Review

The Geological Conservation Review is produced by the UK's Joint Nature Conservation Committee and is designed to identify those sites of national and international importance needed to show all the key scientific elements of the geological and geomorphological features of Britain...

.

The quarries are wholly within the North Yorkshire and Cleveland Heritage Coast and partly within the North York Moors National Park.

The fossil content of Boulby Quarry is particularly important with two plesiosaur

Plesiosaur

Plesiosauroidea is an extinct clade of carnivorous plesiosaur marine reptiles. Plesiosauroids, are known from the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods...

 species (Eretmosaurus macroptera and Thaumatosaurus zetlandicus), an ichthyosaur Ichthyosaurus crassimonus and the only Upper Lias pterosaur

Pterosaur

Pterosaurs were flying reptiles of the clade or order Pterosauria. They existed from the late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous Period . Pterosaurs are the earliest vertebrates known to have evolved powered flight...

 known in Britain, Parapsicephalus

Parapsicephalus

Parapsicephalus was a genus of rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur from the early Toarcian-age Lower Jurassic Alum Shale of Whitby, Yorkshire, England. It is known from a partial skull lacking the snout, but including a detailed endocast of the brain. Despite this, it is an obscure genus.It was collected...

being found at the site. The fossil are found in the bifrons zone, and although not abundant, it is very different from surrounding fossil sites.