Hurcott Farm is a 26.3 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 Somerset

Somerset

The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...

, notified in 1993.

At this site heavily cemented Pleistocene

Pleistocene

The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....

 terrace gravels of the River Cary

River Cary

The River Cary is a river in Somerset, England.The River Cary has its source at Park Pond in Castle Cary, and then flows southwest through Cary Moor to Babcary, where there is a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest at Babcary Meadows and Cary Fitzpaine. It then flows northwest through...

 have yielded an abundant freshwater and terrestrial molluscan

Mollusca

The Mollusca , common name molluscs or mollusksSpelled mollusks in the USA, see reasons given in Rosenberg's ; for the spelling mollusc see the reasons given by , is a large phylum of invertebrate animals. There are around 85,000 recognized extant species of molluscs. Mollusca is the largest...

 fauna

Fauna

Fauna or faunæ is all of the animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is flora.Zoologists and paleontologists use fauna to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert fauna" or the "Burgess shale fauna"...

. The fauna has an interglacial

Interglacial

An Interglacial period is a geological interval of warmer global average temperature lasting thousands of years that separates consecutive glacial periods within an ice age...

 aspect, and includes Corbicula fluminalis and Pisidium clessini

Pisidium clessini

Pisidium clessini is a species of extinct freshwater bivalve from family Sphaeriidae.-Description:The shell has an oval form with somewhat prominent umbo, that is situated behind the middle. There is a distinct concentric rib structure. The ribs are sharp and are separated by relatively big spaces...

. This site is of critical importance as the keystone of the Pleistocene stratigraphy of southern Somerset, and as a freshwater facies-equivalent of the Burtle Beds.

Source

• English Nature citation sheet for the site (accessed 10 August 2006)

External links

• English Nature website (SSSI information)