Dundry Main Road South Quarry is a 0.7 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 near the village of East Dundry

East Dundry

East Dundry is a south-facing hamlet some 160 metres above sea level in a sheltered valley of Dundry Hill just south of Bristol. The hamlet is in the parish of Dundry and about two kilometres east of its village church...

, North Somerset

North Somerset

North Somerset is a unitary authority in England. Its area covers part of the ceremonial county of Somerset but it is administered independently of the non-metropolitan county. Its administrative headquarters is in the town hall in Weston-super-Mare....

, notified in 1974.

The quarry was cited in the last century by d'Orbigny as the English "type section" for the Inferior Oolite

Oolite

Oolite is a sedimentary rock formed from ooids, spherical grains composed of concentric layers. The name derives from the Hellenic word òoion for egg. Strictly, oolites consist of ooids of diameter 0.25–2 mm; rocks composed of ooids larger than 2 mm are called pisolites...

. Dundry

Dundry

Dundry is a village and civil parish, situated on Dundry Hill in the northern part of the Mendip Hills, between Bristol and the Chew Valley Lake, in the English county of Somerset. The parish includes the hamlets of Maiden Head and East Dundry...

 has long been a famous palaeontological

Paleontology

Paleontology "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought") is the study of prehistoric life. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...

 and stratigraphic locality. The type locality for many species of molluscs and brachiopods, as well as other lesser groups, it is renowned as one of the world's most fossiliferous exposures with well over two hundred species recorded. The Main Road Quarry exposes a fine section in the Middle and Upper Inferior Oolite, with the rocks lying stratigraphically below them visible at Barns Batch Spinney

Barns Batch Spinney

Barns Batch Spinney is a 0.06-hectare geological Site of Special Scientific Interest near the village of Dundry, North Somerset, notified in 1987....

. The former characterised by a typically southern English-Normandy fauna, including the rich ammonite

Ammonite

Ammonite, as a zoological or paleontological term, refers to any member of the Ammonoidea an extinct subclass within the Molluscan class Cephalopoda which are more closely related to living coleoids Ammonite, as a zoological or paleontological term, refers to any member of the Ammonoidea an extinct...

 occurrences of the "Brown iron-shot", and the latter by contrasting faunas of Cotswold

Cotswolds

The Cotswolds are a range of hills in west-central England, sometimes called the Heart of England, an area across and long. The area has been designated as the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty...

 aspect. This contrast is direct evidence for movements of the Mendip Axis in Middle Jurassic

Middle Jurassic

The Middle Jurassic is the second epoch of the Jurassic Period. It lasted from 176-161 million years ago. In European lithostratigraphy, rocks of this Middle Jurassic age are called the Dogger....

 times, making this an outstanding site for its bearing on studies of palaeogeography

Palaeogeography

Palaeogeography is the study of what the geography was in times past. It is most often used about the physical landscape, although nothing excludes its use in reference to the human or cultural environment...

.