A New Collection of Exceptionally Preserved Fossils from the Roof Shales of the Wigan Four Foot Coal Seam (Upper Carboniferous), Westhoughton, Lancashire, UK

The Upper Carboniferous deposit at Westhoughton, UK is a site of exceptional preservation. This site was an opencast coal pit, until the end of operations and subsequent backfilling in the late 1990s – there are now plans to build on the site. Only one major study has previously been conducted on the palaeontology of this site, in 1999 by Anderson et al., in which they logged an exposed sequence and described the fauna and flora from a collection (c. 120 specimens) which is now housed in the Manchester Museum (Carl Horrocks Collection). Recently a collection, which more than doubles that of the previously known material, has been donated to the Manchester Museum. This collection contains some exceptionally-preserved material, including articulated arachnids, millipedes, a complete scorpion, and the first record of insects from this site (both adults and nymphs). The new material is dominated by arthropods; however rare vertebrate material is also present, including skull material and egg cases, as well as plant fossils, and coprolites. This new material forms the basis of a new study on the palaeontology, palaeoecology, and palaeoenvironment of the Westhoughton locality, updating and expanding the previous work