Paramoudras, paramoudra flints, pot stones or potstones are

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Historically, flint was widely used to make stone tools and start ...

nodules found mainly in parts of north-west Europe:

Norfolk Norfolk ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

(United Kingdom),

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and

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. In Norfolk they are known as pot stones and can be found on the beach below Beeston Bump just outside Beeston Regis. In Ireland they are known as paramoudras. The term paramoudras was first used by Buckland in 1817 and is a corruption of a Gaelic name, probably padhramoudras "ugly Paddies" or peura muireach "sea pears". Pot stones are flint nodules with a hollow center and have the appearance of a doughnut (

torus In geometry, a torus (: tori or toruses) is a surface of revolution generated by revolving a circle in three-dimensional space one full revolution about an axis that is coplanarity, coplanar with the circle. The main types of toruses inclu ...

). They can be found in columns resembling a backbone. These flints are

trace fossil A trace fossil, also called an ichnofossil (; ), is a fossil record of biological activity by lifeforms, but not the preserved remains of the organism itself. Trace fossils contrast with body fossils, which are the fossilized remains of part ...

s of the burrows of an organism otherwise unknown except for these relics sometimes referred to as '' Bathicnus paramoudrae''.

Notes

External links

* geograph.org.u
Paramoudra on chalk outcrop''
* Aranzadi Science Society - Sociedad de Ciencias Aranzad
Paramoudras en arenisca de la Formación Jaizkibel''
Geography of Norfolk Trace fossils {{UK-geology-stub