Transition Deal and Erased Red Lines. Unusual Ammonites and what ate them.

The UK and EU agreed on the transition period from March 2019 to December 2020.

The three major successes for the UK are:

1. That business has a breathing space to adapt before Brexit sets in (though this will not be finalised till the agreement is signed in 2019)

2. That the UK can begin negotiate new trade agreements during the transition (but not implement them till afterwards).

3. During the transition period, the UK can still benefit from the existing Free Trade Agreements with up to 40 other countries and any new FTAs initiated in the transition period until it leaves.

As part of the agreement, former UK government lines have fallen away:

1. There is still no solution to the Northern Ireland Eire border, but the agreement stands that there will be no hard border. The UK has agreed that the fallback position is an alignment of the UK with the single market and customs union.

2. EU citizens rights in the UK are maintained (and vice versa for UK citizens) during the transition period, though to quote the Guardian 'Jane Golding, the chair of British in Europe, which represents 1.2 million Britons living in other EU countries, said the agreed legal text provided more free movement rights after Brexit for English cheddar than to British citizens'.

3. Scottish fishermen were also disappointed that EU fishing rights/regulations remain unchanged for the next two years.

The deal is by no means complete and it will have to be approved by the other member states but it looks like a major block has been overcome to moving on to the next stage of negotiations.

Hardline brexiteers have so far been muted in their criticism.

Cambridge was quiet today and the exasperated call from a stall owner as we hurried through the market on our way to lunch made me laugh and stop. Mal's fossil stand had a cornucopia of fossils and we ended up chatting good-naturedly about geological slides, polarisation and microscopy. Cheered up all round, one specimen really caught my eye - three large unravelling ammonites. These were actually Ancyloceras ammonites, also known as Heteromorphs (differently shaped!) that really did look like a partially uncoiled spiral. We do not know much about these heteromorphs, apart from them arising at the latter stages of the Ammonite rich period. How mobile were they? Did they just drift around, slowly catching things within their grasp?

Ammonites are actually thought to be more closely related to the modern octopus and squid than the similar looking modern shelled Nautilus. They were successful predators (pretty successful if you see the layers of them fossilised in rock at the far end of the beach at Lyme Regis on the fossil coast). Which then begs the question, what ate ammonites, these octopus like molluscs living in hard shells? Probably other ammonites and their octopus and cuttlefish relatives. The latter certainly have a sharp beak, are capable of camouflage and surprise attacks. They catch and deal with formidable crabs as food, so cracking open an ammonite could well have been in their repertoire.