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Susan Hoi or Fossils Shell Beach or Cemetery of Shell

Susan Hoi features a slab formed from a huge number of embedded various types of mollusks which can be dated to approximately 40 million years ago. This shell graveyard at Ban Laem Pho was once a large freshwater swamp, the habitat of diverse mollusks. With changes on the surface of the earth, seawater flooded the freshwater swamp and the limestone elements in the seawater enveloped the submerged mollusks resulting in a homogenous layer of fossilized mollusk shells forty centimeters thick known as Shelley Limestone. With geographical upheavals, the limestone layer is now distributed in great broken sheets of impressive magnitude on the seashore. The site is located 17 kilometers from the town.

The Cemetery of Shell located at Ban Laem Pho, 17 kms from downtown Krabi along the route to Hat Noppharat Thara.  Long ago this was a freshwater marsh populated by clams and other bi-valves, chiefly little two centimeters long "Hoi Khom" or pond snails, which grouped and multiplied in such numbers that the dead formed a floor for the living.  This process, repeated over eons, led to the creation of layer of fossils about 40 cms thick, called shelly limestone.  Scientific test have established that the age of these fossils is about 40 million years.  Minibuses leave the town for the Fossil Shell Beach daily from 6.00-17.00 hrs.

This is one place in the world where the mollusk is very preserved. In fact it has been known to be the only site left on earth. The shell cemetery is estimated at 75 million years old.The "Cemetery" is a flat platform of fossil exposed along the shorelines. This site is at the cape of Ban Lean Pho in the Muang District.

This "platform" represents layers of shells built up over the times and deposited one on top of another. The separations between the layers are tell tales signs of the weather prevailing at that era when it was deposited.

The thickness of the fossil bed varies from 1-2 meters. Most of the fossils are under water within the shallow bay.

These gastropods with Bivalves, spores and pollen are carefully preserved in calcareous clay stone while various sedimentary deposits then separate these layers over the eras. Tests have interpreted such deposit were made in the freshwater laccustrine environment.

With others studies conducted of the district, it is concluded that the mollusk present could indeed had lived between 20-40 millions year ago. At that time the climate was warm. It facilitated the growth of abundance of living organism in the swamps forested by several kinds of trees. Time had seen the accumulation and overlaying swamp sediments on these layers of shells.

As weather normalized, the seawater receded and until to the present day’s level. With the receding coastline, present days landforms such as beaches, sand lagoons and tidal flats were gradually shaped until what we see as it is.

The latest change that is likely to destroy the fossil will be the effects of the wave action against the whole site.