Fossilise

Found something odd on the beach and wondered what it is? Take a photo. Fossilise tells you which fossil it most likely is, roughly how old it is and where it sits in deep time. Keep the finds you want in a collection on your device, and see them as a grid, a timeline or a map. Identify a fossil • Take a photo or choose one from your library. Fill the frame, use good light and add a coin for scale. • Up to six fossils in one photo are picked out and numbered. • Results show the common and scientific name, the geological period with its age range in millions of years, the type of fossil, how rare it is, its story and where it lived, where known. • A confidence level (High, Good, Possible or Low) shows how sure the identification is, and "Why this ID" lists the clues it spotted in your photo. • If something might not be a fossil, or the match is a low-confidence guess, Fossilise says so plainly and suggests how to take a better photo. It is set up to look out for common lookalikes such as concretions, pyrite nodules and manganese dendrites. • Matching guide pages, including lookalikes, appear under the result. Your collection • Choose which fossils from a photo to keep. Each find keeps its photo, with a close-up when the fossil can be picked out, and the date and time you added it. • See your finds as a photo grid, as a timeline grouped by geological period from oldest to youngest, or on a map. • Turn on "Save where I found it" and each find keeps the place, such as Lyme Regis, from where you are when you save. Places are saved only on your device. • Search your finds, sort by newest, oldest, name or age, mark favourites and add notes that save as you type. • Share a find as a photo with a short summary. The place is left out on purpose, so your best spots stay yours. Ask about a find • Open a saved find and ask a question, such as how old these fossils usually are, where else they turn up or how to clean one safely. • Answers are short and in plain English. They are written by AI, so check anything important. Chats are not saved. Explore • A guide to 24 fossils, from ammonites, belemnites and fossil sea urchins to shark teeth, trilobites, ichthyosaurs and amber. • Each page covers how to recognise it, when it lived and where it's found, with places to look around the UK, from Lyme Regis and Charmouth to Whitby and Robin Hood's Bay. Tap a place to open it in Apple Maps. • A deep time ruler of the 12 geological periods, from the Cambrian to the Quaternary, across about 539 million years. Tap a period to see its key life, the guide fossils from that time and your own finds. • Today shows a fossil of the day, your latest finds and which periods your collection already covers. Daily allowance and offline use • There's a daily allowance of up to 10 scans and 20 questions, and the app shows when it resets. If identifying fails, for example with no connection, the scan isn't counted. • Your collection and the guide's text work offline. Identifying and asking need a connection. No signal on the beach? Take the picture with the Camera app and identify it later from your library. Your privacy • Your finds, photos, notes and places are kept on your device. • The photo you identify is resized, stripped of location data and sent to our server, then on to an AI service, to be identified. Questions you ask go the same way, with the find's name and details. We don't keep the photo or your questions. • No adverts and no analytics. Crash and error reports are sent so bugs can be fixed. • Your collection isn't synced to any server or other device, so deleting the app deletes your finds. Good to know • Identifications come from AI, not an expert, so they can be wrong. • Ages are an estimate for that kind of fossil, not a date for your own specimen. • Works on iPhone and iPad, in light and dark mode, with VoiceOver, Dynamic Type and Reduce Motion support.