This stunning 95-mile coastline, one third of which is protected by the National Trust, is England’s only natural World Heritage Site - ranked alongside the Great Barrier Reef and the Grand Canyon.

Running from Exmouth in East Devon to Studland in Dorset, this stretch of coastline traces almost 185 million years of the earth's history.

Rocks from the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods - rich with fossils - offer everyone the chance to walk through time and, if you are lucky, pocket a piece of it!

Find out more about the rocks and fossils you can see:

• Triassic
• Jurassic
• Cretaceous

Triassic Period - 250-200 million years ago
The Triassic period begins in the wake of the greatest mass extinction of all time. Only about 4 per cent of known species survive from the preceding Permian period.

The world is a single land mass called Pangaea and what is now the Jurassic Coast lies at the arid centre of this super-continent. Mountains to the south and west are the source of huge rivers that wash stones across the area before their waters evaporate. The period is characterised by red-coloured sandstone and mud.

By the end of the period the continental plates had started to drift apart. There also emerge the dinosaurs, pterosaurs (flying reptiles), marine reptiles and crocodiles, turtles and mammals.

• Fossils:
  Rare and difficult to find
  Reptiles and amphibians such as the Rhynchosaurs
  Plant remains

• Beaches:
  Orcombe Point, Budleigh Salterton, Ladram Bay, Littlecombe Shoot, Jacob's Ladder, Sidmouth

Jurassic Period - 200-140 million years ago
During the Jurassic period, the Pangaea breaks up leaving the Jurassic Coast swimming amid and beneath fluctuating sea levels. Deep seas, tropical archipelagos and coastal swamps all flourish at different points.

This generally warm period is characterised by deep-water clays, sandstone and shallow water limestone.

There is great diversity in the sea and just as the land supports enormous dinosaurs such as the Brachiosaurus and the Diplodocus, so the sea is home to the Ichthyosaurs, surviving from the Triassic period, and the top predators of the seas, the vast Pliosaurs.

• Fossils:
  Ammonites
  Belemnites
  Ichthyosaur vertebrae (unusual)
  Plant remains

• Beaches:
  Monmouth Beach, Lyme Regis, Black Ven, Charmouth, Bowleaze Cove, Bran Point, Lulworth

Cretaceous Period - 140-65 million years ago
The Cretaceous period sees the Jurassic Coast become first a gulf of salt lagoons covered with salt flats known as sabkhas, then dinosaur-filled lush swamps, before becoming a warm sea.

The period is characterised by pure white chalk, formed by the skeletons of the warm water algae and the shells of micro organisms. In places (for example Branscombe and Golden Cap) you can clearly see the layer of Cretaceous rock above the Triassic or Jurassic rock.

This period sees the birth of flowering plants and the reign of the most glamorous of the dinosaurs: T-rex, Velociraptor and Triceratops. It also eventually saw their extinction.

• Fossils:
  Ammonites
  Belemnites
  Dinosaur footprints
  Plant remains

• Beaches:
  Hooken Landslide, White Nothe, Durdle Door