February 2000. Repeated freezing and thawing has fragmented this clay boulder into hundreds of chips. A very efficient way to free any embedded fossils. If you've ever tried hacking away at one of these boulders lying on the beach you know how hard they can be.
After a good winter, the clay chips can form an ankle deep layer on the beaches. Once in the surf they quickly "dissolve", and by mid spring all traces are gone.
In the winter of 2000, the cliff face froze repeatedly overnight and thawed in the early morning sun. As a result, the outer layers peeled off and collected in these "spoil piles" at the bottom of the cliffs. Waves quickly wash these away, leaving fresh fossils on the beach. Brownie's is not a good site to find fossil shells, but these piles contain nice, complete, freeze dried shell fossils.
This can happen without any warning! It's a great way to expose new fossils.
Photo of the cliffs just south of Brownie's Beach showing Shattuck's Zone 4 "a six-inch deposit of greenish sandy clay carrying Ostrea percrassa" as the white line of shells. This picture on a windy winter morning in 2000 shows how wave erosion is much faster in zone 4 than in the adjoining smooth clay layers.