UK Fossils was originally formed in 1998 under a personal Freeserve website, it quickly grew, and later was moved under its own domain name ‘www.fossils.uk.co’. this being the starting point of a portal which now has become one of the largest of its kind in Europe, and still growing.

The site was designed and developed out of a sheer passion held since early childhood by Alister Cruickshanks together with his father, Ian Cruickshanks. The domain caused some confusion with the normal '.co.uk' format, so it was decided that we would move to a less confusing domain name, accessible via 'ukfossils.info', 'ukfossils.co.uk' and 'ukfossils.com', at this time, version 2.0 was developed, a complete re-design and new features such as a discussion board and search engine facilities were added.

Between 2000 and 2002 the site has more than doubled. During this time Roy, joint partner of the CWA Design, based in Southwold. The company joined forces with Alister in a determined effort to continue the development of UK Fossils. During 2002 a complete revamp of the site followed. February also saw the launch of UKGE, a new company who's primary aim is to fund the UK Fossils network selling geological tools & books online and via mail order. UKGE has enabled us to start work into other portals. With the ever growing number of sub sites, such as the new special sites, search geo search engine and discussions, it was necessary to move UK Fossils to a dedicated more stable and faster server which was only made possible from the funds of UKGE.

The group has also been renamed to the 'UK Fossils Network' During 2004, UK Fossils and UKGE teamed up with two other companies to publish a new magazine 'Deposits', this magazine has grown into an international high quality glossy earth science publication, and during 2007, was taken under the complete ownership of UKGE. In June 2005, UKF opened two new portals including a news site and revamped the network into version 4.0.

In 2006, Alister's wife, Alison Cruickshanks joined the UKGE and UKF team, and has been helping expand the range of locations on our website as well as research coordinator of Deposits Magazine.

In 2007, Joe Shimmin joined the team at UK Fossils as a field researcher. "I work as a technician for Canterbury Christ Church University in the Geography and Life Sciences Dept. I did my degree in Geography and Environmental Management at Durham. I have been fascinated with fossils for as long as I remember, with my first real fossil recollection being my grandfather taking me across the fields near his home to find flint sea urchins. I am especially interested in microfossils, Dominican amber inclusions and flint fossils from the Chalk. I am a frequent contributor of articles to Deposits magazine and have recently become an editorial assistant for the same"

Today there are in the region of 35,000 unique visitors weekly across the whole of our fossil network, and still growing. In 2008, we celebrated our 10th anniversary of UK Fossils, and to mark the occasion, we launched version 5.0 of our website. We have also started launching the first of a new series of locations specifically for collecting microfossils. These are exciting times!