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Showing results for tags 'Mazon Creek'.
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Yesterday I had the pleasure of getting out for one of the nicest opening days of the fossil hunting season at Mazonia-Braidwood State Fish and Wildlife Area that I’ve experienced. The sun was shining, the ground was relatively dry and temps were in the 40s-50s. And I only encountered 1 tick! I ran into a few other collectors over the course of the day, including @connorp. The park was mostly quiet as usual, with the sounds of birds and passing cars nearby, as well as the distant rumble of trains and planes. My hunting area for this trip was south of Monster Lake- after getting nearly skunked when it came to interesting fossils the last two years I wanted to go back to a site that had given me more success in the past. It’s about a one mile hike to get down to the collecting area, although I was able to pick up a few concretions on the way there. I’ve been using an 8 inch wide plastic rake the last few trips to clear leaves and litter from the ground and I have found it really effective. It’s a full length rake like this one: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ames-60-in-handle-Collector-8-in-Poly-Shrub-Rake-2915900/204476248 so maneuvering it in the underbrush can be annoying sometimes, but since I’m already trying to fit a 6’3” frame through there it doesn’t make it notably more difficult to get around. Here are a couple concretions in an area where I didn’t clear things up: I didn’t find too many already split concretions- a few dirty plants I’ll share once I’ve had a chance to clean them up and some mystery things that may or may not prove to be anything (and one exciting find I will detail below). As usual, there were also plenty of split Essexella blobs to be found, but I didn’t bring any of those home. Towards the end of the day, I found myself at the base of a small hill that was veritably covered in both split and unsplit concretions. At first I thought it might have been a dump pile from a collector back in the day, but the number of unopened smaller concretions made me question that, as well as the next find I made- a very partial Tullimonstrum gregarium! It’s a wee one, but only the second example of our state fossil that I’ve found. Here is a wider shot of the hill where I found it: By this time I was starting to get pretty sore, so I decided to head back. I ended up with around 2 gallons of concretions, a pretty average day at Pit 11 for me. Here is my bucket at the end of the day: I’ve got about 10 gallons of other concretions in the queue ahead of these, so it may be a while before I start freezing and thawing them, but I will work on getting them cleaned up and ready to go in the meantime. As @Mark Kmiecik famously said about hunting Pit 11, I left “bruised and abused and grinning from ear to ear”. It’s a tough experience, but you can count on me keeping at it as long as I can. Anybody else planning to make it out to the park this week?
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One of the nice things about collecting Mazon Creek concretions is that most specimens don't require any prep - they open up and are good to go. This however was not one of those cases. This concretion exploded during freeze thaw last year into hundreds of pieces, and on most pieces the fossils were still covered by sections of shale. It took around 25 hours in total to reassemble the concretion and prep out what wasn't exposed. Big thanks to Kris @Ptychodus04 for helping to finish the prep work. This is a large frond of the rare fern Mariopteris nervosa. And if that wasn't enough, there was a second layer to this concretion, containing more plants and an opisthosoma of the horseshoe crab Euproops danae. A lot more work than is usually necessary, but well worth it in the end.
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Yesterday I stopped by another good friend of mine (Marty) that I have known for about 30 years. He has been collecting Mazon Creek fossils a lot longer that I have and also use to collect with my mentor Walter. Every once in a while he contacts me and has me stop by to pick up Mazon Creek concretions that he does not want and I go through them and place them into 5 gallon buckets for the ESCONI Braceville trip. I then bring the buckets and dump fossils for the participants. Here is a picture of the bags that I picked up yesterday. Marty also pointed out a bag of concretions that he received from Walter, probably back in the early 1980s. In this bag there were two fossils mounted on cardboard, that were given to Walter from a fellow collector that lived in Marietta Ohio. These two fossils, one is a Cyclopteris, and the other I am not sure of, or collected from the Permian- Washington formation, that is found in southeast Ohio. Pictures are below. I also looked at one other piece that was in this bag, and it came from Pitt 11. It is really cool, since it has four different fossils in the concretion. Euproops danae, Pecopteris, Neuropteris? and maybe a lycopod leaf. I had to get acetone to get rid of the writing on the concretion. When I go through the other bags, I will include some future pictures.
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Belotelsonid donation
Sauropod19 posted a topic in Partners in Paleontology - Member Contributions to Science
Greetings, friends. I have some very exciting news on a personal front: My first ever museum donation is this Mazon Creek Belotelsonid, which is going to the Indiana State Museum! Using advice from elsewhere on TFF, I reached out to their team a couple of days ago to ask if they might want it and surely enough they did!
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This concretion opened up recently and I'm pretty stumped. My best guess is that this is a lateral view of some sort of pollen organ, but I haven't been able to find a match in literature. I was hoping someone here might have an idea? @paleoflor @RCFossils @fiddlehead
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Hello. I found this piece during my first visit to Mazon last year and just got around to asking about it. I believe it may be tracks of some sort, as they look vaguely like other arthropod ichnofossils. I was wondering if anyone may be able to confirm my suspicions and possibly ID what kind of animal it could be. I understand this second part is difficult without anything else to go off of, and I apologize for lower camera quality than the other images I’ve seen here. Thank you!
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Hello. I found three pieces in the Mazon Creek area that I’ve finally split open and am interested in. While there is a very good possibility that all three are just consequences of opening the concretion and not actually fossils, I figured I’d check. Image 1: I thought there was a slight possibility it was a leaf or a worm, but due to lack of detail, I imagine it is not. Image 2: Potentially the top of E. asherae or something similar. Image 3: I am actually just curious about what causes the small, light circles on the right side of the bottom piece and in the middle of the top piece. I’ve noticed these on many Mazon rocks and wonder if it is a mineral inclusion or something else. Thank you for taking a look!
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Curious if anyone recognizes this. Looks floral but I don't recall having seen anything like it before. @Nimravis @stats @Mark Kmiecik @deutscheben @RCFossils
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This concretion opened up a couple weeks ago. When I first looked at it, I could tell there was something there, but the contrast between it and the surrounding matrix was very low, so I didn't think much of it. I got around to looking at it again yesterday. In very bright oblique light, I realized it was actually a very beautiful spider with legs and all. It measures about 1cm. I am not sure on the ID. Colors inverted
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This concretion opened up tonight. I'm not entirely sure what it is. I thought it might be a cross section of a small bone, but I could also seeing it being some weird pyrite formation - the site that this was collected at produces a lot of those. Any thoughts? A couple shots under a microscope.
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As with many Mazon Creek pieces, a lot is left up to interpretation and imagination. Looking to see what people think about this piece. @RCFossils @stats @Mark Kmiecik @connorp @deutscheben and any other FF members.
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I spotted this on the outside of a concretion this week while sorting some buckets. It looks to me like it is possibly a wing, but it's pretty water worn so it could also just be a suggestively worn fern pinnule. I was hoping for a second opinion. @Nimravis @stats @deutscheben @RCFossils @Mark Kmiecik @flipper559 Thanks. A couple shots under a microscope.
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I had this concretion open today. I immediately noticed what I believe is a coelacanth scale, but on closer inspection there looks to be some other bits that might be related. Any thoughts? @jdp @RCFossils
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Help Identifying possible organisms from nodules of Pit 11, Mazon Creek Part 2
Joseph Fossil posted a topic in Fossil ID
Starting in early 2021, I've been going fossil hunting at the Mazon Creek area in Grundy County, Illinois. The site I visit the most so far is the fairly large Mazonia-Braidwood State Fish and Wildlife Area. After advice from other members of the Fossilfourm, I've decided to put the nodules I'm most curious about under the microscope and dissecting scope! With these better photographs, I'm wondering if anyone could give a proper ID for these specimens?
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Part 2 Fossil hunting trip in Utica, Illinois October/29/2022
Joseph Fossil posted a topic in Fossil Hunting Trips
This is the second part of my post describing my recent fossil hunting trip with @Tales From the Shale in Utica, of which it was awesome!!! So after visiting the abandoned clay pit, we decided to go to another location in Utica one might not expect to be productive - the former peabody coal company Pit 15 (or at least its outskirts), located not to far away from Lake Shannon, Kankakee County, Illinois (I'm am not going to tell the specific route or address so the area doesn't end up being picked clean). We went there as I had heard a report that a while ago, someone found a sizable Cladodus (or cladodont labeled as Cladodus) tooth at Pit 15 itself. At the top of the outskirts of the Pit was truly Beautiful!!! I expected to find simply nodules in the area. What I found instead were a staggering amount of different rocks with a descent portion containing fossils, most of brachipods though. As the area was once a mine, I've somewhat come up with a theory as to why this is - when the mines were closed, the pit was filled not just with nodule containing rocks but by all the types of rocks available in the Utica area ranging from shale to clay to limestone, likely either Ordovician or Carboniferous in age. It's still a pretty productive site and I've recently analyzed many of the specimens with a microscope and dissecting scope and I hope to get some IDs from them! Here's a possible shark spine I found there!
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Help identifying possible organisms from nodules of Pit 11, Mazon Creek
Joseph Fossil posted a topic in Fossil ID
Starting in 2021, I've been going fossil hunting around the Mazon Creek area in Grundy County, Illinois. The site I visit the most so far is the fairly large Mazonia-Braidwood State Fish and Wildlife Area and at first, I would barley find anything. Then after visiting Monster Lake and another secret location in the area, I started finding more fossils. However, most are around 2-7 cm. In length and I'm still having difficulty getting IDs for them? Would anyone be able to help ID them? I think this could be some sort of Chondrichthyan or a lobe finned fish? Maybe part of a dragonfly wing or a plant? Plant fossil - Genera unknown currently? I don't know what this could be? The specimen here looks almost like a plant fossil. Worm fossil - genera unknown currently.
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The Fossils of the Essex Quad in Kankakee/Grundy County Illinois
Joseph Fossil posted a topic in Fossil Hunting Trips
I've been recently trying to find some good places to go fossil hunting in the Mazon Creek area and there is one area some say is good but I've never heard or or been to before. It's called the Essex Quadrangle or Essex Quad in Kankakee County Illinois. It's supposed to be extremely close to the old Peabody coal company pit 15 and have fossils from the Essex Biota dating to around the Pennsylvanian period. https://isgs.illinois.edu/maps-data-pub/quads/e/essex.shtml https://ilmineswiki.web.illinois.edu/index.php/0359 I'm wondering if anyone's heard of or been to the place before, what kind of fossils you can find there, and where is it? -
I had this Mazon Creek concretion open today. It was collected from the Braidwood biota (freshwater/terrestrial). My best guess is a partial millipede (Amynilyspes?) but I'm not sure and wanted to get other opinions. Thanks for any help. @Nimravis @deutscheben @bigred97 @RCFossils @stats @flipper559 @Mark Kmiecik
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Saturday, October 15th, 2022 was the ESCONI Mazon Creek Open House. It was a great day with about 100 visitors to enjoy a event devoted to Mazon Creek fossils. There were numerous forum members in attendance.@connorp @bigred97 @flipper559 @fiddlehead @RCFossils @Roby @Hurtlady @jdp to name a few. For a full report with videos of 3 of the 4 presentations, please visit the ESCONI website. The fourth video will be posted after the research is published. Recently, we've had a few historical posts about the Mazon Creek Open House events in the past, Mazon Monday #133 and Throwback Thursday #132. @Nimravis supplied me with quite a bit of the historical material. Thanks, Ralph! Paul Mayer and Jack Wittry were on hand from the Field Museum. They provided two display cases of fossils, including the holotypes of Essexcella asherae and Lascoa mesostaurara. Random photos from the day. And, more fossils!
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An idea for a Museum solely dedicated to the Carboniferous life of Mazon Creek, Illinois
Joseph Fossil posted a topic in General Fossil Discussion
I've been to a least a few museums where they would have a part of an exhibit dedicated to the Carboniferous era (of which the Field Museum's section for that in the Evolving Planet is pretty good). But I do wonder what would it be like if a whole A grade small to medium sized museum opened dedicated solely to the fossils found in the Mazon Creek area, including the Essex Fauna. It could be located close to the Mazonia-Braidwood State Fish and Wildlife area and include life sized reconstructions of both the terrestrial and aquatic environments. It could also be a place where fossil hunters could donate there finds to have them displayed so scientists will have an opportunity to study any fossils found (where most of the fossils from the area now I fear end up in private hands). Any thoughts? -
Not really sure what to make of this one and hoping someone can help ID. Thanks in advance. Pit 4 area
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I came across this piece tonight and am looking to see what others think. This piece has what appears to be a faint gut line and 2- eyes. I was thinking possible Hagfish, but not convinced. @RCFossils @stats @Mark Kmiecik @connorp @deutscheben
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Today it was early and about 60 degrees and I decided to go out and do a little collecting. Here are pics of the concretions and some as I found them. As I saw it- As I saw it- As I saw it- As I saw these two- The next piece was large and flat. I do not bring these home, I try to open them in the field or I that is an issue, I break it in half and see if there is anything in the middle. That is rarely the case with these and that was the case today. It is a lot easier this way, saves on the weight that you have to carry. This next one will most likely have a Cyperites. Two more next to each other. As I saw it-
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This is an odd one for me, anyone have any ideas?
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Esconichthys with potential soft tissue donated to field museum
TheRocksWillShoutHisGlory posted a topic in Partners in Paleontology - Member Contributions to Science
I donated the below specimen to the Field Museum of Natural History. It is identified as an Esconichthys apopyris. Work is being done on redefining/solidifying the categorization of this species, and a professional helped facilitate my donation to the museum. There are details on this specimen such as a yolk sac and I look forward to hearing if there are internal details such as vascular structures. I feel like I can see them but I am excited to open it up to professional analysis through donation to a research institution..thumb.jpg.8dc003a0ff06756e8f9e168ce661ff19.jpg)
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