Search the Community

Hello all! Recently, I had the chance to meet up with a few forum members, and hunt the historic Granton Quarry, in North Bergen NJ. Last Monday, March 31st, I was up at the crack of dawn, 4:00 am, to hit the road and meet my partner for today, forum member Jeffrey P, in Newburgh, NY. I left my house in central Connecticut at 4:15 am, eager to be on the road, and heading towards the Triassic exposures of the Lockatong formation. An hour and a half later, after encountering heavy downpours and sporadic showers, I arrived at the appointed meeting place, a McDonalds parking lot, just off of Interstate 84. Meeting time was 6:00 am, and I arrived around 5:45am. Overly anxious? Not me. I was a little concerned about the weather, as ice pellets were beginning to hit my windshield as I waited for Jeff to arrive. Oh boy. Jeff showed up just after 6:00am, and after our initial greetings, and moving his gear to my truck, we got on our way. Jeffrey and I had collected together before, at my fossil fish site in Connecticut, so the trip down to North Bergen was a fun time talking over our expected strategies for this site, and how different this site was from my usual stomping grounds. We hit a bit of traffic heading into North Bergen, and arrived at our destination, around 7:20 am. Now, … Jeffrey had made two previous scouting expeditions to the site, and had a hunch on where we might find some productive layers of fossils. He had scored some clam shrimp and even had a very nice and possibly complete Diplurus newarki, a Triassic coelacanth! We were both hopeful, but realistic as the Newark Supergroup is notoriously hit or miss. For those unfamiliar with the area, the old Granton Quarry is gone, and on top of what was the main quarry floor, a Lowes Home Improvement Center now resides. There are still exposures of the Lockatong accessible to the north of the actual building., however. This exposure was our target. We stopped in to the Lowes, and met with the manager, Ray, who was perfectly willing to allow us to collect from the exposures on their property, so long as we stayed out of the way of any pending deliveries. We assured him we would be as unobtrusive as possible, and having received permission to hunt the exposure,, headed back to the car to get our gear. At this point, the other half of our collecting team arrived. John (Flyguy784) and his buddy Ken. I have been friendly with John since I joined the Forum back in 2010, and we have conversed fairly regularly, having bonded over our mutual frustration over hunting the Newark Supergroup. John is more of a plant guy, but we had talked in the past of a Granton trip, and when I mentioned to him that I was planning on going, he wanted to come up, if only just to get a chance to collect together. Meeting him, and putting a face to the name was a most welcome part of this trip, and we happily exchanged some fossils between us. It was now around 7:55, and we decided to gear up, and check some of the lower exposures, to see what could be found. The sky was gloomy looking, a light drizzle was falling, and the wind was blowing cold – a gray and fairly miserable start. Water was streaming off of the rocks above, in little runnels which felt great, sliding down your back. In the past, the Granton Quarry has yielded assorted fish, reptile/dino footprints, a little plant material, and some reptile material, including phytosaur teeth and coprolites, a gliding lizard (Icarosaurus) aquatic lizards, (Tanytrachelos) . We all had high hopes, but they were realistically tempered by our various experiences with hunting similar Newark Supergroup sites in the past. We collected the in the black and gray shales infrequently finding bits and pieces of both clam shrimp, and coprolites. Things continued in this vein for a few hours. We finally started to find assorted disarticulated bones of the coelacanth Diplurus newarki! Eureka! By this time, the rain had stopped, the sun came out, and the temperature was rising, steadily. At this point, we narrowed down the hunting to the lower few inches of a seam of black shale, the lower 2 inches of which were extremely friable, and nearly impossible to get out of the wall in any decently sized slabs. After finding a number of cool coelacanth bits, coprolites, and Estheria ovata clam shrimp slabs, between us, we decided around noon-thirty-ish to take a break for lunch, and retired to our cars in the Lowes lot. We snacked, talked fossils, and other various sundry things. An enjoyable time to be sure. We soaked up the sun, and enjoyed it’s warmth on our faces. At least my feet were no longer numb from the earlier cold! My companions were all amiable, and we enjoyed the time together. This is the type of outing that can be enjoyed, whether finding anything, or not. But, we were finding things, so we got back too it. We then decided to take the folding ladder I had brought, and try to access the higher layers of black shale which Jeffrey had managed to climb up to on a previous excursion, and remove a bit of shale that had yielded his Diplurus coelacanth. We set the ladder up, and took turns removing shale, and bracing the ladder for each other. When we got tired of removing rock, we stopped, took a break to split what we had removed, and then switched places. This garnered us some larger slabs, that, while they didn’t provide us with any complete fish, did reward us with some mortality plates of the Estheria ovata, and some more bits and pieces of Diplurus newarki. We continued in this way, while John and Ken scouted some of the lower seams of black shale. Time, as is always the case, flew away from us, and before we knew it, 4:00PM was approaching, and we needed to leave by then to make it home at a reasonable time. We packed up our things, said our goodbyes, and got on our way. Traffic leaving Jersey was smoother than coming in, so we were back to the McDonalds in Newburgh just around 5:00 PM. Jeff and I said goodbye, and went our separate ways. I headed home, to be stymied getting to the Beacon Bridge, for about a half an hour …just to get 3.5 miles or so. I finally arrived home to Connecticut at around 7:30 pm, excited by my finds and a successful hunt in the Lockatong Formation – The Newark Supergroup had blessed me with a few Upper Triassic finds for my collection. Thanks for looking – enjoy the pics. Regards, John (Flyguy 784- background) and JeffreyP (foreground) One area we tried to attack Continued...

Recently I had a pretty decent day hunting the scarce petrified wood in the Triassic (Newark supergroup) of southeastern Pennsylvania. The largest piece in the photo weighs 13.5 lbs (6.1 kilos). It was the first specimen found in the first 5 minutes of the hunt, so I was hoping a good day would follow. And more nice wood did follow that first one. As usual, most pieces have a brownish hue, and the silica sparkles a bit. No agatized wood. Scale bar at photo bottom is 4 inches (10.16 cm).

This is my first official Triassic fossil - a tooth (or fish fin) and some associated (poor quality) tissue/bone pieces found in a late afternoon exploration of some rocky outcroppings in Montgomery County, PA. Both halves of the impression are included. The impression/cast are very faint and some of the definition is in jeopardy of being lost since the material powdered and flaked off a bit as it dried, and is less defined now than when I first brought it home and took the first images. Here are some views of the full shale piece and surrounding smooth area with a small skin or tissue fragment at the top: You can see the smooth area around the fossil "tooth or fin" in the positive and negative halves of the shale - which is medium grey in color and about 20 centimeters long. I chiseled open the shale while I was exploring a steep vertical outcropping. What led me to crack this particular piece of shale was a nearby small assortment of what appeared to be dessicated bones and fragments and the shale color was different from the surrounding red shale. I'm including images here of the "bone fragments" and associated material which appear to be fossilized organic material: This closeup has some impressions/pockets that may help with identification: . Update (Oct 23): There is a growing consensus that this may be a fish fin (or scale) - considering that this appears to be attached to a smooth section, and there is a bit of "skin" at the top left, this interpretation makes sense. I agree that I should remove more substrate to see what else can be revealed. Thanks to Fossildude19 for providing links to the Triassic Teeth chart and to a few experts I contacted off-line to get their opinion. The best thing about this find - regardless of the faint impressions, difficult ID and the crumbling possible bone and skin - is that this was found in an area where finds are few and far between, in Triassic sediments that are really scarce in Pennsylvania, because glaciers basically scraped and eroded most of the Triassic and Jurassic geological formations down to older (Ordovician, Devonian, Carboniferous) layers. I wasn't expecting to find anything and this was revealed just as the sun was going down, using the last half hour of daylight and came from inspecting an anomalous shale color in the formation. This suggests that it is worth our time to check out more Triassic formations in our home county/southeastern Pennsylvania. We are totally "clueless" about Triassic fossils (more comfortable with Carboniferous ferns) but since the Passaic and Lockatong formations are scattered in several places within 20 minutes of our home, we are making a few short trips to see what we might run across. Nancy and I remain interested primarily in Devonian and Carboniferous fossils and sites, however our first venture into Triassic territory holds some promise.

I found another new site for Triassic petrified wood in Pennsylvania. I am sure this location has never been hunted. The following specimens are very similar to what I've found elsewhere in PA Triassic. Scale bar is 4 inches (10+ cm).

I found more petrified (silicified) wood at a new site in the Triassic Newark Supergroup of S.E. Pennsylvania. Almost all specimens show good grain patterns and are a nice dark chocolate color. Yummy. Attached is a photo of the larger specimens that I collected. The scale bar is 4 inches. (I have posted other similar pet wood photos in previous topics.)

I found some more petrified wood in the Triassic Newark supergroup in Pennsylvania. 2 big chunks, a light chocolate brown color. And many smaller pieces. The photos are in these first 3 posts. This first, largest specimen measures 16x12x6 inches (41x30x15 centimeters). (Inch and centimeter scales are on the ruler in the photos.)

"Petrified", permineralized, silicified wood from Triassic Newark supergroup in Pennsylvania. Probably Araucarioxylon; same genus as in Arizona Petrified Forest national park. Some specimens have dark lignite on surface. For scale: silver discs in photo are USA quarter coins (0.995 inch or 2.42 centimeters in diameter).

Recently found this piece. Tried my best on the pics. I've included a ruler in the one for scale. It's a big piece for this period. What's super nice is that on this impression, there is at least 18 contiguous nodes/internodes. That is unusual for Equisetite specimens from the Newark Group. I also put up a close up of one section to give you an idea of the actual structure of the nodes/internodes. Quite sure it's genus Equisetite, but any idea on the species? I'll bet ya Tim gets this one for me.