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Hello, FFers: I'm wondering if anyone can tell me anything about these filamental fossils from the U. Ord of Kenton County, Kentucky. Given the structure under the mike, I'm guessing bryozoan, but I'd never seen anything quite like this before. Can anyone tell me more? Including, maybe, an ID? (Or a different direction, if I'm wrong about their being bryozoa.) The scale in the first pic is in mm. Thanks!

Found in grant county SW Wisconsin. Ordovician period... Need help ID

Found in grant county SW Wisconsin. Ordovician period... not sure what formation is. Need help ID

Hey everyone, Just an update on my recent adventures exploring the Whetstone gulf formation. My last post I went to 2 gorges in the Tug Hill Plateau area known to expose the formation. I didn’t find any significant fossils but it was a good learning experience. On one of my recent weekend adventures I spent all of a Saturday and Sunday hiking another gorge that exposes the Whetstone. I won’t always be posting exact locations in these posts. Sometimes discretion is needed so I’m not blasting localities on this particular one. It happened to be the cold and rainy weekend in the northeast US so they were very cold and wet hikes. It seems the “upper whetstone”......a rather loose term......is more productive as far as frequency of faunal zones from what I’ve read and have been told by reputable sources. This means....you need to get to the upper parts of the formation. These massive gulfs/gorges don’t offer really any access so if you want to get inside the gorges you need to start downstream and hike DEEEEEEEP into the gorges working upstream to get to bedrock that “might” have something. The whetstone gulf formation is dominated by shales with thin sandstone beds inter layered in different concentrations. The upper whetstone has the sandstone layers in more abundance and it is reflected by the debris in the streams. The shale however doesn’t last long....at all! Based on what I saw these 2 field days......the really “good” fossiliferous stuff is in the softer dark grey shales. The sandstones do have nice fossils but extraction is nearly impossible. The fossils in the shales never make it downstream into easily accessible hiking areas either. It’s part of why I think the Whetstone generally isn’t sought out. Just doesn’t seem to attract much attention. On my first hike on Saturday (May 9th 2020) I was determined to hike as far into the undisclosed gorge as possible. I just wanted to see if I could find any sign of these hot zones with fossils. I hiked VERY FAR up into the gorge. No real trails and I had to get a little creative to keep my feet dry and still push upstream. It was Really cold so I tried to stay dry at all costs. I was super far into the wilderness, deep into a massive gorge, and super alone....weird feeling venturing so deep into a gorge and you are sure nobody’s been there for a long time. A few shots of the field terrain. It was cold but sunny during parts of the day...and snow/rained to get me nice and wet. It wasn’t until I got very far and very deep into the gorge that I saw the first sign of a fossil. I didn’t look hard for fossils as much early on cause all the pieces of shale downstream were barren and I didn’t even see shale fragments with fossils so I took that as my queue to keep walking. First sign of a trilobite I’ve found in the Whetstone!! I took this picture cause I was positive it wasn’t going to stay together I grabbed it and it began to disintegrate as expected but...... I found this in the process. A cryptolithis bellus cephalon!!! So cool. I felt like I was seeing a ghost. After all that reading, planning, and walking.....and walking lol.....I finally found evidence of the iconic Cryptolithis trilobite!! I’ve only ever see photos so it was very rewarding getting up close to the real thing. Turns out this is one of my best specimens so far. I found a few other fragments in the same small piece of shale. The articulated crinoid columns are a common feature in the fossiliferous shale. Not sure if the calyx’s show up I didn’t see anything in the literature but who knows. This tiny slab has 3 Triarthrus cephalons too. Continued.....

Wowowow I was very surprised to find all this amazing stuff today at my favourite river bank fossils spot of the Etobicoke creek. I managed to snag a whole lot of stuff today, some Orthoconic Nautiloids, Brachipods and what I believe to be the nicest tentaculite I've ever seen!!! The fossils are from the Georgian Bay Formation and they were found in the broken up "rock fields" next to the creek. This is going to be one of my longer posts, so I will have to split them up into section. The full haul, with the typical estwing 22 ounce rock pick (33 cm from bottom of the handle to the top of the hammer end for anyone who doesn't own one). First lets start with the usual: Them cone boys, aka Orthoconic Nautiloids. I believe all of the following to be Treptoceras crebriseptum.

It was an all day outing on a perfect spring day in Central Upstate New York. Al Tahan and I visited a small private quarry where the Middle Devonian Oatkacreek Formation Mottville Member, part of the Marcellus Shale and the lower Hamilton Group is exposed. It's been about a year since I visited the site which I've been coming to for the past five years and it was Al's first visit. Erosion had broken down almost all of the pieces of shale which covered much of the site on previous visits. However a lot of fossils here, preserved in calcite are weathered free from the matrix and surface collecting can be very productive. This is by far the best site I've been to for the gastropod, Bembexia sulcomarginata. There were dozens strewn about the site. I couldn't resist picking up a few adding to my already extensive Bembexia collection. Brachiopods were also plentiful, especially the large spiriferid, Spinocyrtia granulosa (upper right). I couldn't help adding this inflated example to my large collection. Upper left is Mucrospirifer murcronatus, certainly one of the most abundant and distinctive Middle Devonian brachiopods in New York. Lower left is Protoleptostrophia perplana, a Strophomenid.

Whittington, H.B. and Evitt, W.R., 1953. Silicified Middle Ordovician trilobites (Vol. 59). Geological Society of America. https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/books/book/65/Silicified-Middle-Ordovician-Trilobites (free download until June 30, 2020) Whittington, H.B., 1959, Silicified Middle Ordovician trilobites: Remopleurididae, Trinucleidae, Raphiophoridae, Endymioniidae. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College. vol. 121, pp. 369-496. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/part/32962#/summary https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4778534#page/501/mode/1up Hu, C.H., 1974, September. 635. Ontogenies of two Middle Ordovician trilobites from the Edinburg Formation, Virginia. In Transactions and proceedings of the Paleontological Society of Japan. New series (Vol. 1974, No. 95, pp. 353-363). Palaeontological Society of Japan. https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/prpsj1951/1974/95/1974_95_353/_article/-char/ja Hu, C.H., 1976, April. 657. Ontogenies of three species of Silicified Middle Ordovician trilobites from Virginia. In Transactions and proceedings of the Paleontological Society of Japan. New series (Vol. 1976, No. 101, pp. 247-263). Palaeontological Society of Japan. https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/prpsj1951/1976/101/1976_101_247/_pdf/-char/ja https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/prpsj1951/1976/101/1976_101_247/_article/-char/ja/ Bruton, D.L. and Nakrem, H.A., 2005. Enrollment in a Middle Ordovician agnostoid trilobite. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 50(3). http://agro.icm.edu.pl/agro/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-article-e5a5ef53-3af9-4efd-b8b3-ca3006e0e32d/c/app50-441.pdf Yours, Paul H.

Today I decided to revisit a stream exposure of the Upper Ordovician Maquoketa Group in northern IL. I believe these outcrops are all Brainard Shale, which is the second highest member of the Maquoketa in Northern Illinois. The olive-gray shales exposed at the base of the outcrops are packed with Tentaculites, and the few times I've been here I've always searched for those. Today I wanted to explore more of the creek and see what else I could find. The stream was running pretty fast but wasn't too high, despite all the recent rain. Shale and dolomite outcrop for quite a distance along the stream, although the water is usually too high to get to many of them. I probably won't come back until the water level drops quite a bit so I can wade through, the stream isn't super deep. The stream runs near shops and well-traveled footpaths, so to be respectful I don't hammer here. That makes it a little tough since most rock faces are highly weathered and covered with vegetation, but some nice things can still be found. Water-worn brachiopods are common sights, though rarely worth collecting.

I found this last year in north-central New York. It is from the Ordovician whetstone gulf formation and is about 1cm wide. I’m thinking it may be a crinoid calyx base but I may be wrong. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I found this last year in a secret location in Ellisburg, New York. It is a cephalon of the trilobite species Thaleops sp. Even though it is not a complete trilobite, it is still one of my nicer finds. I believe it is from the Trenton Group (Ordovician). I may not be right but I think this is a fairly uncommon trilobite species. I’ve found a lot of Isotelus partials but only one of these.

Hi all. Here s my second round of lockdown fossiling. Went back to my dear brittany trilos. I thought i had none to process left, but somehow i was wrong. Some are recent finds (2 weeks before lockdown), some are more storage finds during reorganisation process. Some hardly need no work, for some others it was a different story. So lets start with a bunch of ectillaenus giganteus. regards

Earlier today, I posted a collection of fossils from the Decorah Shale from NE Iowa. I do have a few questionable ones that I need opinions of. 1. This seems geological but is very odd. Thoughts of what it is are welcome. 2. Bryozoan encrusted gastropod? 3. Is this bryozoan or sponge? 4. This big "glob" sits atop a slab of matrix. I am perplexed.

This will likely be my last trip to the Decorah Shale this season. I thought I would post some finds that were still in the matrix that they were found in. Many fossils of the Decorah are found separated from the rock they were hidden in. I just like fossils in matrix!!! With that said, the first picture is not in matrix. It shows a cephalopod with a Sowerbella brachiopod within it. Someone (I can't remember who) posted a similar item and I had remarked how many cephalopods have other fossils within the body chambers. Here is an example. I hope that person sees this. Secondly, @DMcLY posted a picture of a Strophomena hash plate this week. I think these pictures show the inside of the concave pedicle valve showing the muscle attachment and the exterior surface of it. It may help you visualize what you found. Now the rest are just for enjoyment:

I was doing some research on the ordovician cruziana plates I found in Millard Co, Utah a few years ago and noticed something funny. It seems that similar looking specimens from around the world are frequently the same pink color. In my experience pink fossils are rare. But, it seems pink cruziana is not. Google the cruziana found at Penha Garcia park in Portugal for example. Any thoughts as to why? Here are some pictures of mine.

A month or so ago I found these while trout fishing in a creek in the lower Champlain valley. I have no idea what they are, so any info would be very helpful. They were from Ordovician rock that was pretty barren except for a few brachiopods.

I am looking to trade small flat rate box(es) of Ordovician or Mississippian matrix for unsorted Permian Wellington f. (Waurika) or K Firesteel Creek (Hell Creek) matrix. PM me if you are interested. (or any other interesting micro faunal matrix)

Hey everyone, Haven’t posted much about my recent activities so this is a summary of a few things I’ve been up to the past month or so. I had a lot of goals in 2020 with regards to exploring more of the Ordovician rocks in New York. I am very interested in the Ordovician due to the formations and groups represented. The Trenton group, Lorraine group (has whetstone gulf fm and Pulaski fm) have been of great interest to me because I live in Central New York and these rocks are actually very close to me. Last year I did some exploring and it worked out pretty well. I found a great fishing stream with the Pulaski and whetstone exposed. I also found some exposures of Utica shale that I know are promising. I was also able to get permission from a land owner In November to visit a location with the Trenton exposed but I wasn’t able to actually go there till this year. I am going to share my experience with 2 different rock groups I visited recently on several different field days in April and May. The Trenton group and the Lorraine group. Lorraine group, Whetstone gulf exposures northwestern New York Beechers beds. Lorraine group, Frankfort shale Trenton group exposure. Recent permission. The Whetstone gulf formation is probably familiar to many people who are obsessed with New York trilobites, especially the pyritized trilobites. Other than pyritized Triarthrus some may not know about the other fauna found in the Whetstone. Also...nobody is really looking either. Reasons being difficulties getting to the exposures, proximity to state parks and state forests, nobody lives near there so travel is required, private property issues, and LOTS of walking is required. North of Rome, New York around the northern and eastern edges of the tug hill plateau are several enormous gorges with breathtaking exposures. Depending on how ambitious you want to be there seems to be plenty of exposure to see. The whetstone has been regarded as an impossibility complex system with 100s, even 1000s of faunal zones (perhaps a hyperbole or the musings of a frustrated paleontologist!). The fossils that have been found in the whetstone aren’t Fully documented and more work is needed. There are Eurypterids (parts only, super rare) and rare trilobites that have been recorded to be found that are not easy to find information about today. It’s like chasing a ghost trying to even find photos of these fossils. Rudolf Ruedemann wrote a magnificent publication on the Utica and Lorraine formations of New York (1925). Since then his work remains, to me, the best source regarding these formations. Here is a few plates from that. Interesting stuff. Some of the names have changed... Last year I found a calymenid pygidium in some Pulaski formation “drift”. I didn’t hike far enough to reach the whetstone that day so “seeing” the whetstone and exploring is a 2020 goal. Some of the possibilities.....I didn’t find these. These are just examples of a few nice arthropods from the Whetstone. A complete Homotelus stegops from the Whetstone gulf formation. I guess these are very rare A legitimate specimen of some Eurypterid body segments. Whetstone material. Exceedingly rare. Continued.....

I was able to get out and hunt a new Ordovician spot today. A full trip report is coming, but I’m too curious about this one to wait. In the field I grabbed this thinking it was a large trilobite genal spine. After getting it home and doing some quick cleaning and research, I am less convinced. I’m not even sure that any trilobite from this time period/formation would have spines this size (still researching). From a quick glance at a Kentucky Geological Map it looks like I was in the Grant Lake Limestone (Upper Ordovician). I’m probably way off base here. Trilobites (and bits) are barely in my wheelhouse. What do you all think? I have outlined the general shape of the whole specimen in the below photo as it is obscured by overlying matrix, and a brach, towards the wider end. It has striations running the length and is flat for the most part, but the inside of the “spine” appears to be more rounded.

Ordovician inverts are not my specialty, and thus I have a few that I would appreciate some help narrowing down the species on. The first three are from the Upper Ordovician Platteville Group (Mifflin Member I think). 1) A large cephalopod section. 2) What I think is a bivalve steinkern. Not sure if a species can be ascertained. 3) A tiny trilo pygidium. 4) This last one is from the Upper Ordovician Maquoketa Group. My guess is Eochonetes? Any thoughts @Tidgy's Dad? Thanks for any help.

Hi everyone, We recently stumbled across this interesting specimen while combing through some rocks of the Verulam Formation (Upper Ordovician), just north of Manitoulin Island in Ontario. We initially thought trilobite, however we are now unsure, as there are over 30 segments of the thorax and they appear to be curved up towards the cephalon as opposed to down towards the pygidium. Any help is appreciated!

In the Ordovician, Trenton Limestones of Ontario Canada and New York, there are many species of Ceraurus that have been described. Yet, more are found in Canada than in New York. This is most likely due to a lot more collecting in Ontario and shallower environment in Ontario verses deeper water in New York. Some of the related genera like Bufoceraurus and Leviceraurus in Ontario have not been found in NY. It was exciting for me to find this cluster of Ceraurus in New York because they appear to be the same species of C. plattinensis that have been described from Ontario. However, the Ontario/NY C. plattinensis are different than the C. plattinensis that comes from the Decorah in Missouri. They are being looked at and will be described as a new species and deposited in the New York State Museum.

My last excursion to the Decorah Shale was meant to be a collection of specimens for @Tidgy's Dad, who helps me with identifications in this material. Unfortunately, the postage to Morocco has gone up exponentially (hundreds of dollars for a SMALL package) so that he will go empty handed. Here are a few things I am grappling with from that trip and hope to receive some incite from those more knowledgeable than me (so anyone!!). 1. This seems to be a cross section of a coral 3 cm in diameter. The corals frequent to the Decorah Shale are small solitary rugosa coral, having a rust color to them. Have looked for other types of coral and come up empty handed. 2. A hash plate full of crinoidal material. What are the linear objects scattered throughout the plate? Hyoliths or crinoidal? I guess while you are looking at this, any opinions on the owner to the genial spine (lower left)?

I went on a bit of an unusual fossil hunt this morning--in my office closet. I'm getting things packed up for a move next month to Gainesville, FL. We're moving up there from South Florida because I've had my fill of hurricanes (and year-round yardwork). In Gainesville I'll be able to volunteer more with the FLMNH. So I'm slowly repositioning the contents of my house into a growing stack of moving boxes. I got to the bottom corner of my office closet today and found a box that had some childhood memories in them. No favorite stuffed animals, no catcher's mitt and baseball, no cheap trophies for athletic prowess demonstrated. Nope, this was MY childhood and it was slightly (or more so) more eccentric than portrayed in Leave it to Beaver. My childhood contained as many science books as comics or Mad magazines. I had access to my dad's workshop and knew my way around a soldering iron building kits from Heathkit (a reference that will mean little to those of a younger generation). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathkit The box I found in my closet contained my first microscope--a simple little slide scope with a pair of AA batteries in the base for backlighting. It also had part of my childhood rock collection--some pyrite, a piece of green quartzite, an agate, and a heavy chunk of specular hematite (given to me my by 3rd grade teacher who knew I was a science geek). The best "discovery" was my nascent fossil collection. It had my first fossil book (copyright 1962): There were plastic bags filled with little scraps of poor quality fossils. I was living in Chicago at the time so my fossil horizon contained items mostly from the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian. My 3rd grade teacher must have had a summer home up in the upper peninsula of Michigan (the likely source of the chunk of specularite) and she also gave me my first mystery fossil. It's a partial negative cast and I never could quite figure out what it was. I pressed clay into it as a kid to view its positive form and often suspected some form of trilobite. Could never make out any eyes on the end and looking at it now I suspect the "head end" may be some sort of pygidium. Maybe someone here may be able to hazard a guess. Several years ago Tammy and I visited the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in D.C. and of course spent an inordinate amount of time in the paleontology section. When I saw a nice example of a complete (and highly enigmatic) Recepticulites my mind went back to this piece that I found nearly 45 years ago. Most of the fossils that I collected myself were found wherever I had access to either beaches (like Lake Michigan) which had tumbled cobbles containing fossils or from a campground I remember a couple hours west of Chicago that used large rip-rap limestone boulders as erosion control where a road crossed over a large lake. So, in addition to bringing marshmallows for flambéing in the campfire in the evenings, and a fishing pole in attempt to see what types of fishes were hiding beneath the surface of the lake, I also brought a hammer and stone chisel--that's normal, right? I'd clamber around on the rocks looking for evidence of some poor quality fossil poking out here and there. I'd spend much more time than it was really worth freeing gastropod steinkerns, barnacles, crinoid stem segments, and other representative fossils of the time. I was always quite happy when I found find something that was included in my fossil guide book. Fossil books were few and far between in museum book shops and this was long before the ubiquity of the internet and longer before @Cris had the idea for TFF. I'll unpack this box again when we reach Gainesville and look back on my humble beginnings collecting fossils. I may organize some of these into a showbox display and hang it in my office in the new house. Back in the day I told (mostly adults) that I wanted to be a paleontologist when they asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. Not hearing the expected answer of teacher, fireman, or astronaut (this was the era of the space race), the questioner would stare blankly at me till my grandfather or my parents would explain that it is someone who "digs up fossils". It took me a few decades but I've finally been able to travel around and "dig up fossils" if only on a serious avocational level. You'll see some indications that I was trying to be a serious collector back then. I had numbered several of my finds when I had made a potential identification. I had a notebook (long since vanished) where I recorded the collecting information and (probably) identification for my finds. The little adhesive numbered tags were cut from strips of numbered tape used to identify both ends of cables when building racks of switches and relays (back in the day before semiconductors). I have my first specimens of a rugose horn coral, a faint brachiopod, a crinoid segment, and my first worn partial trilobite. I remember some of these fossils and some I've long since forgotten about but the one that was the most surprising to see while picking through my old collection was a reasonable example of a Mazon Creek fern frond. While this is a well known fossil locality here on the forum (and beyond), I was surprised by this as Mazon Creek and its fossil lagerstätte had escaped my awareness till about a decade ago. Tammy and I were visiting the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago with our nieces and we happened upon the great exhibit they have there on Mazon Creek. That was the first time I was conscious of the fact that there was a great place to collect fossils relatively close to where I grew up but that fate and the relative lack of information back in the day had hidden it from me. Had I known about Mazon Creek back in the day and been able to amass a more impressive fossil collection as a kid I might not have chosen computers for a career. Actually, computer programming came natural to me like walking or breathing so computers were likely baked into my fortune cookie of fate and interest in fossils would rekindle later in life as it has. I still have no recollection of how this Mazon Creek concretion came into my possession. I can only assume that I received it as a gift from some adult trying to fan the flames of a passion for fossils. With the possibility of a long-term time-delay fuse this effort seems to have worked. Think about that next time you gift some fossils to a kid who shows interest. Cheers. -Ken P.S.: Tammy thinks I should choose one of these as a last minute entry for the FOTM contest since I (re)found them this month.