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Showing results for tags 'Tennessee'.
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I apologize in advance for the photo quality, and the fact that I did not have a ruler with me when I took the pics. I see these things EVERYWHERE. The ones pictured here are large (6-8”, 15-20cm), in limestone slabs. But I see them in smaller sizes, in rocks that I pick up. The rocks often have recognizable fossils in them, too: cephalopods, brachiopods, crinoids, bryozoans. I am thinking maybe these are internal structures, perhaps of brachiopods? I’m starting to think I am crazy…
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Hi Everyone, Last month I took a trip from New York to Elizabethtown, Kentucky to attend my parents' 70th anniversary. My sister and her husband, two of her adult children, and my parents, both in their 90s have all resettled there. I try to visit them at least once per year, but my parents' 70th wedding anniversary could not be missed. It is a very long trip from the suburbs of New York City to E-Town and a stop along the way was the sensible thing to do, so I spent the night in Harrison, Ohio near the border with Indiana and only 15 minutes from St. Leon, the well known Ordovician roadcut. I've been there twice before. It is a huge outcrop, fossiliferous from top to bottom, with plenty to explore. With even a full day it is impossible to do justice to the site. As it was, I spent a half day. Most of you I'm guessing have been to or seen pictures of the roadcut. Here's a couple anyway:
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I have 11 specimens of this, and all of them are incomplete. I am posting an example that shows the salient features that apply to all. This is from the lower Devonian Birdsong Shale member of the Ross formation in Parsons, Tennessee. All specimens are 30~50 mm ovals consisting of growth rings only, and any hinge area is missing from all. The rings have no radial features or ornamentation. They are very shallowly concave and seemingly have no prominent apex The growth rings center from what appears to be a muscle scar, and the outer ring is always slightly thicker and wider. The shell is quite thin at about 1 mm. I can post other photos, but this one has all the key features that are perplexing me.
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My husband and I went hiking today, and I started looking at rocks, and I think every single one had fossils in it! Many of them had a similar shape, which I see quite a bit around here. I have no idea what it is, though, maybe the inside of a brachiopod? Maybe a cross-section of coral? Thanks for any answers.
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Hello, I'm a novice hunter and need help identifying two specimens.
Robert Mahorney posted a topic in Fossil ID
Hello, I'm a novice hunter and need help identifying two specimens. Thanks for any info u can give found 40 miles north of cookville tn. Thanks
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The Devonian period is known as "The Age of Fish", but could also be known as "The Age of Brachiopods." In the Early / Lower Devonian, brachiopods reached the height of their diversity towards its end in the Emsian. We see the ancestral groups occurring, lingulids, craniids, orthids, protorthids, pentamerids, rhynchonellids and strophomenids, as well as the later successful groups we have seen before such as atrypids, athyrids and orthotetids, plus the rise of spiriferids, spiriferinids and productids and the beginning of the terebratulids. By the end of the Devonian , several of these groups are extinct or severely reduced in importance and brachiopods never quite recover. Also, the Devonian is the last time we see trilobites with such variation, large sizes and numbers and orthocerids too are much more uncommon after the rise of the goniatites. The massive tabulate coral reefs also disappear after the Devonian. Fascinating period and I hope to share some of its wonders with you. Equally, a lot of this is rather new to me, so I would be very grateful for any assistance, corrections or further information on my specimens. Thank you. The Early Devonian epoch is split into three stages, so let's start with the first of those, the Lochkovian, that began about 419 mya and finished roughly 411 mya. I have been sent a nice selection of brachiopods from the Kalkberg Formation, Helderberg Group by the Mighty @Misha, mostly. But the kind gentleperson also sent me this fascinating little bryozoan hash : It is dominated by fenestellids, which is usually the case in the Devonian, but other orders sill occur. These ones, I think, are Fenestella, but there are so many species in the formation that I wont take a guess as to species : Not sure what this one is ;
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The thread http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/84678-adams-silurian/ was getting rather enormous, so I have decided to leave that one to deal with the Llandovery and Wenlock and put my specimens from the Late / Upper Silurian here, though I don't have a great deal of material from the Ludlow and Pridoli yet. However, I do still have some jolly nice specimens to show off here. Here are my other collection threads for the Cambrian and Ordovician ; http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/78887-adams-cambrian/&tab=comments#comment-832018 and : http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/78974-adams-ordovician/&tab=comments#comment-832912 In the mid 1980's, on the way home from one of my annual visits to the Hay-on-Wye second-hand bookshops, I managed to persuade my girlfriend at the time to take a bit of a detour and stop off at a roadcuttting just outside Aymestrey,, Herefordshire in the Welsh Borderlands. The rock here is the Aymestry (sic) Limestone Formation, part of the Upper Bringewood Beds and is Gorstian, Lower Ludlow in age, so about 426 mya and a little younger than the Much Wenlock Shale Formation. Many species of coral, trilobites and brachiopods found in the formation are the same as those found at Dudley, but the bed is noted for its massive numbers of the brachiopod Kirkidium knighti (was K. knightii),a lovely, large pentamerid. In fact, during my hour or so searching, I found almost nothing but this species, the only exception being a couple of Atrypa reticularis. The problem was that this limestone is thick and seriously hard, even the broken bits are generally huge, but I managed to obtain half a dozen reasonable specimens and about the same number of fragments. Over the years I have traded, given away or sold them, so that now I only have the best one left. Here is Kirkidium knighti : It's a shame the tip of the beak is broken off : I make index cards for all my fossils, this is the one I made for the specimens at the time, back in the mid 1980's : And today's version : There was a minor extinction between the Wenlock and the Ludlow, known as the Mulde event and it is often said to have primarily effected graptolites and conodonts, but it seems to me it had a massive impact on the bryozoan faunas of the time too. Gone are the varied stony stick and mound trepostomes that made up such an integral part of many faunas from the Middle Ordovician through to the Middle Silurian and even cystoporid groups such as the Constellariidae became extinct at this time. Trepostomes and cystoporids did survive until the end of the Triassic, but were never as important again, the bryozoan faunas would start to become dominated by fenestrids in the Devonian, though they reached their peak of diversity and distribution in the Carboniferous. I will look closely at my limited number of rocks, but I don't think I have a single Late Silurian bryozoan. I know our friend @Mainefossils studies the Late Silurian Leighton Formation in microscopic detail, but I can't recall him posting any bryozoans. Are there any, Asher, old chap? Interesting.
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My grandson found this walking the shore line at Pickwick Lake. Hoping for help identifying it to spur more interest in him to start a new hobby.
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I found this on a river bank in rogersville TN. A place where I usually find a lot of Native American artifacts this particular object has me baffled. I don’t even know where to begin on how to identify it through a quick simple google search. How would one describe this odd-ness? Anyways, im not at all knowledgeable in the fossil department so here I am hoping someone else can help me identify this thing. thank you in advance!! I must add that it feels hard, not rock hard, but more plastic hard but feels like a bone material or shell like material.
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I purchased this from a man who said it was found on a mountaintop in Tennessee. I have no other information about it at all. Does anyone have any idea what it might be?
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Paleozoic Adventures in Kentucky and Tennessee October 2021
Jeffrey P posted a topic in Fossil Hunting Trips
Hi Everyone, In the latter half of last month I took a two week trip to Kentucky and Tennessee. My sister, her husband, two of her adult children, and my parents all live in the Elizabethtown/Louisville area and I was able to spend some quality time with them. Fossil collecting was also part of my agenda. Herb, my primary fossil collecting partner in Kentucky and I had a three day trip down to Tennessee planned. Before I went on that expedition, I was out with my brother-in-law driving around central Kentucky. He dropped me off for 20 minutes at the Upper Mississippian site at Wax where the Glen Dean Formation is exposed in a roadcut. I picked these up:
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I found this bone in a creek bed in middle Tennessee very shortly after a large flood exposed new sediment. I know that that are of Tennessee was once a seafloor so it is likely marine. Any help is appreciated.
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I had the opportunity to visit another Silurian site in the northern Georgia/southern Tennessee area. This is now the third such site I've visited, but the first in the Rockwood Formation as opposed to the Red Mountain Formation. As far as I can tell there's very little different between the two lithologically and paleontologically, with the Rockwood and Red Mountain occupying pretty much the same stratigraphic position. The difference seems to be that the TGS prefers to use the term "Rockwood" to describe it's Niagaran Silurian system and the GGS and AGS prefer the term "Red Mountain", mostly because the unit is more differentiable in Tennessee whereas in southern NW Georgia and Alabama it is less differentiable. However, the GGS does use the term Rockwood in some of it's reports, and there are some lithological differences between the more southerly and easterly exposures and the more northerly and westerly ones (most notably in the thickness of the hematite beds), so I'm going with Rockwood Formation for these specimens. I had some difficulty in telling the age of the rocks at first. The geologic map I was using wasn't very accurate, and had both the Rockwood Formation and some upper Ordovician units within close proximity to each other. As you'll see with some of the fossils, there are some forms more associated with the Ordovician, such as Isotelus and Vinlandostrophia (Platystrophia), but at the same time I couldn't help but notice there were some similar characteristics between this fauna and the Rose Hill Formation, such as the calymenid molt fragments, and prevalence of Leptaena, which I did not find in the nearby upper Ordovician rocks (not to say it doesn't occur in the Ordovician, just that I didn't find it). Combined with the presence of Eospirifer and the thin beds of iron-rich sandstone and ferruginous limestone, this site is most likely in the Silurian Rockwood Formation. However, in my opinion, it appears to host an earlier, transitionary fauna than the Rose Hill. The collecting itself was pretty easy. The weather was nice, the site not too hard to explore, and the fossils easily extracted from the rock. Most of the exposure was unfossiliferous, however every now and then I'd come across a little part where there'd be a densely packed assemblage, with some loose specimens scattered about. The shale and thin limestone were the most fossiliferous. The first up are some of the brachiopods. A couple of different species it looks like, both tentatively of the genus Dalmanella sp. The report I'm basing this on is pretty old so that name probably no longer applies, however. These are pretty good examples of the more Ordovician forms present at this site. Although Vinlandostrophia (Platystrophia) sp. does occur in the Silurian as late as the Waldron Shale, it is definitely more common in the Ordovician, where V. ponderosa forms veritable coquinas in the upper Leipers Formation. It's a bit hard to see in the bottom one, but it does have a sulcus, unlike most of the Dalmanella sp. present. A few Leptaena sp. Although it is known from the upper Ordovician, I have not found it in the Ordovician rocks nearby and have found several in the Silurian Rose Hill Formation. It is interesting to note that there are such similarities between the two early Silurian fauna across such distances. One characteristic I quickly noticed was that a lot of the specimens in this area occur as loose shells, whereas in Maryland and Pennsylvania they're often internal molds wedged in rock. It makes for easier collecting, and more photogenic fossils! I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is Dalmanella elegantula(?) Pretty good preservation on this one, but I'm not quite sure about it's ID. Maybe some kind of Chonetes (?) sp. Eospirifer sp. with crystalline preservation.
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I have these few pieces of coral I need help identifying. They were all found in middle Tennessee. They were all found in the same place and their formation is part of the stones river group. I also have this weird little guy from Tennessee that my dad found on a roof.
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Hello. This is my first post. I have little experience in fossils except perhaps an eye to notice they're not quite a rock. I "think" this is a fossil tooth. Found in Tennessee, USA, Mid-Ordovician area in general; at approx 1,100 altitude in the dry portion of a chronically drought stricken river. Partially mineralized and lying where 100-200+ old trees are. Their roots are exposed; fossil wood can't be ruled out. I appreciate your thoughts. I'm a professional rock hound of 10 years with 60 years of accumulated knowledge. Science has sheets fascinated me; geology is involved in my life's work at this time. But I can't validate this! I'm currently cleaning it to remove some of the calcite-concrete. It bubbles a little in a vinegar solution, but not much. Thank you in advance!
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Looking to see if anyone can tell me what I found. Big 1 looks to be solid quartz. The 2 small ones are as big as a finger.
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What kind of gastropod is this? Found in east Tennessee?
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Cephalopod fossils in matrix found in Sumner county Tennessee.
Robert Mahorney posted a topic in Fossil ID
Can anyone identify? Spyroceras maybe?
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I believe might be a coral or sponge of some sort any ideas?
Robert Mahorney posted a topic in Fossil ID
I believe might be a coral or sponge of some sort any ideas? Found around smithville Tennessee
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I really almost dismissed it as a rock but second guessing. Could this be a shark tooth possibly? It was found along with crinoids and horn corals in a creek in Nashville area Tennessee
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Hello, I recently found what I believe to be a fragment of an ammonite in some fossil rich dirt. It was found in middle Tennessee not too far from a creek. Thanks
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Brachiopods orthoceras crinoids all found right here in Hendersonville TN Sumner county just north of Nashville. Love to fossil hunt and see what I can find while imagining worlds of the past.
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Found this while hunting geodes in TN. Any thoughts?
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