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Greetings all, I thought Id put together a write up on some of our most recent experiences in the Permian exposures around northern Arizona where we live. This is turning into a great project, we are learning more about permian fossils than ever before and have found quite a few new surprises as well. Here is what I have so far: Arizona has a rich sedimentary rock record both in the northern part of the State and south of Tucson. Trilobites, which are only found in Paleozoic aged strata can be found in many of them, although they are rare except in Cambrian rocks. The rarest and hardest to find trilobites are in Permian aged rock. This includes in northern Arizona the Kaibab and the Fort Apache Limestones. But the Fort Apache is a very thin bed in the Supai formation - only tens of feet thick west of Payson, and at a maximum of 100 feet thick in the inaccessible areas on the Fort Apache Indian reservation which is the easternmost exposure. East of Payson, the limestone contains virtually NO fossils. This starts to change around Strawberry north of Payson where very rare gastropods can be found. Finally, the easternmost exposures on Highway 260 just before you top the Mogollon Rim (southern edge of the Colorado Plateau) are the last you will find until a hundred miles to the east on the reservation. Fortunately, there are areas along the High line trail that cut right into the scree slopes of the Fort Apache Limestone outcrops. Here, for the very first time we can find fossiliferous limestones with silicified invertebrates which can be released by treatment in muriatic acid. (about 10% dilution) Very little has been published on the Fort Apache Limestone recently. Up until recently, the best I had was the 1964 paper "Stratigraphy of the Fort Apache Member Supai Formation (Permian) East-Central Arizona" by Thomas Gerrard of the University of Arizona. Although he discusses the stratigraphy and geology at length, very little information on the enclosed fossils is to be had. Fortunately, I was able to get through a very kind fossil forum member a copy of Winters epochical paper from the GSA Memoir 89 - "Supai Formation Permian of Eastern Arizona" written in 1963. (Nothing significant has been written since.) This outstanding 99 page memoir covers not only what is now called the Schnebly Hill formation which is a Sahara type dune complex that brackets the limestone above and below, but a superb treatment of the rare fossils which they found in the Fort Apache Limestone - From the richest 6 areas directly on the Indian reservation. What Winters did was truly inspiring as far as collection and field work. They spent 1947 collecting one ton of limestone from the best localities, and then trucked this huge crate of rock back to the Smithsonian where they spent years acid reducing the rock down to its insoluables! And it took them over a decade to write the Memoir in 1963 on the geology and paleontology of the formations. From that one ton of rock, they obtained a few fragmentary trilobite fossils and many other more common types such as mollusks. And this leads me up to the present. We have brought back so far over a hundred pounds in promising rock in our backpacks, and spent many hours dissolving it in the masonry muriatic to free the specimens. Then three sizes of sieves were used to sort them according to size. Amongst the countless tiny gastropods which dominate the fauna present, two or three trilobite pygidia and many fragments were found in the acid fines. The preservation is key - unlike all the other fossils present which are preserved in a white silica that is fairly opaque, the trilobites are always preserved as casts of a yellow translucent opal like silica, making pieces easier to spot in the sorting trays under the stereo microscopes. You can see this unusual caramel colored preservation here in this set of images from the first 120 pounds of rock we have processed. Winters partial specimens allowed him to get a good approximation of the genus and possibly the species. Below is what a complete pygidium of Anisopyge sp. looks like from the Treatise volume O. So rare are Permian trilobites, only a page is devoted to all of them! 10x microscope shot (field about the size of a dime) of many of the common trilobite fragments found. Winters identifies this trilobite as Anisopyge cf. A. inornata. (cf. is a Latin abbreviation meaning "compares to") In the most recent trip with 60 pounds of rock, this all we got - a few pieces of the outer rim of the pygidium. Most complete specimen so far a nice pygidium with the ribs visible. it is roughly 1 cm tall. The trilobite would have been less than an inch in size. Oblique view same specimen. Another pygidium (tail) still attached to some matrix. The specimens are so delicate, I am afraid to even try to pick them up with tweezers, as they will fall apart. To move them I use a wet toothpick and stick them to the fossils. A glabella (nose) both front lip and top part which fell apart. Here I am at the locality this morning (Sept. 1) looking for promising limestones. Usually, the ones with the most urchin spines on the surface seem to have the best fossils inside! Thanks for looking. Ill be posting a more compete version of this on our paleo web site. The exploration of the Fort Apache LImestones continues!

Greetings all, Another break in our summer monsoon, and last weekend we were out again back at our fossil outcrop in the Permian Fort Apache Limestone east of Payson Az. First, to get you in the right mind set about this formation, a bit of information. While the entire Mogollon Rim area (south side of the huge Colorado Plateau) is all permian both marine and terrestrial, There are several different transgressions of the sea to visit here. The brick red Schnebly Hill formation - which is equivalent to the Supai in the Grand Canyon to some extent - is a huge fossilized Sahara style dune field, composed of non fossiliferous sandstones with huge eolian crossbeds. This is the very same rock which makes Arizona's town of Sedona famous for its red colored buttes. BUT, a narrow band of marine lies in the upper half of this red bed sequence! it is a grey micrite like limestone ranging from about 10 feet thick in Sedona to around 100 feet thick at the type section in Fort Apache on the indian res. Now for the bad news. It is nearly completely non fossiliferous. We have spent years exploring outcrops of this limestone all over the state and come up empty handed. Until now. A few years ago we found an outcrop along the Highline Trail east of Payson which was rich with very tiny fossils. A few selected specimens were placed in the pool acid and we discovered that the limestone dissolved easily and left tons of fine sand and dirt, and some very tiny fossils that were silicified. FInally - our first site with fossils in the Fort Apache! But why were all the fossils missing from everywhere else? We have hoped to collect enough of the material from this site to begin to answer that question. (we have, more on that later...). Todays posting will initially start with one of the smallest of fossil found, the ostracods. We found at least three types picking through over the acid fines from over 60 pounds of limestone. I wont attempt to identify them, that is for an expert on these tiny crustaceans. First lets look at the site, and give you a look at where we collected our material. From the parking lot at the trail head, you can see directly ahead the 20 foot thick layer of Limestone. We are going to an area just below its scree slope. Here I am at the outcrop. Looking closely at a fossiliferous boulder, you can see some of the few larger fossils, productids. The layer is also packed with some urchin material. Looking for promising rocks for tiny fossils, I collected anything that had fossils on the surface. One slab of trace fossils too. It was the only one we found that day. Back home, in the paleo lab we sorted out the prospects for the acid bath. We use 10% muriatic in pails out side and sieves of various sizes to get rid of the loads of dirt mixed in. Also I mention that the limestone is very "fetid". This is a strong petroleum like smell that occurs when you hit the rock with a hammer caused by enclosed organics. Now for some microscope shots. Takes many hours to pick out the specimens from the acid fines! Ostracods, 5x with mm scale. this by far was the most common type we found. They are fully silicified and have an oval or rectangular shape, and a slit on one side for the arms to protrude. This second type of ostracod had a very neat ornament on the shell exterior. Very rare too, we only found half a dozen of them in 60 pounds of rock. Oh my. 15x close up of ostracode #1 Now for a few 30x shots. This is the max for my stereo microscope. The second type is quite interesting at 30x. and TWO stuck together~ Well, thanks for looking, we have more to write on this trip and some of the other micro fossils we found. It is starting to become clear to us that the Fort Apache limestone does indeed have some very tiny fossils to be found. And next write up Ill you why....

Hi all, Here is the LAST report on the truly amazing fossils we have found at the SW (Stevens Way, Ashfork) locality in the Bright Angel Shale, far south of the Grand Canyon. These were listed by us for years as "problematica" or "mystery sponges" and since then, a coordinated effort by the members of the museum (Mesa) and a bit of direction on the literature by Piranha here at this forum has illuminated the dark path to identifying these elusive animals. Never heard of a "Coralomorph"? Neither did we up until this past few months. In fact, we found many Cambrian researchers had not either. I am posting this here so all can see and enjoy yet another amazing Cambrian animal most of us have been unaware of. Only a few localities exist in the US, and a handful in the entire world. First, we have produced a extensive graphics filled write up on my web site here: http://www.schursastrophotography.com/paleo/Fossilfotos-4h.html However, Ill post a few images from this write up here to whet your interest! General field appearance in the green shales on the surface of a coralomorph at 10x: Side view of a fragment of the vase shaped animal laying on its side: 20x view of another surface impression. The bundles of tubes go down into the shale layers several centimeters. 10x side view with calices visible. Coralomorphs are very similar in appearance to a very primitive tabulate coral. But 10x smaller and they have to partitions in the tubes. The fragments are radial pieces of the compete animal. Our first reconstruction of the complete fragments looked like this: Finally, my attempt to show what the animal would have looked like in its live state. They were about the size of a tennis ball for our specimens. Again - Take look at our write up and there are many more images, graphics and information on how we found and finally identified these enigmatic animals. http://www.schursastrophotography.com/paleo/Fossilfotos-4h.html

HI all, As we go through the latest acid fines from fossiliferous limestones from the Permian Fort Apache Formation at our new rich site on the Mogollon Rim, we now have a new specimen which is larger than dozen others we have obtained from this site over the past few years, a whopping 7mm long! The Permian was the very end of the span of these enigmatic fossils, the current thoughts are they were a lophophorate of some sort related to brachiopods and bryozoans. These Tentaculitids (say that three times real fast) are curved which is a bit rare, and etch out as hollow tubes with one end closed. Here the tip is missing, but you can see the general shape. More exciting finds are coming out of the fines, besides super tiny gastropods, we have found many urchin parts and some silicified trilobites as well. Ill keep you updated as we sort through the latest material! 10x microscope shot, mm scale at bottom.

Stopped on the side of the road near the Petrified Forest in Arizona, to see what I could find and can't get over how much this piece seems to resemble muscle tissue, but thought that's gotta be unlikely. I did some quick research and found out there is such a thing, but it seems uncommon. Hoping people here with better eyes might be able to tell me what I am looking at. Help!

I'm helping @0lderthandirt with identifying the fossil Fauna of his land, and while I was looking through things I came across this one that broke in transit. This is from Arizona, red wall limestone,mississipian. I have no clue as to what it is, Any ideas?

Hi all, We do qute a bit of microfossil study of what is usually specimens dissolved out of a limestone matrix. But these were obtained in a most unusual way. There are areas in north eastern Arizona near Show Low that are in the Twowells tongue of the Dakota formation. On one of our recent expeditions, we found a low hill composed not of the usual sandstone and shales, but of limestone. We found on top scored of giant ant hills several feet in diameter. The ants had dug down deep in to the earth and pulled out not only the usual gravels, but quite a few fossils too! We spent hours going over the abandoned ant hills with magnifier and tweezers and even took home bags of the scrapings from the sides for later examination. We found tons of tiny complete sharks teeth, ray/skate teeth, fish bone, black sideritized gastropods and brachs, and some really interesting forams. Tons of them. They look like chains of spheres, and internally they are rolled up like dough in crescent roll. Here is an image with close up camera and a mm scale. I know nothing about forams. Can any one tell me anything at all about these interesting finds?

HI all, Here is the last piece of the trilobites write up from our "SW Site" (Stevens Way, Ashfork, Az.) featuring the interesting pygidiums of the Zacanthoides Walapai trilobites we found in huge abundance in the Bright Angel shale. Ill post a few nice shots here, and at the end a link to the full (monstrous) write up on our paleo web site. Thanks for looking! The most common fossil found in the green shales at our SH locality are trilobite pygidiums for the Zacanthoides Walapai species. They are joined by assorted cranidiums, thorax and rib segments, and hordes of hyolithids, and a very rare coralomorph. Generally low diversity such as this site suggests has been attributed to a stressed environment, with perhaps low food sources, aggressive wave action, or an influx of fresh water from the nearby deltas. This was a shallow sea outbound from the deposits known as the Tapeats Sandstone which marked shore, delta and beach deposits. Combined with the deeper water Muav Limestone, this trio of formations is known as the Tonto Group. All three can be found outside the Grand Canyon to the south in small limited areas such as here, yielding an opportunity to explore the paleo fauna without hiking miles and thousands of feet into the Grand Canyon. A few images that are special: The full write up can be found here: http://www.schursastrophotography.com/paleo/Fossilfotos-4f.html

Hello, Im traveling from Argentina to photograph the national parks in Utah and tge Grand Canyon and petrified national park. Can someone tell me where I can find some fossiles( obviosly out of nat parks), or soneone who can guide us to fossile sites? Thanks.

Permian Marine Fossils at the Fire Break Road on the Rim Permian Kaibab Formation, Fossil Mountain (Gamma) member The Fossil Mountain member of the Permian Kaibab formation (285 million years age) outcrops on the top of the Mogollon Rim (Southern end of the Colorado Plateau) as you top out after a steep climb on Highway 87 north of Payson. As is most of the Kaibab Limestone, it is highly dolomitized and very hard and brittle. Fossils do not survive well the process of dolomitization of limestone, however the larger more robust brachs, mollusks and bryozoans do fairly well. This locality is one of the first fossil sites we ever located over 25 years ago, and we continue to return to explore its riches. Its also a great place to go in the summer, when its hot in Payson and broiling in the Valley. This trip which was on July 14th this year had great weather in the morning, and the Monsoon did not rain until later that afternoon. We came back with a nice batch of Productids, Brachs, Sponges, Bryozoans, Stromotoporoids, trace fossils and raspberries! The location of this site is no secret - Go north on Highway 87 and about half a mile on the left before Highway 260 is the fire break dirt road. Drive 1/4 mile to end and park. Fossils are everywhere. Images of the Site and Fossil in Situ: Up on the Mogollon Rim, at 7200 feet elevation consisted mainly of Ponderosa Pines. There had been a large fire years before, and the ground was mostly barren still. Dawn searches the slopes where the lithology suddenly changed from Productid to Urchin bearing layers: The ground is covered with cherts, and dolomite pieces. This magnesian limestone will not dissolve in acids. Images of Fossils cleaned up - Leucon Hexactanellid Glass Sponges (Actinocoelia Meandrina) - Sponge images are photographed under water for best photographic appearance. Surface texture of a sponge Inside, the patterns in the cherts record the sponges internal details in startling color! Many Productid Brachiopods (Productus sp.) were found at this site, but preservation varied considerably. They ranged in size from an inch up ward to around 4 inches for the monster ones. The most gigantic one Dawn found was base ball sized! She always finds the coolest fossils... Nearly 100% of all productids found had both valves intact. This is the bottom of the brach, which is very flat compared to the top: This was the first time I had ever found these productids with the flat valve missing! You can see the insides of the pedicle valve has muscle attachments scars: Meekella Brachiopod, large and poorly preserved. This was the only one we found: Urchin Material Found at Site: Here is one of the two types of spines found, the tuberculated spines here: The other type of spine found was ribbed on its exterior and were easily degraded by the taphonomy of preservation: Microscope close ups of Fossils - 10x. Rhynoconellid and some bryozoans: Stromotoporoids (A type of flat sponge) - plentiful in the dolomites, and here is a cross section, about 1/4" thick showing internal pillar details: Dawn found that right next to where we parked was filled with wild raspberries. Harvest time! The Author - waiting for Dawn to finish collecting raspberries... While waiting, I wandered down the road and found the BEST urchin material of the day! After washing and scrubbing with nylon brushes to remove dirt and moss, they are laid out to dry: We had a fantastic fossil hunt this last weekend, hope you can get to Arizona some day and check out this site!

Hello everyone, this is my first time posting, I absolutely love this forum. I've decided to register and dive head first. I've recently moved back to Southern Arizona from Florida and I have rekindled my love with rocks, and now fossils, since it would seem I've been finding many of them from all of the ages. Please help me identify this find, it looks carnivorous of some sort, it would be cliche to say it looks like a raptor, but indeed it does. It would be hard for me to believe that this is a fake, since there is also tons of evidence that would point to this being real. (If it is, I'll post more of my finds from the area). I KNOW, I'll get to the point already. I'd just like some real feedback from folks who are more informed and educated in this area than I am. Here it is... and what do you think? Mineralization? Replacement of the softer tissues with minerals? I also have more what look to be different skulls, but some with holes in them and inside you can see bone, which the rock has encased. Found in Southern Arizona. I do apologize for the images being rotated in every direction.

Greetings all, Another big project just completed, our photo survey of nearly every Hyalithid we found at our SW locality near Ashfork Arizona in the lower middle Cambrian Bright Angel shale. Me and my wife have been working on this project for several months now, getting all the specimens cleaned, prepared and photographed. The shale is greenish in color due to glauconite and is fine grained, preserving many of the finest details in the specimens. This contrasts greatly to the southern extension (in Arizona) of the BAS known as the "Abrigo Formation" which leaves much to be desired for the quality of preservation. Fortunately, the age of the BAS is about 5 MY older than the famous Burgess Shale, and many of the faunal elements are identical or very similar. The hyolithids here are "Hyolithes sp." same as the Burgess, but lack the curved extensions known as "Helens" which normally protrude out the sides of the conchs. In fact we looked extensively for these features, but they were not present even in the best preserved specimens. Apparently, not all Hyolithids had them. Here are a few images from this survey, and I would encourage you to take a look at our main web page summary of this study which can be found here: http://www.schursastrophotography.com/paleo/Fossilfotos-4e.html Selected hyolithids images from the survey: Thanks for looking, this was indeed a very illuminating project for us! Glad to share this with all of you!

Could this be some sort of fossilized egg? Or is it just a concretion? Any help in identifying this would be much appreciated. Note: It was found in the Sonoran desert, laying on the surface of the ground in an area that had recently been leveled for house construction.

HI all, Well, we finally got through the last batch of scrapings from the sides of the giant ant hills up east of Show Low in the Cretaceous Twowells Tongue of the Dakota formation. About 2 gallons worth of gravels were gone through, pinch by pinch and the finally tally of micro fossils can now be fully evaluated! In this last posting on this subject, Ill show a few microscope shots at 10x of some of the left over categories of what we pulled out of the tiny gravels brought to the surface by huge red fire ants. Only a few tiny sideritized gastropods were found. They are truly treasures. They are internal casts in the iron mineral siderite, and show a minor fauna in the underlying cretaceous limestones beneath the surface of the hill we were on. Here is a shot of the gastropods. Next, we have sideritized worm burrows. Many segments of these were found, and some of them had pointed ends. And while we spent many hours picking through the gravels with a 5x optivisor in a black gold pan, to alleviate boredom we often pulled out anything else that was interesting, like these awesome clear quartz gravels: Finally, a big surprise - half a dozen extant LAND SNAILS that were ultra tiny showed up in the fines. We did not expect these! Well, thats it for now. Until we get back to that area and find more fossiliferous ant hills where our insect worker fossil friends have pulled out more micro fossils for us, we bid farewell for now on this subject. Thanks for looking, its been fun!

Hi all, Now here's a tough one! As you may know, we have been extensively documenting many of our finds from a new locality in the middle Cambrian Bright Angel shale of northern Arizona, and have found superb preservation on molts of hordes of rare Zacanthoides trilobites. But - besides the hyalithids and occasional inarticulate brach, we find something very peculiar. Both mixed in with the trilobite beds and in a bed all their own about a few inches lower, we find this fossil, best described as "bundles of tubes" in quite an abundance. I have lots of photos we took under magnification, and our guess as to what this may have looked like which Ill post here. We have had a number of professional paleontologists look at these, and they just threw their arms up in the air. So here is what we know at this point after examining hundreds of specimens: 1. We never find solitary tubes 2. 90% of them are preserved upright in life position 3. 10% are found laying on thier sides with the trilobites so they cant be rhizomes or burrows. 4. Length varies from 1 - 3cm and goes through multiple layers of shale vertically. 5. No internal septa, tabulae or partitions, or branching. 6. Some have a tapered profile 7. cross sections are hexagonal in center, round on edges 8. separate tubes are .5 - 1mm dia 9. no sponge spicules seen at any magnification, and no osculum. Ok, so here are some shots with the microscope: 1. Cross sections at 10x 2. Side views paralell to bedding plane 3. Our best interpretation of what the animal may have looked like so far (dont laugh - Im no paleo artist!) Now I dont want to steer you into any conclusions, but our thoughts are a colonial hydrozoan or cnidarian, or some kind of strange holdfast or anchor for an animal. I dont think an algae or sea weed would have polygonal structures like this. Any thoughts on this will be greatly appreciated!

Greetings everyone, Finally finished our write up on the section illustrating images of the thorax components we found of the rare lower middle cambrian trilobite Zacanthoides walapai at our unique site south of the Grand Canyon near Ashfork. Although we wished for more complete specimens, a scan of the literature shows that most finds are very fragmentary on this species, and to be able to illustrate some additional specimens in good detail was sheer pleasure for us! We have found only 3 or 4 other localities outside the Canyon of Bright Angel Shale, and this is the ONLY one with Zacanthoides. Thank you all again for your interest and past comments on our work in the BAS, and we hope to keep posting more images in the future. http://www.schursastrophotography.com/paleo/Fossilfotos-4d.html

One of the most exciting finds in the giant ant hills in the Cretaceous limestones near Show Low was the hordes of tiny sharks teeth. Since I am not an expert on such, we called any flat triangular, round with sharp tip, or curved flat with sharp tip tooth a sharks tooth. Now I want you to try to imagine a bright red fire ant carrying a quarter inch big flat serrated sharks tooth in its big venomous jaws out of its hole and in one mighty thrust - throw it over the sides! These are our tiny fossil seeking robots, and they do a great job at bringing to the surface many types of microfossils that we never found ourselves even in the nearby layers of limestone. Here, Im going to highlight the teeth and show you some of the types we picked out of the slopes of countless gravel and sand grains on the sides of the big 4 foot ant hills. Most of the material was found by first identifying prospective ant hills that were hopefully abandoned that contained plenty of fossils. Then we scraped the sides into gallon bags to take back with us for washing and sorting. Unfortunately, some of the best hills were still shall we say - "active" and when you scraped a bit too hard they would all come rushing out to greet you with gaping biting jaws. There are hazards to micro fossil hunting for sure! Here are the images I took yesterday of the specimens with a 10x binocular microscope by pointing a digital camera into the eyepiece. Ive grouped them according to shape and type roughly, so thank you for looking and glad to share them with this group! The scale on the bottom of each image is in mm.

HI all, Here is the latest installment in this extensive series on the Bright Angel Shale of northern Arizona. We have spent many months taking thousands of images of lower middle cambrian fossils (5my older than the Burgess) and in this new upload we have posted nearly 500 new images of the cephalon and associated parts such as the cranidium, free cheeks, hypostomes, etc. of the trilobite Zacanthoides walapai. This is an extremely primitive trilobite and there are few if any images in the literature on this stunning arthropod. This most certainly is the largest collection of images of this species ever presented. We hope you will enjoy this series as much as we did putting it together. There is so much more to come on this topic. So let the Cambrian excitement begin! http://www.schursastrophotography.com/paleo/Fossilfotos-4c.html

Hi all, As we continue to wash, sieve and go through one teaspoon at a time our gravels from the sides of giant ant hill mounds from the Twowells Tongue of the Dakota, we are finding some very exciting microfossils! As you recall, we found ourselves on the top of a large rounded hilltop a few months back with very rare limestone on its cap. Most sediment from this formation is either a yellow sandstone, or shale. The Ants did all the work - They brought up pieces of material from the depths of the usual stuff, mostly small gravel pieces and sand. But mixed in has been a plethora of microfossils. Besides the tons of giant forams I posted last time, we have hordes of shark and fish teeth. Can you imagine a red fire ant about 1/4" long carrying a perfect fossilized shark tooth out of its burrow? (yes they bite!) Here are some representative of what some us were calling "Ray or Skate teeth". IVe put them under the microscope at 10x and did a dark field illumination. Most are top up and a few bottom up so you can see both sides. They are roughly 2-3mm in size and are a bit oblong. Most are flat topped domed, but many are more pointy and spherical in shape. My thoughts are some sort of pavement crushing shark which ate molluscs? What do you think, I don't have much experience with fish teeth, but we are sure finding some beauties!