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Hi everyone! I'm new to this site (signed-up-5-mins-ago new, lol), and I have a question. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture, because I wasn't thinking and sent it to school with my daughter, who is studying fossils in class. Anyway, my husband and I took our daughter fossil-hunting on a trail in Frostburg, MD (Allegany Co.). As a kid, I used to go through shale piles at my grandpa's farm and occasionally run across a fern fossil, and since this particular trail (down from the train depot, Allegany Highland trail, perhaps?) has lots of shale on the sides, I thought it would be a good place to look. Without much luck, we dug through fallen piles of the black shale. I finally stumbled across a piece of shale (right as I was ready to give up, lol!) that had an imprint that I'd never found before. The only way I can describe it is that it looked like a bunch of vertical lines, very even, and the prints (two side by side) were about 2-3 inches wide. I looked it up online, and the pictures of calamite fossils looked identical as far as I could tell. The question posed to you all, after all the long-winded explanations, is: Is it possible to find calamite fossils in Western MD? None of the websites I visited specifically stated what I would be able to find in Western MD, and I'd like to have a name to put to the fossil. After she's done showing it to her class, I will try to take a photo. For now, if anyone can confirm/deny/offer any other suggestion as to what I have found, I'd be so darn grateful! Thanks!, MissusTodd

Some pics of a few local finds.

This is Washington, PA dunkard group. I am starting with one and will be adding pics of other plant material to this same post. I have a couple.... #1 (the piece I found is a fairly large size... Let me know if additional pic would help)

Found a couple things in some river or lake rocks today. Found calamite before and thinking this is possibly a somewhat worn piece? Thanks in advance!

Pittsburgh PA. I need to get a better camera.... The nodule (?) has a vein like pattern in it, and the other an area of perfectly straight lines. Hope pics are good enough to maybe ID. Also not sure if the second one is just an imprint.... Thought? http://www.thefossilforum.com/public/style_emoticons/#EMO_DIR#/smile.png

We collected these Neuropteris fern leaves and stems, and Annularia (Calamite tree) leaves at McIntyre Mountain in June 2012. This site is at the very top of the mountain, where the coal pits have been reclaimed and converted to a forested park. The veins of the leaves show up very clearly in the closeup photos.

In June we were collecting neuropteris fern impressions from the shale spoils at the top of McIntyre Mountain (on our first fossil trip) and we discovered this plant fossil which is more "plant-like" - definitely not neuropteris and doesn't look much like a fern but has a distinctive pattern. UPDATE: The consensus is that this is Annularia, the leaves of the calamite tree. Probably Pennsylvanian.