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I found this fish scale in the lighter grey layers of Granton Quarry. It is about 1 cm in length, and seems to be rather characteristic, so I am hopeful of a ID. Lockatong Fm Granton Quarry, North Bergen, New Jersey Upper Triassic Thanks.

Hey all, I am really interested in finding some of the southeastern PA track fossils. I realize it is a huge stretch to ask for a locality but figure it is worth a shot to see if anyone wants to share information over PMs regarding locations or other useful information on this area. Thanks in advance!

Last month my dad and I ventured to the site of the former Granton Quarry in hopes of adding some nice Late Triassic fossils to my collection. We only stayed for an hour and a half because there isn't much there anymore. Much of the fossiliferous layer has been carved out by collectors. One spot looked as if someone just scooped out all of the rock. We were quite fortunate to find a spot that had been missed or had only recently been exposed. We came close on two occasions to finding a complete Diplurus newarki, but no luck this time around. That will just have to wait until our next trip! Here are some of my favorite finds: Some conchostracans (Estheria ovata) Several plates just covered in assorted bones and scales - I love the white/blue hue to these! First of the shamers. This fish is potentially complete, but when I tried to remove the last chip to see how well preserved the head is, the rock began to separate, so I just left it as is. For what it is worth, it is two-thirds of a Diplurus newarki, and two-thirds of a coelacanth is better than none! Here is the other one. This piece split off unevenly from a larger block - as often happens at Granton Quarry - exposing two heads of Diplurus newarki. One of the heads is incredibly well preserved and was likely part of a complete fish that was broken in half when the rock split. It is still a pretty cool find!

We finally had a warm spring day - 80 degrees - so I spent a couple of hours at a Lockatong (Triassic) site (southeastern Pennsylvania). The only discovery I made that is worth sharing is this large rock with an interesting pattern - it's more than a meter long. You can judge the size by the glove I placed next to the specimen. Also, there was a diagonal shadow across the rock that I lightened a bit with Photoshop. Any ideas what this might be?

Triassic - Lockatong Formation - Montgomery County - Pennsylvania This is another piece I collected March 2 at the Triassic Lockatong site I was exploring. The rock is a totally different color and the black marks on the pinkish rock are interesting but seem to be too indistinct to be fossils. My impression is that these are simply mineralizations and traces but since I've never seen these before I'm posting them here. These are natural light photos that show the pink substrate: These were taken with incandescent light: In technology innovation (which is my profession) we talk about "weak signals" indicating trends and innovations that are just beginning to appear. My few Triassic visits have been focused on some very fossil-poor Triassic formations that run like thin ribbons through Montgomery and Chester County, PA. I keep wanting to return to our fossil-rich Devonian and Carboniferous sites that are 1 to 2 hours away but the proximity of these sites (10-15 minutes from our home) makes it easy to spend an hour or two exploring. The trace fossils and few fish scales that turned up so far suggest that something more meaningful will eventually appear. This weekend Nan and I also found a very large flat rock with what appear to be lizard tracks but they were eroded into round circles - arranged in track patterns, and one has a sharp toenail type point - not worth collecting but another weak signal that keeps drawing us back to these sparse Triassic formations...

Triassic Lockatong - Plant or Root Fragments? Saturday I spent 2 hours looking over a Lockatong formation (Triassic) in Montgomery County, PA. I'm sort of testing my ability to spot some fossil patterns in this formation where fossils are very scarce. I found this interesting piece with lots of organic fossils and impressions - assume they are plant fossils. It's so difficult to find Lockatong fossils in PA, anything we find is interesting. I've included a piece of the large rock (about 10 inches) and several closeups. These look to me like some sort of vine-like plant stems with rootlets and also cross-sections of stems. Also on Saturday, Nan and I visited a second nearby Lockatong site and saw what appear to be reptile tracks on a piece of rock about 4 or 5 feet long - although the impressions were round and not track shaped except for one of the round impressions had a thin pointed tip. We did not photograph or collect this, mostly admired it and count it as a "weak signal" that there are better fossils to be found.

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.

Happly Holidays to everyone and all the best for 2013... Here's a trace fossil from our last Fall fossil trip - Lockatong - Triassic - not sure what this pattern represents. The rock is about 1 foot wide. Here are some additional photos including a shot of the full rock, and some angles that show the thickness of the trace material and may give some clues to the consistency, etc. The opinions on what this might be are very interesting - as for me, I have absolutely no clue...