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Howdy folks. I had a question about soaking mazon creek nodules before starting the freezing process. I’ve had mine soaking in water for 2 days (prior to the first freeze, will be several more days), and there seems to be oil on the surface of the water. Is this normal, or is it something I should be concerned about? This is my first time doing this, and I just want to make sure I’m doing it right. It is just plain water, I’ve added nothing else to it. Thank you!!!
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This morning I decided to drive the 90 mile round trip to Pit 11 and do a little collecting. I only spent a few hours collecting and it was one of my least productive days ever. I headed past Godley, Illinois and made a right turn on 5000N, heading to the Mazonia South Unit. This below is a picture of the road as you head to the Monster Lake parking area. I park my car on the side of the road versus the parking lot when I am going to climb the tall hills near Monster Lake. The blue dot is where I park. The lake that is right next to the dot is Monster Lake. Here is what the parking lot looks like, I parked there when I was heading to the Tipple area. Here are a couple pictures of a frozen Monster Lake. After parking on the road I headed to the hill. It is very difficult climbing at this time of the year because of the mud and the ice. Even though it has been warmer over the last couple of days, ice still remains in place on the slopes. I use my Estwing stick to help me up these slick slopes. Up on top, I can see 5000N road and my car. Once on top, the area it totally overgrown (see below) and this is the only time of the year I will collect up here, it is too hard to see and navigate in the Summer. I do use a little rake that I cut down to 18” to move some leave. If you put the time in and you know the shape / color of the concretions, they can be found here. The below pics show concretions as I found them. A crack open half of an Essexella asherae Jellyfish. This was probably opened by a collector a 30+ years ago, when no one cared about the Jellyfish. A nice little Pecten clam, I only found the one half. After I collected this hill, I moved my car to the parking lot and then crossed the street and made the long trip to the Tipple Hill. Tipple Hill was alway a favorite of collectors and some great stuff came from that location. Here is the chain that you have to walk around to get to the hill. I travel light into this area, and I only bring a plastic bag for concretions. Back in the 80’s and 90’s, a couple of doctors from Chicago use to lease this are from Commonwealth Edison and the had a similar mobile home that they would use during hunting season. Sometimes they would open the chain so we could drive up to the Tipple area. hThe road keeps going. There use to be a short cut to the right, but that has since overgrown. Here are pictures of Tipple Hill, it always has a sulfur smell to it. They put this fenced in area about 30 years ago, no one really knew what it was for, but it did expose concretions then and still today. I don’t find much Flora at the Tipple, but on occasion I do. This look like a worn Annularia. There is a lot of petrified wood at the Tipple, I believe most suffering from pyrite disease, but I still pick some up for the ESCONI Braceville trip. A lot of coal is also found here. Even though I did not find a lot of concretions or opened fossils, it was still a nice day.
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From the album: Mark's Mazon Creek Fossils
BOTH HALVES SIDERITE CONCRETION, SPLIT BY FREEZE/THAW METHOD & LIGHT HAMMER BLOW. SPECIMEN 98mm X 25mm (3-7/8" x 1").-
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- francis creek shale
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From the album: Mark's Mazon Creek Fossils
BOTH HALVES SIDERITE CONCRETION, SPLIT BY FREEZE/THAW METHOD. SPECIMEN 97mm X 32mm (3-13/16" x 1-1/4").-
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From the album: Mark's Mazon Creek Fossils
BOTH HALVES SIDERITE CONCRETION, SPLIT BY FREEZE/THAW METHOD. SPECIMEN 67mm X 25mm (2-5/8" x 1"). BOTH HALVES BROKEN AND GLUED.-
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From the album: Mark's Mazon Creek Fossils
BOTH HALVES SIDERITE CONCRETION, SPLIT BY FREEZE/THAW METHOD. SPECIMEN 67mm X 11mm (2-5/8" x 7/16").-
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From the album: Mark's Mazon Creek Fossils
BOTH HALVES SIDERITE CONCRETION, SPLIT BY FREEZE/THAW METHOD. SPECIMEN 62mm X 27mm (2-7/16" x 1-1/16").-
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Calling on the usual suspects, @stats @deutscheben @bigred97 @Nimravis @fiddlehead @flipper559 @connorp @RCFossils , to either confirm or refute my meager guesses at ID on these ferns. Thank you all in advance -- I truly appreciate your help. And of course, I'll consider what any others think as well. Thank you.
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Tomorrow (March 1st) is opening day for fossil hunting at Mazonia-Braidwood State Fish and Wildlife Area, also known as Pit 11 to Mazon Creek collectors. The weather has been on an excellent trend running up to now, with many days over the next week predicted to have highs in the 50s and even 60s, although a few days do have rain predicted as well (and things may already be muddy as the soil thaws too). Who is planning on heading out this week to kick off the season? I will be taking tomorrow off work to be there on opening day. I missed out on the 2021 season entirely, and actually haven't been to the park since March of 2020- my last trip there was one of my last activities before COVID hit. With any luck I will be able to make at least a couple of trips this year. With the warmer weather, be sure to watch out for ticks, and with potentially muddy conditions drive carefully- I have seen vehicles get stuck in the past. Finally, it's always a good idea to have your copy of the fossil collecting permit, either picked up outside the park office or printed from online: https://www2.illinois.gov/dnr/Parks/Activity/Documents/MZB_FossilPermit.pdf Best of luck to everyone and I hope to see some of you out there in the park! Please feel free to share your finds and reports in this thread as well.
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I came back across this fossil after taking another look through my Mazon creek collection. It looks like some type of creature with a preserved trail? I had previously missed it, thinking it was part of plant material that it is associated with.
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- mazon creek
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In this post I am going to show you a couple examples of fish related fossils that are found at Mazon Creek. Many of these are my finds and many are from my fossil mentor. The pics are zoomed up, I apologize for that, but I mounted my fossils (pairs) on white cardboard, so I do not want to pull them off and have to reattach them. First up is a lamprey - Mayomyzon pieckoensis. This lamprey was collected at Pit 11. Next up are a 3 examples of the Jawless fish- Gilpichthys greenei . These fish were found at Pit 11. Now I do not know if these names are still acceptable, but when I first started they were. These fish were found at Pit 11. Acanthodes marshi Acanthodes beecheri Here is a nice paleoniscoid that was found at Pit 11 and was ID’d by Dr. Dave Bardack, I believe the correct name is - Elonichthys peltigerus. This is a Rhabdoderma exiguum - Coelacanth. This fossil was found at Pit 4, in the area that I always called “Across From Pit 4”-(AFP4). Here is another nice Coelacanth- Rhabdoderma exiguum with a little coprolite. This piece was found at Pit 11 and I acquired it last year in a collection that I purchased. Here is another example- Now here is an odd one, it is called a Pipiscius zangerli. Many older collectors called it the “Push me- Pull me fish”. This second pic shows what should be the mouth. Now I know they are not classifying these as larval lungfish as they did when I first started, but I wanted to show a couple anyways. Here is Esconichthys apopyris. The first example shows multiple individuals. The next 3 are individuals. With this example you can see why collectors call them “ Ghosts”. This next piece was identified by Dr. Bardack as a fish head, but unknown species. This was found at Pit 11. This next piece I had brought with me to one of the Mazon Creek Open Houses at Northeastern and showed it to Dr. Bardack. He identified this as Acanthodian fish scales. This piece was found at Pit 11. Here are a few nice fish scales found at Pit 4 (AFP4). Here is a piece that I have identified as an Orthacanthus sp. tooth. This piece was found at Pit 4 (AFP4). Here are a couple Palaeoxyris. These pieces were found at Pit 4 (AFP4). Now these next pieces, all found at Pit 11, are described as either fish or amphibian eggs cases, either way they are very cool fossils. Mazonomaya helmichnus. This last piece is a spiral shark coprolite, not my best example, but one that I just came across. I also could not locate my Vertebrate Fossil of the Month find to post. Again these are some examples, I hope you enjoy them.
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From the album: Mark's Mazon Creek Fossils
BOTH HALVES SIDERITE CONCRETION, SPLIT BY HAMMER BLOW. CONVEX HALF BROKEN IN TWO & LEFT AND LEFT SEPARATED TO SHOW DEPTH OF SPCIMEN. SPECIMEN 30mm X 20mm X 15mm (1-3/16" x 13/16" x 5/8").-
- ne illinois
- pennsylvanian
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From the album: Mark's Mazon Creek Fossils
BOTH HALVES SIDERITE CONCRETION, SPLIT BY FREEZE/THAW METHOD & LIGHT HAMMER BLOW. SPECIMEN 100mm X 25mm (3-15/16" x 1").-
- ne illinois
- pennsylvanian
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From the album: Mark's Mazon Creek Fossils
BOTH HALVES SIDERITE CONCRETION, SPLIT BY FREEZE/THAW METHOD & HAMMER BLOW. SPECIMEN 55mm X 10mm (2-3/16" x 3/8"). BOTH HALVES BROKEN & GLUED.-
- ne illinois
- pennsylvanian
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From the album: Mark's Mazon Creek Fossils
BOTH HALVES SIDERITE CONCRETION, SPLIT BY FREEZE/THAW METHOD & LIGHT HAMMER BLOW. SPECIMEN 54mm X 11mm. (2-1/8" x 7/16").-
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- pennsylvanian
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From the album: Mark's Mazon Creek Fossils
BOTH HALVES SIDERITE CONCRETION, SPLIT BY FREEZE/THAW METHOD. SPECIMEN 40mm X 25mm. (1-9/16" x 1")-
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- francis creek shale
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Old Strip Mining Pictures of Pit 11 (Mazon Creek)
Nimravis posted a topic in General Fossil Discussion
For you viewing pleasure, here are a couple pictures that I took at a friends house showing the Pit 11 area and the type of machines used.- 4 replies
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H0020 Macroneuropteris scheuchzeri terminal pinnules
Mark Kmiecik posted a gallery image in Member Collections
From the album: Mark's Mazon Creek Fossils
BOTH HALVES SIDERITE CONCRETION, SPLIT BY FREEZE/THAW METHOD & LIGHT HAMMER BLOW. SPECIMEN 40mm x 20mm (1-11/16" x 7/8").-
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- pennsylvanian
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From the album: Mark's Mazon Creek Fossils
BOTH HALVES SIDERITE CONCRETION, SPLIT BY FREEZE/THAW METHOD. SPECIMEN 65mm X 20mm (1-9/16" x 13/16").-
- ne illinois
- pennsylvanian
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From the album: Mark's Mazon Creek Fossils
CONVEX HALF SIDERITE CONCRETION, SPLIT BY FREEZE/THAW METHOD, CONCAVE HALF CRUMBLED BEYOND REPAIR. SPECIMEN 64mm X 24mm (2-1/2" x 15/16").-
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- pennsylvanian
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E0067 Macroneuropteris scheuchzeri, 2 basal pinnules
Mark Kmiecik posted a gallery image in Member Collections
From the album: Mark's Mazon Creek Fossils
BOTH HALVES SIDERITE CONCRETION, SPLIT BY FREEZE/THAW METHOD. SPECIMEN 29mm X 20mm(1-1/8" x 13/16"). CONCAVE HALF GLUED.-
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- pennsylvanian
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From the album: Mark's Mazon Creek Fossils
BOTH HALVES SIDERITE CONCRETION, SPLIT BY HAMMER BLOW, PARTIALLY SHATTERED. SPECIMEN APPROXIMATELY 50mm (2") IN DIAMETER. DISTINGUISHABLE FRAGMENTS GLUED BACK TO ORIGINAL POSITION. EXTENSIVE ACETIC ACID BATH & DENTAL PICK PREP.-
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A couple of head scratchers and three that I would have called Pecopteris in the past. Calling on the usual MC gang @stats @deutscheben @bigred97 @Nimravis @fiddlehead @flipper559 @connorp @RCFossils and anyone else who would care to take a stab at ID.
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- ferns
- coprolite plus
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I'm stumped on this one. Unfortunately it is not very well defined, but it seems like something interesting... I haven't found anything similar before. Any thoughts are appreciated. @stats @deutscheben @bigred97 @Nimravis @Mark Kmiecik @fiddlehead @flipper559
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I know that some fossils from Morocco are composites, but that also occurs sometimes when it comes to the Tullimonstrum gregarium (Tully Monster) from Mazon Creek. The only difference with the Tully Monster composites is that they are easily recognizable. Here is a nice 7” example of what I am talking about. With this piece, the added part is the tail, and I think that you would agree that it is a pretty close match. The scale cube is 1 cm. The neck portion, though the jaw is not visible. Transverse bar with the two black eyes. The tail-
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- 7
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- composite
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