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Showing results for tags 'mississippian(?)'.
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Yesterday, my folks and I decided to head to Ooltewah to get access to property with Missisipian (I think, don't know the formations there by name) marine fauna. It was only a slightly longer drive than it took to get to Chatsworth or Dalton, being maybe 1000 feet north of the GA-TN border. We parked in a big gravelly lot. The first impressions upon arriving were promising: As I expected, we saw this sign on one of the logs leading into the place: With this, the first order of business was clear: finding the owner to ask permission (as always (couldn't find contact info on the internet)). There was a house that was right next to the parking area, so we tried knocking. Nobody home. We then spotted the sign of a taxidermist that was either the owner or their neighbor. So we walked up the road and then up the taxidermist's driveway to go talk to him, and found him prepping some deer skulls. We explained to him that we had heard that the quarry he was next to was a fossil hotspot according to you guys on the forum. He told us that this wasn't new to him or his uncle, who owned the quarry in question. He called his uncle to tell him about us and was very generous to let us in. Before we started, the uncle showed up in his white truck and we had a nice long conversation, with him telling us about university classes coming through the area to hunt the quarry quite regularly, and that a certain group of people had even discovered a few 300 or so year-old native graves with glass lids. All in all, both were very polite and I recommend getting to know them if you do drop by the area. With permissions out of the way, it was time to get to the good part: the hunt. The area was huge, and in the biggest cliff I saw what looked like 5 distinct formations exposed (names/ages pls?). The uncle told us that the best stuff was at the top of the cliff up a shirt dirt road that led to the top, so after a minute or two of looking at what I believe were concretions, I ventured up the road while my step-grandfather stayed below to search. On my way to the top, I saw what I thought at first were a large industrial screws or bolts that had severely. After I saw a few more, I decided to pick a few up: It was only upon looking at the end of these "bolts" that I realized they were bits of Crinoid stem, and then I picked up the one on the far right (is it a bryozoan? I remember seeing a piece like it on FOTM). After seeing 1, I couldn't help but see what must have been thousands of columnals Covering the ground. There were so many of these columnals that you would've needed to be a ninja to not inadvertently step on some while walking around. After We had collected a good amount of marine material, I explored an area where a darker formation was exposed, but didn't find anything in it.
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