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Showing results for tags 'oligocene'.
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Rains started in ernest today, river hunts will probably be on hold until Spring. Hit another site yesterday in hopes of finding some cetacean goodies or anything worthy of packing out. Found a fish nodule, Aturia fragment with nice color, clams and enough glendonite to cover my neighbors driveway.
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- crescent formation lincoln creek formation
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Taxonomy from Fossilworks.org. Diagnosis from Monsch & Bannikov 2012, p. 274: "First and second dorsal fin separated by distance slightly longer than base of first dorsal. Fourteen precaudal vertebrae. Haemal spine 1 comparatively strongly thickened and curved (but not posteriorly hooked, see Weiler 1933, Text-fig. 4). Anal fin with 11–13 rays." References: Pauca, M. (1929) Vorläufige Mitteilung über eine fossile Fischfauna aus den Oligozänschiefern von Suclânesti (Muscel). Acad. Roum. Sect. Sci. Bull. v. 12, p. 112-121. Monsch, Kenneth A. and Bannikov, Alexandre F. (2012) New taxonomic synopses and revision of the scombroid fishes (Scombroidei, Perciformes), including billfishes, from the Cenozoic of territories of the former USSR, Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 102, 253–300, (for 2011).
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References: Danil'chenko, P. G. (1960) Bony fishes of the Maikop deposits of the Caucasus. Trudy Paleontologicheskogo Instituta 78:1-247 Jerzmanska, A. (1968) Ichtyofaune des couches a ménilite (flysch des Karpathes). Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 13(3):379-488
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Hi guys i have these brule fm jaws from sioux county, Nebraska and i was wondering if anyone could confirm if the Id's i have for them are correct, thanks 1.leptomeryx spp. would a species level be possible?
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This June I went hunting the Oligocene White River formation in Wyoming and found two lower Canine jaws. I could us a little help in identifying them. I was thing the second one could be a bear dog. Its a juvenile with new eye teeth starting to erupt but the front of the jaw is missing.
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I am looking for info on a turtle which I have heard called a "helmet turtle". Mine is truly shaped like a helmet--fat and rounded--does not look like a stelemys... ...found in SD. I once saw a similarly shaped one in NE, but it wasn't worth collecting. I just want--at this point--to know if such a thing exists. If I can get affirmative info, I'll send pix. Thank you.
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Hello, everyone, Lately this summer I’ve been doing a bit of casual fossil collecting (with explicit permission!) on some land that a very close family friend owns in Weld County, Colorado that has a lot of exposure of the White River Formation, and I’ve collected a sizable amount of material including some pretty awesome finds. Being an amateur, I need some help identifying some of the fossils I’ve collected. Since the forum has a photo upload limit per post, I’ll be making a few threads for different finds, I hope that is ok. The following are two teeth that I found very near to (but not attached to) a piece of jaw bone. My current hypothesis is that these two teeth are associated with the same jaw. From Weld County, CO. Though hard to tell from the pictures, tooth #1 does have a distinctive ridge at the apex of the crown, though this could just be wear. Tooth #2 appears only to be a fragment, and a small fragment at that, and so may or may not be identifiable unless it turns out they’re from the same animal and the first tooth is identified. #1: #2: Thanks!
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Today I got this mostly complete Subhyracodon skull from the White River formation, South Dakota. Right now it still looks a bit rough since it's been crushed a bit and there's a bunch of sediment stuck all over the place. The specimen has been pretty well stabilised. So it's not very fragile thankfully enough. Almost all the teeth are present. Only one maxillary tooth is gone and the very tip of the premaxilla is gone. The 2 posterior premax teeth are still there, but the anterior ones are gone. Roughly half of the braincase is also missing on the back of the skull. Otherwise the skull is quite complete. Initial unpacking. Starting prep outside After some exploratory prep using dental picks. I will likely start removing much of the bulk of the matrix in areas such as the orbit and nares with powered tools. The different isn't very visible right now since I was mostly working on small areas and further cleaning up areas where bone was already mostly exposed. Stay tuned for more!
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Hey all, I wrote up some more on our recent paper on the giant dolphin Ankylorhiza (formerly Genus Y) from the Oligocene of South Carolina - this is a bit more interesting as it covers the anatomy, adaptations, feeding ecology, and evolutionary implications of the discovery. Hope you can give it a read! https://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2020/08/ankylorhiza-tiedemani-giant-dolphin_9.html
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Hello fossil friends! I'm a bit late getting to this, I've had some personal complications. Late last month I had the absolute pleasure of going on my first fossil hunt! I'm calling on your assistance for some IDs as I'm extremely new to this part of the fossil world. From my research I was hunting in the oligocene/eocene volcanic deposits of the Clarno Formation. Here are some of our finds, curious if any of you recognize these or can point me to some good literature. Unfortunately I have very little knowledge of fossil flora in general. One of our common finds were these robust orange fern pinna, which from my research I believe may be Dioon sp, or saccoloma Gardneri We also found a few of these, which seem to also be fern pinna, they are lighter in coloration and seem to have a higher density of pinnules so I believe it's a different species. Not sure about this one
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Want to read more about the giant dolphin Ankylorhiza (="Genus Y")?
Boesse posted a topic in General Fossil Discussion
Hey all, Since COVID began and I've had more free time I've been getting back to blogging, and now I'm regretting taking such a hiatus since I started here in Charleston. I've written the first of a 2 or 3 part series of semi-technical blog articles that most here should understand and appreciate on our new study on the giant dolphin Ankylorhiza tiedemani (formerly known as Genus Y). The first post is about the background to our paper, and the second one will be a bit more on the anatomy, feeding behavior, locomotion, and evolutionary implications of Ankylorhiza. Take a read here: https://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2020/08/ankylorhiza-tiedemani-giant-dolphin.html
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Heavily weathered nautiloid, Aturia, from the lower Oligocene marine sediments of Washington state. Agatized. Some prep work, too fragile to expose further.
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Enter the Oligocene (Virtual Reality Project) - Phase one is complete !
Brett Breakin' Rocks posted a topic in Members' News & Diversions
Hello Everyone, Now that my time under a --- COVID-19, virtual teaching, selling my house and moving to Colorado --- rock is ending ? I can share the phase one completion of my students' VR project, Enter the Oligocene. This project was a collaboration with Matthew Gibson at The Charleston Museum, Dr. Bobby (Robert) Boessenecker @Boesse and my SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) students. Graduate and Undergraduate students participated in the 'class' and spent a little under 8 weeks to complete the Phase 01 portion of the project. A herculean effort for any artists given the circumstances. On its face the goal was to create a virtual and visual outreach project. A project that takes the fauna specifically from the Charleston area at the time of the Early/Late Oligocene and brings it to life. The star of the show ? ... Bobby's as yet described Genus-Y (now described Ankylorhiza tiedemani ! )would be the hero model and focus of the main display in the encounter. A few references for those not familiar with Bobby Boessenecker or Matthew Gibson's institutions. Mace Brown Museum of Natural History - Bobby Boessenecker - Paleontologist http://geology.cofc.edu/natural-history-museum/ The Charleston Museum - Matthew Gibson - Curator of Natural History https://www.charlestonmuseum.org/ Hopefully this has been posted and shared elsewhere on the forum ! Bobby's newly published skeleton of Ankylorhiza tiedemani and colleagues (Dr. Morgan Churchill, Dr. Emily Buchholtz, Dr. Brian Beatty, and Dr. Jonathan Geisler) Convergent Evolution of Swimming Adaptations in Modern Whales Revealed by a Large Macrophagous Dolphin from the Oligocene of South Carolina https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)30828-9?fbclid=IwAR0DbqXtV_IyFhBTOH6i0263t_fFbctGblBeJilnI_ThNQks9s8LvQ024LU#articleInformation I originally imagined the backdrop for the project as an undersea 'lab' environment attached to a equally impressive museum or display structure. The player can go from the interior of the structure to the flooded exterior of the structure effortlessly. The team focused on various hero elements, one being an Otodus angustidens (my personal favorite) Genus-Y and other billfish, rays and fish common for the time period. Our inspirations were varied but the students did settle upon something more akin to Art Deco for the interior. Here are a few of the initial models/inspirations. A few of the models as Works-In-Progress To Be Continued:
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Hey y'all - we finally re-named "Squalodon" tiedemani, now known as Ankylorhiza tiedemani - a large macropredatory killer whale like dolphin with some implications for the early feeding ecology of odontocetes (toothed/echolocating whales) and convergent evolution of swimming in baleen whales (mysticetes) and odontocetes after their split some ~35-36 million years ago. I've copied our FB post text below so I don't need to re-type it all. Introducing the species formerly known as Genus Y: Ankylorhiza tiedemani! This large dolphin was originally named from a partial but uninformative skull dredged from the Wando River in South Carolina in the 1880s, erroneously placed in the genus Squalodon, and without any age data. Our new skeleton, CCNHM 103, is nearly complete, and demonstrates 1) that it definitely isn’t Squalodon, needing the new genus name Ankylorhiza, and 2) the species is from the Oligocene epoch. The new skeleton was discovered by Mark Havenstein in the ~24 million year old Chandler Bridge Formation near Summerville SC in the mid 1990s. There are two major aspects to this new study, published today in the prestigious journal Current Biology by one of our paleontologists, Dr. Boessenecker, and colleagues (Dr. Morgan Churchill, Dr. Emily Buchholtz, Dr. Brian Beatty, and Dr. Jonathan Geisler). The first and more simple finding is that Ankylorhiza is large and has several adaptations for feeding on large prey: large, thick-rooted teeth, a robust snout, sharp (and occasionally serrated) cutting edges on its teeth, enormous jaw muscles, and a killer whale-like range of neck motion. This evidence all points toward Ankylorhiza being an apex predator, reinvading the niche formerly occupied by predatory basilosaurid whales which died out only 5 million years before the oldest fossils of Ankylorhiza. The second and more surprising aspect is what the skeleton tells us about the evolution of swimming adaptations. Modern baleen whale and echolocating whale skeletons are remarkably similar, and assumed to have remained static since the split between the two groups some 35 million years ago. Indeed, most “whaleontologists” working on early baleen whales and early dolphins are ‘headhunters’ and focus exclusively on skulls. The flipper and vertebrae of Ankylorhiza indicate that many features in modern baleen (mysticetes) and echolocating whales (odontocetes) actually evolved twice, in parallel – we call this convergent evolution. We know this since modern mysticetes and odontocetes share many features– including a remarkably shortened humerus (upper arm bone; still a bit long in Ankylorhiza), lost muscle attachments of the humerus (still present in Ankylorhiza), short blocky finger bones (long/skinny in Ankylorhiza), a narrow tail stock (wide in Ankylorhiza), and more than 23 or so tail vertebrae (fewer than that in Ankylorhiza). These features therefore must have evolved convergently – likely driven by the locking of the elbow joint, forcing the flipper to be used only for steering and all propulsive force to come from the tail. You can read the paper here: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)30828-9 (please email us if you would like a pdf of the paper)
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- ankylorhiza
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What are the characteristics of a White River turtle shell that can differentiate between Stylemys and Gopherus (Testudo)?
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predator/scavenger puncture marks ???? in an Oligocene tortoise carapace
MarcoSr posted a topic in General Fossil Discussion
I was looking closely yesterday at my tortoise (Stylemys nebrascensis from the Oligocene Brule Formation) that I found on my sons’ M&M Ranch in Nebraska that finally made it to my home in Virginia this Saturday. You can check out the two below links which describe finding it and the four year time-frame to get it home to Virginia: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/65393-oligocene-tortoise-from-the-mm-ranch-in-crawford-nebraska/& http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/98983-my-stylemys-nebrascensis-tortoise-from-the-oligocene-brule-formation-of-nebraska/ I could see a number of rounded holes on the carapace. I started to measure the distance between the centers of the holes and determined that there were four pairs of holes with 45mm spacing between centers of three sets of holes and 44mm spacing between centers of the fourth pair. I don’t think that this could be coincidence so I believe that the holes may be puncture marks from the canines of a predator/scavenger. Below are pictures of two sets of holes: Do TFF members think that these are puncture marks from a predator/scavenger? If so, what animal or animals could have made them? I looked at skulls found on my Virginia property from extant mammals like skunks, possums, raccoons, coyotes etc. Most were under 23mm canine spacing. The coyote skull had the largest canine spacing at 40mm. So if the marks on the carapace of my tortoise are from a predator/scavenger it was a decent sized animal. My sons have the skulls of a good number of the predators/scavengers from that Oligocene time period. I’ll have them check the canine spacing. They have 6 or 7 saber cat skulls and I’ll have them check the saber spacing also. Marco Sr.
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Hello everyone! know I've been slacking on updates on my three week trip to Wyoming with PaleoProspectors, but I promise I will post some more of my finds and do a full recap of last week's adventure as soon as I can. As for tonight, I'll share my experience hunting in the white river formation today, A view of where I began my day hunting. My first find: A section of Paleolagus (rabbit) jaw. Next I found a native american artifact After entering a larger area of exposures I came across this Mesohippus (horse) jaw.
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Hi everyone, I've been hesitant to post this fossil on here for a while as I didn't know if I wanted to hear a response which would contradict what I had hoped this would be. However, I recognize that to maintain a reliable and accurate collection I would have to properly identify what I found. The fossil in question is a possible partial egg that I found last year in the White River formation of Wyoming (Late Eocene/Early Oligocene) w/PaleoProspectors. This formation is known to produce fossil bird and reptile eggs (in fact, someone found a large, complete egg on this ranch the week before I was out there) so I knew that there was a possibility. When I found it most of the inside still contained sediment, which I have since gently scraped away to the best of my abilities. It has an odd dent in the top and no obvious pores, but the overall shape and the apparent shell make me think this is an egg. It is 8 mm tall and about 10 mm in diameter. I want to know what you all think. I would especially like to hear the opinions of @CBchiefski @jpc @MarcoSr @Auspex@Troodon Interior of the egg before I cleaned out the matrix. After I scraped away the matrix. Here's two views of the top.
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Lit.: Nel (A.), Gill (G.A.) & Nury (D.), 1987 - Découverte d'empreintes attribuables à des Coelentérés Siphonophores chondrophorides dans l'Oligocène de Provence. Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, sér. 2, t. 305, p. 637-641
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Just for fun A few micros from Kobrow, Germany, U.Oligocene.
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Oreodont Merycoidodon Teeth
JulianoLPD posted a topic in Is It Real? How to Recognize Fossil Fabrications
Hi there, guys. So, I got these from an internet auction. It's the first time I put my hands on this kind of piece. It doesn't "feel" fake or nothing, but I just want to be sure, so I thought I'd better get an expert opinion. What do you think? It's supposed to be Merycoidodon culbertsoni, from the Oligocene of South Dakota Badlands.
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Palaeolagus ('ancient hare') is an extinct genus of lagomorph. Palaeolagus lived in the Oligocene period which was about 33-23 million years ago. The earliest leporids described from the fossil record of North America and Asia date to the upper Eocene some 40 million years ago.
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Merycoidodon ("ruminating teeth") is an extinct genus of herbivorous artiodactyl of the family Merycoidodontidae, more popularly known by the name Oreodon ("hillock teeth"). It was endemic to North America during the Late Eocene to Early Miocene (46—16 mya) existing for approximately 30 million years. Merycoidodon would have somewhat resembled a pig in appearance, but had a longer body, at about 1.4 metres (4.6 ft), and short limbs. The fore limbs had five toes (although the first one was vestigial), while the hind limbs had four. Given the shape of the limbs, it is unlikely that the animals would have been able to run fast. Unlike modern ruminants, they had a full set of teeth, although the molars were adapted for grinding up tough vegetation. Notably, they had strong, and very striking, canines. The skulls of Merycoidodon have a pit in front of the eyes. Similar pits are found in the skulls of modern deer, where they contain a scent gland used for marking territory. Although Merycoidodon was not directly related to deer, it seems likely that it possessed a similar gland, which may imply that it, too, was territorial. Oreodonts lived in large herds and moved about from place to place. They seem to have had a predilection for well-watered regions, where food was plentiful and succulent. The number of fossils found implies that, at one time, oreodonts were as plentiful in South Dakota as zebras are today on the serengeti plains.
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Finally getting around to working on a jigsaw puzzle I found in the White River Fm of Nebraska a couple of years ago. Pretty sure it’s a soft shelled turtle, but I’m not having luck finding anything like it online. The shell is eggshell thin and seems like it was leathery in life. There are a few bones included. Suggestions?
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Now that hockey season has ended and the lab is warm again, and perhaps due to my new found extra time in isolation, I am embarking on documenting my prep projects. I thought I would start the prep season off with something easy that should turn out fairly nice. Please welcome my new little friendly Oreodont, Miniochoerus gracilis. It came into my collection in the summer of 2013 and has sat jacketed in a box until today. This evening I concentrated primarily on consolidation and bulk matrix removal with an ARO, and still have a ways to go. The plan is to prepare the "down" side in the hopes of a beautiful orbit and zygomatic arch. I did notice a cross section of vertebrae on the rear of the block so there is probably some neck attached as well. I'm hoping there is enough matrix below the jaws to make a nice pedestal to sit on as well.
