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  1. Too lazy to translate it myself, I just put the finished pdf through the google translator : Fossilien_2023_21052023_E.pdf Some, but not all, formating is lost, though. And its just one page of text besides three pages of pics. No worries about the detailed site map, as we already know, nobody cares about rudists . Here is the link to the original, German version, for our German speaking members : Fossilien_2023_21052023 (pdf, 3.4 MB, personal homepage) Here are the original pics: Have fun ! Franz Bernhard
  2. I would like to share a typical "day off & out" during summer. During summer, I don´t do serious prospecting. Too hot, too green, too much distraction, like blueberries and mushrooms. So, last Sunday (07/03/2022), I mainly explored an area for "fruits" and visited two fossil sites discovered in October 2021. It was hiking-only, no driving between the various "stops". I found lots of blueberries (not fully ripe yet at 900 m asl), but it was much too dry for mushrooms. Nevertheless, I found a few places with a few Cantharellus cibarius: Some of them were even growing on extremely dry tractor paths. In the same general area, I have found two big Boletus edulis in May 31st by pure chance on a tractor path, which was very early in the year, hence my detailed prospecting for mushrooms in this area . Anyways, the goal were the sites 63 and 64, two about 10 years old forest road outcrops north of Reinprechtskogel (977 m asl) in the "Mixed Zone" of the lower Afling-formation in the Santonian-Campanian Gosau-group of Kainach of the Eastern Alps, squares are 2x2 km: Some landscape between the mushrooms and the fossils. That hill in the foreground a little bit right off the center in the first pic is Römaskogel hill (1006 m), the highest hill of the Kainach Gosau, with the rudist zones on its southwestern to northern slopes: Despite being quite densely* populated by dairy farmers, I find the area incredibly lovely and appealing**. Highest mountain in the very background to the right is about 2000 m high. Pics taken at about 900 m asl. *About 200 years ago, there was much less forest and much more (dairy) farm land in this area! **Ten years ago, I didn´t know the area yet and found it most boring geologically, judging from the literature... Site 63 exposes an about 1 m thick conglomerate bed with sparsely distributed Trochactaeon, rudists and some other molluscs, about 3 fossils per square meter are visible. The following pictured fossils were uncovered at 05/31/2022 and are somewhat clean now, scale is 1x1 m: Detail A, two weathered Trochactaeon: Detail B, a Vaccinites, a part of it still sticking in the outcrop: Here are some pics from October 2021, site 63 as found: I worked in slightly loosened parts of the exposure with a screwdriver and found some very "ugly" fossils. The following four pics all show the same specimen. The Trochactaeon is slightly flattened parallel to the bedding plane, the red object is about 11 cm high. Nearly in-situ, note the two already pictured snails at the upper right: Nearly in situ: Recovered and still in the field: Cleaned and at home: Other fossil found, upper valve of a Plagioptychus rudist: And a new one for the site, I don´t know what it is. I am fascinated by these ugly fossils in this coarse-grained conglomerate. Very probably a mix-up of various habitats, transported and deposited in a quite coarse-grained sediment. I would like to share also a polished section from this site again, specimens become a little bit better that way : I dug also a little bit at site 64, just a few tens of meters away from 63, and found again some rudists. Here, they are in a layer of sandstone, and no Trochactaeon have been observed yet. There are no outcrops between sites 63 and 64. The fossil beds could be in continuity, but it could also be a small fault in the small creek between the two sites. The fossil layer is at the red item: I took one specimen, its also not really a beauty . Freshly exposed and still in-situ: Cleaned at home: My recently bought pressure washer made cleaning of all these very dirty specimens easy. Not good, now I might take also big, very dirty specimens... Thanks for reading and looking! Franz Bernhard
  3. These pieces of "red" rock (I don't know the geologic terminology yet, sorry), have some unique features. Hopefully someone can help identify one, two, more, or all of them for me, if they are anything. If they are nothing, I'd like to know that also. These came from Jacksonville, Texas (south of Tyler, TX) in east Texas. Thanks in advance. 1) Is this an orthoceras nautiloid? 2) What is this impression? Ammonite? 3) Worm tube? Anything? 4) Worm tube? Rudist? Anything? 5) ?? No idea. Anything? What are the brown lines? 6) What is the "K" impression? Anything? 7) What is this impression? Anything? 8) Anything? Rudist? Plant? Or just wonderful coloring? 9) What is the yellow? Anything? 10) What about this yellowing? Anything? Or is it the brown lines? 11) Last one. Anything at all? Or nothing? Thanks
  4. Hello and happy New Year! I have visited this region a couple of times, earliest being around 2000 and last time just a few days before the NY Eve. My first visit was limited in Chaeronea, in order to visit the Marble Lion that was erected in honour of the fallen soldiers of Theba, who fought against Philip, father of Alexander the Great. The battle took place in 338BC, technically was a civil war between the city state of Athens and Macedonia. (The Lion) Following the road South of the lion, I found my first rudist on a dirt road. All I can say is that the site is Santonian. Years later, December of 2019 or 2nd of January 2020, I visited the mountain of Ptoo at the locality Marmeika. This is an abandoned nickel mine, more precisely, a pit. Middle Turonian possibly up to Coniacian This is an amazing outcrop for rudist lovers, because you can observe huge colonies in life form. I really regret it I did not take pictures last time.. Moreover, it is the place with the most diversified fauna. I will start with the finds of the first time. Nerinea sp vertical cut and steinker. Very typical find, usually away from the rudist zone. Radiolites sauvagesi, I think. Abundant in the lower greyish limestones. Finds of my last visit. A quite large sponge (Demospongiae?) which is completely silicified. I am not able to narrow down its species. Close-up showing its stracture An amazing Actaeonella sp, which has all of its shell, yet one end missing. My top find I think. The same Actaeonella next to a cross section of another Actaeonella. A nice gastropod that looks like Ampullina sp but did not find a reference. More Nerinea sp One more Nerinea sp as found And after 1h of cleaning. The limestone is very soft and easy to remove. Two interesting rudists. The left one must be Radiolites mamillaris. The one on the right side, no idea! Rudists collected in the area during my last trip to Greece, December 2021. Still in boxes in my car. Aghia Varvara section: The scientific research leads you at a small hill, near a chapel. Although it is described as rich in gastropods, the area has mostly badly preserved specimens and some fractured rudists. The most interesting find from this section, is a matrix free cross section of a rudist, replaced by calcite. It is just a slice. 1.5-2Kms SSW of the section mentioned above, we found another layer of the same formation which gave some nice fossils. Neoptyxis incavata or Neoptyxis symeonidisi, as per the references. Can't tell which one. The gastropod on right side, no idea. One Neoptyxis sp in situ. The layer that was found was tertiary so it must have been redeposited. Rudists are very underrated fossils. However, if exhibited with other species of the Cretaceous sea, will create a very artistic illustration of a reef. Maybe there is someone who might be able to help a little with identification @FranzBernhard Hope you enjoyed! References: Cretaceous Rudists of Boeotia by Thomas Steuber [1999]
  5. Hello, I would like to give a away some Gosau-fossils from Austria, Styria, for free. Mainly hippuritid rudists, some Trochactaeon snails. I don´t want anything in exchange, shipping is free. If you like, you can donate a small amount to TFF after you have received the fossils, but that´s not obligatory. Please pm me, if you are interested. Thanks. Edit: Closed! Several people have already pointed out their interest in specimens. I am likely to run out of stock . Good thing!! Thanks for all your interest! Franz Bernhard
  6. Hello, last Saturday (10/09/2021), I visited again some classic fossil sites at Waagraben, Hieflau, northern Styria, Austria with a friend. These sites are known since around 1850, are probably of Coniacian age and belong to the Gosau-group. First, some maps: Overview with location of Waaggraben in Styria, a geological map from Ampferer, 1935 (1 = rudists; 2 = Trochactaeon; 3 = Conglomerate quarry), topo-map, and DEM. These sites are very well known, so no problem to pinpoint them exactly on maps: On the way. We will meet this guy in the background near the car again: Conglomerate quarry: First, we visited the surroundings of a historic conglomerate quarry, first mentioned in 1509 and intermittently worked until 1974. It worked an interglazial, well cemented, mostly white conglomerate, used as high-quality building stone or mill stone, but sometimes also as decorative stone. This are the remnants of the old smithy, the quarry itself is heavily overgrown: View back with some houses of Hieflau, to the left some remnants of the smithy: Rudist site: Lots of rudists (mostly hippuritids, some radiolitids, few plagioptychides), mostly found at both sides (shoulders/berms) of the forest road. This time I focused also on specimens with large diameter (Vaccinites) and we found a few. (I have seen one from this site in a collection, but have not stumbled upon one during my last visits from 2014 to 2015. But when you know...). The rudist outcrop near the road is also still there and untouched. Found also a few Plagioptychus, but they were not my goal. Lots of rudists also in the steep forest below the road, coming all from periodical road cleaning/grading. Funnily, the furious forest ranger showed up (we knew already that such a crazy guy is around in that area). He shouted: "No digging, no digging!! I have your car number." "We are only looking at the road." "A fat lot I care about that (Nice translation of Styrian "Das ist mir wurscht!"), but no digging, no digging, I have your number." Turning around and escaping with high speed. Such a crazy guy . Overall view from southeast and northwest, respectively. A little bit to the upper right from the center of the second pic, you can see some old diggings. This is what the guy was crazy about: "No digging!!". But I can understand, look at the tall outcrop of rudist limestone above the road. Severe undercutting not recommended! At the red X is the "permanent" rudist outcrop at the forest road: Rudist outcrop at forest road, its composed of Hippurites species. There exits a master thesis from 2015 about this site and the surrounding, if anybody is interested: Waaggraben Rudist Limestone (in English, ca. 6 MB, pdf, hosted at Uni Graz): Rudist fragments (mostly Hippurites) below this outcrop, as found: Some crushed pseudocolonies of Hippurites, as found, pseudocolony in second pic is 16 cm high: Trochactaeon site 1: In the year 2014, I found several Trochactaeon in the shoulder/berm of the forest a little bit downhill of the rudist site. Yesterday, dozens of snails showed up, all at the surface of the shoulder. (The driveway itself has foreign gravel spread over it). At one spot, they seem to crop out in the shoulder (red x). I took a total of 6 specimens, how many snails can you spot in the second pic? The host rock of the snails is a sandy marl with lots of white spots, made of an unknown fossil (at least unknown to me). You can see some to the left of the red object in the second pic: Trochactaeon site 2: This is the classic (known since about 1850) Trochactaeon site at Waaggraben. Its situated near the creek and it has changed considerably since my last visit in 2016, because the area above the digs was clearcut some years ago. Due to better lighting, the steep hillslope is now quite heavily overgrown with grass and such things, you have to know where the digs have been located. Anyways, just a few meters downstream, a new dig hole has been opened up by someone, and was last visited only a few weeks ago. Lots of Trochactaeon left behind (everything is veeery muddy, not easy to spot), but we took nothing, we had enough. New dig hole (red x) and debris below, veeery dirty, very dangerous (overhang!), no fun to work in that hole: Old dig holes, barely visible: Pic from 2014 showing about the same area with well visible dig holes: View from above with one quite recently activated old dig hole (red x): Here are some polished specimens of Trochactaeon from Waaggraben of my finds from 2014, box is 40x30 cm: Polished specimen with typical "spotted" host rock (sandy marl) Hope, you enjoyed a little bit . Thanks for looking! Franz Bernhard
  7. marguy

    rudists to see

    Hello, my wife and I went to Charente to meet uncles and aunts that we had not seen for several years. A few kilometers from their home, walls and old houses in a hamlet are built with recycled materials: rudist fossils !!! here are some photos (on the first, it was not the cars that threw the fossils ) We walked through the surrounding countryside but the vegetation covers the ground, and only a corn field and a walnut plantation left some bare land where we found mostly broken pieces, but in the end a nice coral and 2 decent rudists for our pleasure. Enjoy. (I think @FranzBernhard in particular will appreciate ...)
  8. Karam

    Fossil?

    Hello! Found yesterday, although I'm not even sure what it is. I put rudists in the tag section since someone told me if you don't know what it is, then it's probably a rudist (especially in Lebanon). I would also like to mention that those patterns are not only on one side, rather they're everywhere even on the small pieces that fell off while i separated it from a bigger rock.
  9. Saturday, 02/06/2021 St. Bartholomä-Formation (Campanian), Styria, Austria - mainly rudists of the hippuritid and radiolitid family. This was my first fossil trip since more then 3 months due to too much Covid first and too much snow lately. But now snow has melted, at least in St. Bartholomä. Note: Austria is still in so-called "hard lockdown", but you can drive around like crazy in our country, as long as you stay in your car overnight . I did not, I am doing only day trips, and St. Bartholomä is only a 30 km drive. - First I visited two low-productive sites, checked out small creeks again and a quarry, that is only barely accessible also in winter because of too much prickly blackberrys. At least I saw some good outcrops there, but not the right layer ("Knödelbrekzie") nor any rudists. - Switched over to the quarry at Point 25, my most productive site in this formation. Something has been coming down to the quarry floor during the winter, but no rudist etc. Examined my dig site higher up at the northern end of the quarry ("Point 25-North"), also some loose fresh material, but nothing. Started picking rocks from the undisturbed debris below the "Knödelbrekzie" outcrop and found indeed some ok rudists and a small coral colony. Still some potential here. I already know that there are fossils coming down also at the southern end of the fossiliferous "Knödelbrezie" in this quarry, but it is hard to reach from the quarry floor. However, it looked possible to reach it from above. And that was really the case. Some kind of bench has naturally formed at the edge of the quarry, exactly at the level of the fossiliferous "Knödelbrekzie". It had already disintegrated somewhat (which is good, even necessary!), forming a debris of cobbles intermixed with soil and earth. During unsystematic scuffing in the debris, I found indeed two quite good radiolitid rudists and a large limestone piece with two enclosed rudists, which I left behind. This is the site, called "Point 25-South", after scuffing, looking from the south end towards north. Funny thing, it came already with a handrail for safety . Its going down for about 5 meters to the right, steep, but not vertically. The fossiliferous layer ("Knödelbrekzie") and the debris is accessible for about 3-4 m horizontally at the moment. Maybe I will exploit this site systematically during this year, forming a horizontal, about 0.5 m wide and safe bench along the way to the north. Maybe not. I don´t know yet. I have quite a lot of rudists from St. Bartholomä and would like to do also other things . - Already quite late, I took a quick look at the overgrown heap of fieldstones at point 32. The electric fence running along the heap was turned off so I took the chance to remove some rocks under a root ball at the other side of the fence. From my perspective removing the rocks, I did not see "it", only as I moved a little bit, I saw it there, sitting deep under the root ball like an egg in its nest: Lower left is my first sighting, to the right after removing some earth and more rocks, just before picking. Its a good sized radiolitid rudist, about 7x7x7 cm, with coarse ribs. It was a very nice day out, good exercise (mainly stretching ), found a few fossils at a known spot, found a new, possibly productive spot and also a nice "Easter Egg". Links to some former trips to this formation: St. Bartholomä - 1 St Bartholomä - 2 (Point 32) Franz Bernhard
  10. Hi all! Perhaps this is a dumb question, but I' still new to the forum as well as the hobby itself, so I offer a teaching moment - In round rock, (just north of austin in central texas), I have a location at the base of a limestone cliff where after some gritty mining efforts I've come across an extremely dense pocket of what I've been informed are internal casts of rudists. That ID was great!, but I'm having trouble learning about what the actual organisms were like. I've tried researching quite a bit with no clear picture of what these are that I'm discovering. Also geologic maps of the area have some disagreement, so the exact spot could be Edwards limestone, eagle ford, or buda limestone. I understand (I think) that these were some variation of a mollusk but the story ends there. Discovering these would be even more magical if I had a proper understanding of what these organisms were like, looked like, and what role they played in their environment while they were living. I know these are a common fossil so many of you will have a wealth of knowledge about these. Please enlighten me, I'd love to learn! Below are some examples for reference:
  11. I've been slowly working my way thru some specimens I collected this summer. I often sort stuff out and tackle one group/order at a time. So I am sorting out some of the rudists that are found at one of my favorite Glen Rose Formation locations. The site is rich with a seriously diverse fauna that includes at least 4 species of rudists. Rudists were rather weirdly shaped bivalves that went extinct at the end of the Mesozoic. They are also, most often, only found locked into hard rock and difficult to collect. But this local produces at least two that you can pick up complete and two that give good internal molds. I started with the requienids Toucasia texana (Roemer) which look more like big gastropods than bivalves. As I sorted them by size and quality I found there was one I kept picking up and turning to match with the others. But it wouldn't... Take a look and let me know when you see the one that is different. I'll follow up with pics of the other species later today. EDIT: I guess I still did didn't turn it around enough times...It's just upside down....feeling kinda foolish about now...still nice fossils I think...
  12. Hello, some local Campanian news again... . First: The rudists from St. Bartholomä, Styria, Austria, made into a local journal (pdf, in German): DieRudistenvonStBartholomae_Mineralog_2019.pdf Second: After this nice find at point 25-North from 09/24/2019: Point 25-North - 09/24/2019 I could not resist collecting this site systematically. 18 hours of work in October and November 2019 resulted in more than 100 fossils, which is a very good yield. For details see: Point 25-North - Four weeks (External site, in German, only a few pics). This particular site is far from being exploited... Third: My last trip to this formation two days ago (12/18/2019) was very short and "designed" to bring back lesser specimens, duds, and some cutting rejects to three different sites. However, the trip resulted also in 4 fossils, two of them again from point 25-North: This is the 7th chaetetid-stromatoporoid sponge I have found in this formation, 6 of them came from this spot. I like these fossils more and more! And a rather nice (for this formation ) rudist matrix specimen: The two other fossils found this day were a small Hippurites colliciatus and a colonial coral from point 32; both specimens need to be cut and polished. Thanks for your interest and happy winter/christmas/new year fossil hunting! Franz Bernhard
  13. Hello, I have summarized my hunting trips to St. Bartholomä from July 2019 to September 2019. Its in German and located at an external site: Rudists St. Bartholomä - July-Sept 2019 (external site) (pdf, ca. 4.2 MB) Fell free to delete this post if you find it inappropriate. Thanks! Franz Bernhard
  14. Hello, today I had another opportunity to fossil hunt in St. Bartholomä. I tidied mostly up my main dig and collecting site in the quarry at Point 25 east of Kalchberg. As expected, I did not find much, only some small so-so specimens (19 specimens in 3 hours, but the majority would be rejects). However, in the same small quarry, a few meters to the north of the main dig site, "Knödelbrekzie" is also exposed (upper part of lower right pic), with some steep scree below. I have found two good rudists in this scree two years ago. Today, I dug again with bare hands in the scree. First without any success. Sure, every piece was fossiliferous limestone, but even not a rudist fragment among them. But then, only a few minutes before I had to leave, it was there! Just pulled out of the dark hole to the left of the specimen: A slender, slightly bend Vaccinites vesiculosus. The apex is broken off (pillars are visible there) and it is also broken at the top end, but it is quite aesthetic and elegant, that´s at least my thinking . I like it very much! Ok, back to work : This is the main dig site at point 25 as of today, 09/24/2019. There are no longer many clasts of fossiliferous limestone in the scree, mostly sandstone and marl. The orange bucket in the upper left pic contains clasts of fossiliferous limestone, the black bucket waste material (marl and sandstone). Today I have removed 23 buckets (10 Liter) of waste and 3 buckets of fossiliferous limestone from the dig site. Scale bar is 1 m. In the lower left pic, piles of fossiliferous limestone are visible, the waste material is dumped to the left (not visible). In the lower left corner, cutting rejects are deposited. At the right edge of the lower right pic, fragments and partials of rudist are deposited. This was probably my last hunting trip to St. Bartholomä for some time. I would like to do more prospecting and light surface collecting during my next trips. I am not really the born digger, I like prospecting more, but sometimes, I just have to dig . Thanks for looking! Franz Bernhard
  15. Hello, Another hunting trip for rudists to the Campanian of St. Bartholomä in western Styria, Austria (09/15/2019). I have hunted these heaps of stones, collected from the former nearby fields (now meadows) over centuries, several times before, but there seems to be always something to find. I found six "good" specimens in 2 hours - and that´s exactly my usual yield in this formation . First topo map, geological map, relief map and aerial photograph of "Point 32". No problem to make everything public, nobody is interested in this stuff (well, except me...). Views from my parking place and from the way to the heaps: Some impressions of the heaps. First row is the western, lowermost end of the east-west trending with a small dig. A small, but quite nice radiolitid from this hole is to the left of the pocket knife. A second radiolitid was also found there. Second row shows some parts of the upper, north-south trending heaps. Third row shows to the left a fragment of a Hippurites nabresinensis (nearly in-situ, a small part was exposed). To the right, a freshly exposed, but still nearly in-situ Vaccinites is visible to the right of the red object; a small part of this rudist was also already exposed. Its the area shown in the pic above. Well, no pocket knife, already lost...
  16. Hello, this time, I will start with the end result : I am quite satisfied with the result ! The pillars are nicely preserved and the rudist is filled with sparry, white to orange calcite and contains some voids coated with tiny calcite crystals. The greenish batches consist also of calcite and are also well polished, but are finer grained and contain additionally some small quartz grains. These fillings may be related to the second filling event during redeposition of the rudists in this formation. For more info about that, see here: Some Rudists from St. Bartholomä The right section contains also a blob of fossiliferous limestone. More about the locally heavily bored shell - see below . Before I got this nice result, there was a decision - to cut or not to cut : It is a conical specimen with some ribs preserved and a large, interesting, vertical groove. A large blob of limestone is sitting at the top end of the rudist, but one pillar was also already visible there. Mostly due to the ugly limestone blob, I decided to cut the specimen near the end of the visible shell. The top part (AN4240) does not contain much shell, the section about 6 mm lower (AN4239) does. The vertical groove is a simple inflection of the shell. No clue, what caused it, no remains of any other shell are visible. But it may have been some kind of an obstacle there. The specimen was found in a steep, wooded area east of Kalchberg, at the lower end of an old vertical ditch, possibly a prospect for water. Some pieces of fossiliferous limestone were lying around, somewhat exposed by heavy rains. I dug with bare hands in the soil, and nearly immediately recovered the specimen above from the "rat hole" to the right of the pocket knife (first row): (At the upper left corner of the upper left pic, a rudist is sticking between tree roots. This rudist was already featured here: Rudist hunting (3) in St. Bartholomä) Yesterday, I visited this spot again and pulled out several more pieces of limestone and sandstone from this "rat hole" (about 200 pieces), again only with bare hands (second row). No large Vaccinites was found this time, put a few smaller specimens (third row): upper left: small Vaccinites specimen; upper right: small pseudocolony of Hippurites colliciatus; lower left: Hippurites nabresinensis; lower right: fragment of Vaccinites vesiculosus. Ok, not much to see on this sucking pics, so I will stop now . Thanks for looking, maybe you have at least enjoyed the polished specimen . Happy hunting! Franz Bernhard
  17. Short hunt at the North Sulphur River Texas. Lots of mosasaur bones.
  18. From time to time, I would like to post specimens from the Campanian St. Bartholomä-formation in Styria, Austria, in this thread. For the first specimen, I was motivated by this thread: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/91459-is-this-a-rudist-fossil/ So the first specimen is a fragment of a large Vaccinites alpinus, with only two pillars - and not much else. Franz Bernhard
  19. Here are the numbers I promised : From 07/16/2017 to 09/13/2018, about 140 hippuridit rudist specimens were found in the scree slope of "Point 25", the sweetest of all spots in St. Bartholomä. The species distribution is (approximate numbers, with examples): Hippurites colliciatus: 80 (with 140 individuals – many pseudocolonies!) - F, G, H, J Hippurites nabresinensis: 10 - I and possibly K Vaccinites vesiculosus: 25 - A, B Vaccinites alpinus: 10 - C Vaccinites cf. sulcatus: 5 - D, E Vaccinites sp.: 10 (no pillars visible, but to nice to be cut, or partial specimens) Polished traverse sections of hippuritid rudists found at "Point 25" from 01/20/2018 to 03/23/2018: Only hippuritids in this spot? No, during the same period, about 200 radiolitid rudists were also found, giving a total of about 340 rudist specimens from this spot. Thats about 70% of all rudists found in the St. Bartholomä-formation during my hunting and digging trips from 05/07/2017 to 09/13/2018. Ah, and about 10 coral colonies ware also found at "Point 25"... It is difficult to estimate how many rudists are still waiting in the scree there. Judging from - the amount of material already removed and dumped (about 3-4 m3), - the distribution of fossiliferous limestone and other rocks in the scree slope (about 1:2, but highly variable), and - considering the amount of „Knödelbrekzie“ that seems to be missing in the outcrop (and now lying in the scree), I will try to make an estimate of 200 to 500 rudists that are still there to be found. Now I am stopping! Thanks for your patience! Franz Bernhard
  20. Fine, a very nice rudist - a Hippurites nabresinensis -, one of the longest I have found so far in St. Bartholomä (18 cm). But it came even better! At home, I recognized that I have already seen a quite similar traverse fracture before. Indeed, here it is, with the cleaned traverse fracture of the newly found rudist below. Maximum diameter is about 7.5 cm. The two parts fit together (considering that there are at least 100 years of weathering between them), resulting in the by far tallest rudist found by me in St. Bartholomä up to now, having a total length of about 27 cm. The shorter part was found at 05/20/2018, about 2 m downslope of the second, longer part, in a depth of about 10-20 cm. Note that the longer part has a kink at the upper end. The upper part is also the natural end of this rudist, as some parts of the upper valve are preserved (upper left). I could stop now, but I don´t. Some people may like numbers, so I will present some in the next entry: "Point 25" - Summing up
  21. Now the sandstone slab behind the red x (last photo of the previous entry) has been removed. Can you spot it, just above the pocket knife? Photo taken 09/13/2018. Closer… Closest! There was a large rudist just behind the sandstone slab, lying in a depth of about 40 cm below the surface of the scree slope. Still in situ, only some roots and small stones removed for the photo. Pocket knife is 9 cm long, some tapering of the rudist is clearly visible. Such a nice surprise is very rare, normally the rudists are quite dirty there and you can only recognize a few rips or the typical conical or cylindrical outline. Rudist removed from the scree and photo taken of the uncleaned traverse fracture at the left end in the photo above. The apical view clearly shows two pillars (P1, P2) and a very thick shell, it´s a Hippurites nabresinensis. Photo taken 09/13/2018. Next entry: "Point 25" - Surprise at home!
  22. For some general information, including some maps, about the Campanian St. Bartholomä-formation in Styria, Austria see: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/86433-rudist-hunting-in-st-bartholomä-styria-austria-13072018/ The rudist-bearing St. Bartholomä-formation covers an area of about 3km2. Within this area, there are a few sweet spots, where rudist can be found with some confidence: one of the creeks west of Kalchberg; a pile of rocks west of Kalchberg, collected during centuries from the nearby fields; a small, weathered outcrop along a narrow forest road, also west of Kalchberg; or simply an accumulation of fossiliferous limestone with some rudists in a steep forest east of Kalchberg. But the sweetest spots of all, supplying a continuous flow of rudists, is a scree slope in a small quarry east of Kalchberg - called "Point 25" in my own documentation. The scree slope is located below an outcrop of „Knödelbrekzie“, which is a grain-supported, coarse conglomerate to breccia, exclusive composed of fossiliferous limestone clasts with the occasional rudist, as can be seen in this photo, taken 07/16/2017. The rudist is the cracked, horizontal cylinder-like object in the middle of the photo: The next photo is a frontal view of a part of the quarry. It was operated about 100 years ago for hydraulic marl and is heavily overgrown, in other words, its very dark there and the photos are so-so (as usual). „K“ denotes the exposure of the „Knödelbrekzie“, which was shown in the photo above; below you can see beds of fine grained calcareous sandstone. The „U“ denotes the entry to the underground workings, the entry is largely filled with debris from above. Below the „U“ is the scree slope, consisting of clasts of fossiliferous limestone, sandstone and marl. At the bottom is the „deep hole“, scale bar is 1 m, the red x will appear again. Photo taken 09/13/2018. Lateral view of the quarry. Out of operation since 100 years? It doesn´t seem so. I visited this spot for the first time at 07/16/2017 and two rudists were found instantaneously in the scree (beside the one in the outcrop itself). In October 2017, I decided to examine the material of the scree slope systematically. I began with the nearly horizontal left side and progressed to the steeper right side. Fossiliferous limestone (center left) and marl, sandstone, soil, organic material etc. (at the left edge) were dumped separately. Part of the „deep hole“ is visible in the right corner (note the big sandstone slab in the lower right corner, this slab is also visible in the photo above). I collected and dug at this site from October 2017 until 09/13/2018 about 34 times, each time for about 2 hours. Photo taken 09/13/2018. The „deep hole“. At 09/13/2018, it was about 1.8 x 1.8 x 1.6 m large and something like a quarry in the quarry. Note the red x on the sandstone slab… Photo taken 09/13/2018, scale bar is 1 m. Next entry: "Point 25" - What´s behind the red x??
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