Search the Community

Hello, at Tuesday, 10/01/2019, I made my first visit to the area around St. Josef, Western Styria, Austria ("Florianer Schichten", Langhian-Miocene) since about 11 months. I checked out 6 sites in 5 hours, three of them were made public by me 2-3 years ago: Fuggaberg-3-a Fuggaberg-3-b (This one was also published in a local journal 2 years ago.) Hoellerkogel-4 Bramberg-1 All sites had easy surface pickings of small fossils from debris. Outcropping sediment with fossils is exposed in 5 of them, in one you have to dig a little bit (Fuggaberg-3), but its still easy going. I guess I have collected and seen about 40 mollusc species within these 5 hours. So, the situation around St. Josef is still very good (if you like miocene molluscs and small fossils, though ). I am starting with: Fuggaberg-3 Two fossil-rich outcrops are located in a very small creek, about 15 m apart (W and E, 1st row, left). At E, only the fossil-poor overlying sediments are exposed at the moment (1st row, right, the red object is about 12x6 cm large), but digging in the debris below (2nd row, right) yielded some fossil-rich matrix specimens. You can see the yield of this 10-minute dig in the pic of the 3rd row, right. Of special interest are the two small fossils lying on oyster shells (coral and muricid). The debris 1-3 meters below the outcrop contains many loose fossils, eg. Granulolabium bicinctum (2nd row, left) or Terebralia bidendata (3rd row, left). Nearly the same situation at W, only overlying sediment is exposed (4th row, left). In the debris below, below the red object, many small fossils are lying around (4rd row, right). You can see Granulolabium bicinctum, Terebralia bidendata, Turritella partschi, Sphaeronassa shoenni, Acanthocardia paucicostata and a bi-valve Anadara diluvii; only the last one is not lying at its original position but was put there for photo purposes . Continued...

Hello, another fossil hunting trip to the "Florianer Schichten" in St. Josef, Styria, Austria (Styrian basin, Miocene - Langhian, ca. 15 Ma). This time I went to a locality (Fuggaberg-6), that is dominated by the horn snails Terebralia lignitarum. This is one of the most common molluscs in the "Florianer Schichten", but only in some localities. The recent species Terebalia palustris is living in mangrove forests in the intertidal zone and is a herbivore. I discovered this locality at 10/22/2016 and collected there at 04/22/2017. Now, about 1 1/2 years later, I visited it again. Not much was to see, it looked nearly natural again, so I had to scratch a few minutes to make an outcrop. I have done this scratching at 11/08/2018 and made the photos at 11/11/2018. First "pic" is a geological overview of Styria with the position of St. Josef southwest of Graz. Second "pic" is a map of the area, site "Fuggaberg-6" is near the "H" of Höllerkogel. Third pic is an overview of the area with the outcrop in the center. Fourth pic is the outcrop. Scale bar is 1x1 m, left of the green x is a layer rich in gastros, left of the red x is a layer rich in oysters. Fifth pic is a detail of the outcrop. Terebralia are enriched in some spots, field of view is about 16 cm. To be continued...