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I have been meaning to do this for over a year. So this is going to be a bit piecemeal. Me and my son Ian have been collecting in the Catskill formation for 14 years now! In June we made a very quick trip to Red Hill and then to Rt 15. Red Hill as anyone who has recently been there has become a difficult site to find anything new at. Decades of excavation have removed most of the easy material. Our goal has always been to add more fossil evidence to the fragmentary tetrapod remains found so far and in 2021, I thought we had found what I thought could only be a tetrapod shoulder girdle although not well preserved. Unfortunately, when I sent it to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philly, Ted Daeschler was unable to make any call on it and so it sits in some drawer there. So in 2022 while at Red Hill with Ian on another hot day we decided to take a walk on the railroad tracks. The access is not easy and it's a pretty long hike any way you go. What we found was lag material at the base of the cliff. Probably a flood event that swept a large number of fish (parts) into a very small depression where they were covered. Most of the material is fragmentary Megalichthys mullisoni. There is some placoderm and acanthodian fragments but the next most common fossil is sarcopterygian, probably Hyneria and a mystery sarcopterygian which shows up pretty much throughout the Catskill fm. We went back in June this year and this time brought climbing gear to find and see if we could loosen material from the layer. Turns out the productive layer was just below the lip of the cliff and we were able to drop a bunch of material down to the bottom where amongst a lot of interesting fragments was a posterior jaw fragment. The jaw was fairly low and thick, a large adductor fossa, had no ornament we could make out but a very faint radiating pattern, no cosmine but we could make out a series of fenestra along the Meckelian cartilage. Finally there are four broke teeth (fangs?) of the last (3rd) coranoid and a small empty shelf laterally where presumably the posterior portion of the dentary would sit. All this has led me to believe this is a fragment of Densignathus rowei especially the multiple teeth in the middle of the jaw. I've sent images (multiple times) to Ted and Jason Downs at ANSP but haven't gotten a definite answer. This specimen will eventually be sent down to them but seeing if truly Densignathus, it is not anything new. Still, pretty cool! Lateral view. Clearly no cosmine and no obvious ornament. There is a very weak radiating pattern on the angular. Lingual view Dorsal view. Coronoid " fangs" are the ridge in the middle on the left side. Lateral side is top and you can see the little shelf for the dentary. The adductor fossa takes up most of the right side and the articulation site on the right is broken off. Daeschler, J. Paleont., 74(2), 2000, pp. 301–308 More to come soon!
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Almost complete new Permian tetrapod species may been found in Canyonlands National Park
Creek - Don posted a topic in Fossil News
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-300-million-year-old-fossil-discovered-in-utah-could-be-a-new-species-180979042/ Nicely preserved specimen. Almost complete.