Search the Community

Another day of great finds in Saskatoon! This time, some trace fossils. With my wonderful collaboration with the University of Saskatchewan's Museum of Natural Sciences still continuing, recently I have been very lucky to make multiple trips out to a beautiful site just outside the city of Saskatoon where massive deposits of glacial lake silt are exposed. This silt produces pristine grass and other plant fossils in abundance (I'd like to make a post about them soon as well), but also seems to be teeming with various invertebrate trace fossils. All are very small (under 1 centimetre wide). I've attached some of my best pictures below. 1 - 6: Overlapping Planolites sp. closeups 7 - 11: Edaphichnium sp. 12 - 14: Taenidium sp. closeups 15 - 16: Taenidium sp. wide shots 17: Taenidium sp. closeup

Found in Advocat Harbour NS on the western shore , Bay of Fundy Found at low tide where the tidal swing is 50 ft roughly 2”x4”x6” 1.95 kg the last photo shows the underside of my specimen compared to the soft shell egg discovered in the Antarctic

Found in Southern Ontario, late Ordovician. Would these be the fossilized burrows of the Brachiopods? Or just odd erosion? Note the trace fossils around the "Burrows".

I found these burrows in Ordovician-Silurian rocks in Waukesha Wisconsin. I found hundreds of these just a few weeks ago in Green Bay WI (Ordovician) any way to identify what animal made these burrows? Thanks! ps: so sorry I forgot the scale

Some weird looking patterns in the rocks. I suspect it to be a trace fossil or a plant fossil but I am unsure. Does somebody know what they are? They are from northern Taranaki.

I went on a recent fossil hunt in North Carolina looking for the cow branch formation. I found some fossils. It was a very quick stop, about an hour before I had to leave. I found what I believe is to be a footprint it reminds me of a tremnospondyl but it’s from the cow branch I believe. I also found some shells there, plant material, and pieces of what looked to be good footprint material but I wasn’t there long enough to fully examine. So here’s the finds from yesterday: Total haul: footprint in question: outline of footprint: What species was this footprint from? It’s late Triassic and I’m pretty happy to be finding footprints again these might be my new favorite fossils.

Found in the side of a building and in the surrounding landscaping. From the Cambrian seashore sandstone of Blackberry Hill Wisconsin. The place is known for its fossils of mass jellyfish strandings and its trace fossils of some of the first arthropods, mollusks, and other animals on land. What are these? Thanks!

Hello dear fellow forum members, some time ago I was given the remnants of a geologists expedition souvenirs, without any labels. The piece pictured below was in a box together with a nice example of the trace fossil tambia spiralis, and about the same colour matrix. So I assume it could be from the same location, which may be the famous permian Bromacker quarry. It most resembles Limulus traces as far as I could find though. Described from Bromacker are several species of roaches, but on the other hand, I do not know if it is really from there. Any ideas?

Found on my way down to my usual fossil hunting beach (Devonian) I’m pretty sure these rocks were brought in to prevent erosion though. Late pre-Cambrian - Devonian rock for sure

Found this while splitting some black shale (Millbo ro Shale, Devonian) open, unsure if it is a trace or just a diagenetic feature.

While I am out in the badlands of the San Juan Basin, I keep an eye out for the trace fossil known as Asthenopodichnium...lozenge shaped overlapping pouches or cavities found in petrified wood. My first encounter with it was a number of years ago in an outcrop of Upper Cretaceous Menefee Formation. I threw a chunk of wood, with this very interesting texture, in my bag and took it home. Perplexed by what it might be, I showed it to Spencer Lucas at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History. He was happy to see this specimen and we discussed the theories of what it might represent, as it is not fully understood. We wrote up a small abstract with a few other co-authors for a Geologic Society meeting and since then, I have looked for other specimens while wandering. In 2015, some specimens found in the Upper Cretaceous Kirtland Formation of the San Juan Basin were published in the NMMNHS' Bulletin 67 and are the first published record of these trace fossils in the Kirtland. The following is a link to that paper. The trace fossil Asthenopodichnium from the Upper Cretaceous of the San Juan Basin, New Mexico On a recent adventure, with @Opuntia, in the Kirtland Formation of the San Juan Basin I stumbled upon these... ...and was delighted. I couldn't wait, and texted the photos to Spencer. His response was "collect it!" In later conversations he asked where the specimens were and we discussed their location, a potential small paper and started planning a return trip to document them. Excited, I sat pondering the fossils and referred back to the paper. As I looked at the field photo in the paper I noticed a rock in the frame...I had seen that rock. I compared my field photos to the publication's and realized that I was looking at the same locality. Publication field photo: PFOOLEY's field photo: This left me feeling a bit deflated as there would be no need for collection nor a small paper. I began to think back to the time, all those years ago, when I first encountered this trace fossil in the Menefee...I'm going back there and can hopefully relocate that site...might just have a small paper in store after all. I post this here to see if any of you have seen this trace or maybe just some thoughts on this fascinating fossil. Got Asthenopodichnium?

Hello it’s me again hahah. I have not given up on finding a fossil. So here is my latest rock. Thank you for your time. I found it in Arlington wa. weight is about .5lb.-1lb Maybe more still need to get a scale. I do find a lot of rocks like this where it looks like there is what seems to have fun shapes and colors. .lol FYI I am still cleaning it. Not sure how to clean it faster then just distilled water with picks/brush’s it is blue-ish Gray colors and has a strange mouth like feature. And an eye ! It sure does look cool. And it’s about the 3rd one I found it’s just that this one was the best pic quality one. and I think the others could be turtles. Pic 1- dry after cleaning pic2- after distilled water cleaning and the last pic is the back of the what I think is a head of some turtle lizard thing. again thank you for your time and hope everyone has been good and safe!

Picked this up in Arizona, and I unfortunately do not remember exactly where. I initially thought it might be a coprolite, but looking at it now it looks like it may be just a lump of preserved mud cracks. Any ideas on what this might be, or what would cause a rock like this to form? The rock is about 4.5x3x2 cm and shows the cracks on all sides.

The slab has its 4 sides the same as I showed here. It shines a lot on the sides. Curious about that trace on it. Is it geology or fossil?

This is a retcon of an earlier post I had. Cambrian fossils aren't something one thinks of when they think of Maryland fossil hunting, and perhaps for good reason. The Cambrian rocks of the state are poorly exposed, those few areas where they do outcrop usually being gobbled up in urban sprawl. Compared to sites elsewhere like in Utah or York, Pennsylvania, the Maryland Cambrian is also rather barren. You could probably count on both hands the number of macrospecies in the entire early and middle Cambrian section of the state. But this rarity only makes collecting in it that much more interesting! Luckily for me I'm pretty close by most of these formations, so I have a decent knowledge of the area and outcrops, but even then it took a decent amount of time researching and scouting to find a site. The most recent formation I visited was the Araby Formation. Up until the mid 20th century the Araby was considered part of the Antietam Sandstone further west in the Blue Ridge, but after some more studies done on the formation it was found that it's lithological character was distinct enough to warrant it being a separate unit. Whereas the Antietam is a white quartz sandstone (much like the Oriskany I posted about yesterday) deposited in a beach-like environment, the Araby was deposited in deeper water (compared to the Antietam) and is more a mixture of siltstones, shales, phyllites, and slates. Together with the Antietam the Araby has some of the oldest fossils in the state dating back to the early Cambrian period some 540 million years ago. This makes it the oldest formation in the Frederick Valley. For those that don't know the Frederick Valley is a predominantly limestone syncline in west central Maryland (I consider it western Maryland, but most people probably wouldn't). At it's core is the early Ordovician Grove Limestone (which has practically no fossils), and on it's flanks are the late Cambrian Frederick Limestone (fossiliferous in parts, but those parts are very rare) and finally the Araby Formation. The Araby takes up positions along the far flanks of the valley, and it's eastern boundary with the metamorphic rocks of the Westminster Terrane marks the Martic Fault (no Washingtonians you don't need to worry about a San Andrea, from what I've read the Martic has been inactive for a long, long time). Due to it's sediment type and that of the surrounding rocks, the Araby is also a minor ridge forming unit, holding up the series of hills that flank Frederick Valley's eastern edge. These hills are nicely visible from the grounds of Monocacy National Battlefield, which is also of interest for marking the site of the northernmost Confederate victory (July 9, 1864 for those who're curious) in the Civil War. This ridge forming aspect means that, although very thin and covering a very small area, the Araby Formation has multiple exposures throughout the Frederick Valley. Some of the better ones are visible along I-70 just east of it's crossing over Monocacy River (an MGS team found some trilobites there) and MD-355 as you drive through the woods before hitting Araby Church Road (I believe the namesake for the formation is actually the Araby Church). In terms of fossils the Araby is almost exclusively dominated by the trace fossil Skolithos linearis, an annelid worm burrow. Other fossils found in it, however, include echinoderms and Olenellus sp. trilobites. As another aside the Cash Smith Shale, once held as an independent formation, also has trilobites and I believe inarticulate brachiopods reported from it, however it is no longer considered an independent formation but rather a member of the Araby Formation. Almost all of my fossils were the worm burrows, still cool but for everyone's sake I won't constantly repeat what they are this time around. Image 1: The largest burrow I've found. I originally thought it was a genal spine from a trilobite due to it's size. Image 2: Cross section of a burrow, outlined by the iron oxide stain. Image 3: Another burrow, this one roughly outlined by the iron oxide. Image 4: The large tubular structure covered in iron oxide (you might be noticing a pattern here with the oxides and burrows. I can't say definitively if they're connected in some way, but oftentimes you'll find the one with the other).