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This was found in Eastern Kentucky in the creek behind my house. Carboniferous. I think it might be astertophyllites. Is this correct?

Hi, I found this beautiful little asterophyllites yesterday and noticed that there seems to be some rock covering part of the fossil. I'd like to be able to remove the rock and expose the fossil. It's very solid and too thin for any of my chisels. Would an air-abrasive pen or dental equipment work? Perhaps professional help would be appropriate.

A couple of years ago I visited a site in Central Pennsylvania with exposure to the Late Pennsylvanian Llewellyn Formation. I found a lot of Annularia and Calamites pieces. I also found this single whirl. I initially chalked it up as just another piece of Annularia. I recently came across the publication "Fossil Plants From the Anthracite Coal Fields of Eastern Pennsylvania." The publication has been very helpful in assisting me put a species identifications with all of my finds from the various Llewellyn Formation sites I have been to. When I tried to compare this piece to the images of Annularia in the publication they didn't quite fit. That got me thinking that it could actually be Asterophyllites equisetiformis. However, I haven't seen an example of Asterophyllites that has this pinwheel look to it- most of the examples I have seen are preserved with their leaves pointing upwards, not outwards. I have also attached an image of what I believe to be Annularia stellata that I found at the same site. You can see the clear differences between these pieces. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks! Asterophyllites equisetiformis? Annularia stellata

Conditions in Western PA have been unusually warm recently, with highs in the 40s and 50s. I decided to take advantage of this warm spell by getting a little bit of fossil hunting in. I decided to do a hunt focused on plants as I’ve been hunting for vertebrates for the better part of the last year and a half and, although I could never get tired of vertebrates I thought some variety was well overdue. So I headed to one of my favorite plant localities in the area. It is located in the Connellsville Sandstone of the Casselman Formation, which is in turn the upper half of the Conemaugh Group. The sandstone is around 305 million years old. The Casselman Formation holds the record of the tail end of one of the largest plant extinctions in our earths history. The prolonged wetness that had existed for much of the Pennsylvanian gave way to dryer conditions, and, as a result, the lycopsid forests fragmented. Many of these lycopsids went extinct during this event, which is known as the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse. Conifers took advantage of these newly opened ecological niches. Their fossils have been found in this area, although I have never personally found them. Anyway, on to the fossils. Today I mostly found partial Pecopteris fronds, Neuropteris pinnules and Annularia leaflets. I’m going to include some of my better finds from other trips as well, as this trip was rather unproductive. Pictured below is the best Annularia I found today. Or Asterophyllites. I’m not sure. We’ll just go with Calamites leaves for now.

Hello, this is a very tiny Asterophyllites; it was found in Tower City/Pennsylvania, Llwellyn Formation. I have several species of Asterophyllites, but I've never seen a specimen exactly like that. Total length about 5 cm (scale = match = 45 mm). Maybe it is a usual A. equisetiformis, and it is because of taphonomic reasons (e.g. currents), that the leaflets (whirls) are nearly "closed"? I know here is a lot of knowledge about carboniferous plants of North America, so possibly someone knows what species? araucaria1959

These fossils are from our second visit to St. Clair (Aug 4) - several are fossils we haven't seen before so we appreciate help with IDs. Special thanks to Fossildude19 for the excellent starting points. Note: some of the images are out of order when you look at the photos below, because I am renaming and reposting them as they are being identified: 1 - Pecopteris Squamosa - This is small and the leaves are very close together and parallel - based on Lesquereux - amazing that some of the best fern identification sources are from 1879! 2 - Calamites Stem Fragment - A thin Calamites branch. 3 - Unidentified Plant - Nancy calls this a "flower" - of course it isn't, but it seems to be a different shape from others we collected at St. Clair. 4 - Alethopteris and Annularia - Included this because it makes for a nice artistic layout. 5a-5b - Asterophyllites equisetiformis - This interesting pattern appears over a large area several meters square in one part of the St. Clair site, and covers the surface of a very large flat boulder in one area of the site. (source: 6 - Siggilaria - This is our second Siggilaria trunk impression. Some of the trunk and branch fossils (Calamites, Siggilaria) are very exotic and interesting to collect. 7a-7c - Trigonocarpus (Seeds of the Alethopteris Fern) - The same shape appears in three different samples collected on our two trips and according to our friends on the site and reference materials, they appear to be Trigonocarpus seeds, which is very exciting because we keep reading about seed ferns but these are our first fossil seeds. One reference describes Trigonocarpus as the seeds of Alethopteris (which is the most common fern found at St. Clair) - other sources give these the nickname "fossil pecans" because of their physical resemblance. 8a-8b and 9a - Cyclopteris - Fan Shaped Leaves - Some of the reference books show round fan shaped versions of some common ferns but this looks like something separate so we're going with Cyclopteris. We'll try to find a separate, more articulated sample on a future trip. 10 - Unidentified Fern. 11 - Assume this is Sphenopteris. 12 - Assume this is Neuropteris - Where Neuropteris sometimes has rounded leaves (??) 13 - Sphenophyllum - Including just for fun. I'll update the names in this list as the IDs are confirmed. One of our goals continues to be, finding scarce specimens we haven't come across yet, as well as articulated fossils, designs and larger pieces for display. As you can see, we're already making great headway identifying these. Thanks to everyone who helped us ID our finds in the past 2 months, and especially for helping with these...we're really surprised how many different species there are at this single site, all very close together.