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Last week in a thread by @WyomingRocks! about Whiskey Bridge, a Middle Eocene Claiborne Group site in Texas, @historianmichael asked about ostracods from there. I said I would post some pictures, so here I go. I brought home a bunch of matrix from the site a couple years ago and have broken much of it down and pulled out the larger fossils, but I had not really gone through the micro stuff until recently. I sieved it through a series of screens and found the ostracods primarily on the 60 mesh screen. I have only gone through a tiny amount of it, but wanted to answer his question as I tend to wander off in all fossil directions and who knows when I'll get back to Eocene Ostracods - haha. I picked over two dozen specimens from several different species out of less than 1/2 TBSP of matrix. I wonder what all is in the quart bag of it that I have!! Artusy in his thesis (see below) recognized 46 species of ostracods, I have a long way to go. A few years ago @jkfoamposted an ostracod or two from this location in this thread: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/11079-the-arthropod-that-cant-get-any-respect/page/2/ There may be other posts on the forum as well, but Eocene ostracod threads are not a huge topic! I am not an ostracod expert by any stretch, so others that are more knowledgeable (like @Acryzona) can feel free to correct or update any of my ID's. The literature that I found dealing with ostracods from this site is limited and somewhat old, but that is what I have. I'm sure there are more recent publications on portions of the fauna, but I have not tried to wade through that. I primarily used: The Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology Part Q (1961), a thesis by Raymond Artusy (1960) Ostracoda of the Stone City Beds at Stone City Bluff, Texas, Bulletin 114 of the Mississippi Geological Survey by William Moore (1970) The Jackson Eocene Ostracoda of Mississippi I know some of the pictures are not totally focused, but unfortunately at this magnification, there is a pretty limited depth range that is in focus until I learn how to do photo stacking. I hope you can get the idea of what they look like though, some of them are really intricate and wonderful looking. The last few pictures are really intricate specimens and I'm sure with some effort, I could get a more precise ID, but the differences are all in the details of the ornamentation and subtle shape differences and I haven't taken the time yet to master that. Enjoy!

I found a very odd fossil at whiskey bridge over the weekend and was wondering if anybody had any knowledge on what it could be, picture attached isn't the very best but I'm too afraid the remove it from the bag protecting it right now due to fragility, planning on properly preparing it once i get some paraloid in. BUT the fossil is about 4-5 inches long and 2-3 inches across, it is very fragile towards the end of it but the stem seems to be more sturdy. sorry again for poor picture and lack of scale, just don't want to risk further damage to the fossil yet. My only current guesses are a large piece of coral or some sort of vegetation. either way i know finds of this size aren't very common from whiskey bridge. thank you for any help with identifying.

As background, I am a sedimentologist, and my father was a vertebrate paleontologist, and I am reasonably good at broad-brush identification of fossils (especially in carbonates), but when it comes to any kind of detailed ID, it's not really my area! My son (9) is really into fossils (not my fault, I swear!), and I took him to the nearest place that I knew we would be able to collect some fossils for him, which was Whiskey Bridge near College Station, TX. Here, on the banks of the Brazos River, the Eocene Crockett Fm. is exposed, and we were collecting in the Stone City Member. We found plenty of gastropods, pelecypods, and scaphopods, but a disappointing (for him) lack of shark teeth. The outcrop is mostly glauconitic mudstones, which contained most of the fossils, but there were also lenses of fine sandstone between some of the glauconitic layers. These have been described as tidalites, but the sedimentologist in me would happily argue that they could also be hummocky cross-stratified storm beds. The exposures are pretty poor, so this wouldn't be a very satisfying argument to have. While scraping through the extremely friable (tidal? event bed?) sandstones, I came across the fossil seen in the pictures here. My first reaction was some kind of tooth, but I haven't seen one with this shape before, and I have my doubts about that. It is somewhat triangular in cross section, with a curved 'front' and a nearly flat 'back', and the 'back' is shiny (almost opalescent), something that doesn't come through well in the photos. The length is ca. 20 mm, and it is approximately 5 mm across. All of the shelly material out of here was bleached white, so I don't think it's a weird section of a shell. There were concretions in the sandstone, but they were lenticular in shape and genarlly 10 cm+ across (nor have I ever seen a concretion with a backwards curved shape like this). There were hints of burrowing in the sandstone, but again, the shape doesn't even somewhat resemble any burrows I've seen (I can do a better job of identifying trace fossils than I can real fossils), so I don't think it's a mineralized trace fossil. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Hello everybody, I am starting this topic as I need some help with identification of some Trigonostoma type fossils I found at Whiskey Bridge. I think they may be my favorite type of gastropods I found there. There are 3 types listed in Emerson book but I think I have more than that. The picture here shows 7 specimens (5 & 6 are the same, one and I will start from the left in this discussion. 1. this one looks very similar to T. penrosei but the main difference is that the shoulders are rounded, not flat topped like a normal Trigonostoma. The ribs are more prominent and spaced further apart. The aperture is a different shape and it has 3 folds on the columella instead of 2 like T. penrosei. The line and spiral ornamentation is basically the same and the umbilicus is covered up by the callus. 2. also looks similar to T. penrosei (and somewhat similar to a Bonellitia parilis but I ruled out B. parilis due to the ornamentation being different, aperture has a flat outline on top and has 3 distinct folds on the columella) but is shorter and more squat. It has periodic large ribs showing where the aperture was located at. It has a fairly flat topped shoulder and the ornamentation is more pronounced. It has 3 folds on the columella. 3. Trigonostoma panones juniperum 4. Trigonostoma penrosei 5 & 6. unknown type that is more of a T. babylonicum style but has a more pronounced rib structure, that are straight and do not have a slant to the left as the other Trigonostoma types do. 5 is a more juvenile specimen than 6 as the ribs disappear and the only ornamention left is prior aperture locations on the more adult one. 6 has serial dentation on the out lip and 5 does not. 7. Trigonostoma babylonicum. If anybody has any ideas please let me know. Or if better pictures are needed I will try my best at that. Thanks, Stephen

I have been searching through some Whiskey Bridge matrix I received a while back. This stuff is amazing, full of excellently preserved gastropods. It also has a good amount of micro shark, fish and ray teeth. (thats for another post soon) I have found several references online and have ID'd much of what I have found, but there are a few which elude me. I will post my ID'd finds another time. Thanks for any help you can give to Id these 8 specimens. unknown 1 ... 8mm ..... unknown 2 ... 5mm .....