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I hadn't gotten out to look for fossils for a couple of weeks due to commission work and other things, so I was beginning to itch so much that I spent the day yesterday digging away in my favorite ditch in the Upper Danube Valley where I've been working at prying up bits of the Kimmeridgian hypselocylum zone. It was a nice sunny day and relatively warm for the middle of winter, so it was quite an enjoyable experience, although my old bones were starting to ache a bit at the end of the day. Here are the things I've sorted out for the collection. Streblites tenuilobatus. 7.5cm. Parataxioceras perayense. 5.5cm. Eurasenia trimera and Glochiceras sp. 5x5x4cm. A sponge which may belong to the genus Hyalotragos sp.

I mentioned here about a week ago that I had discovered a promising new exposure in that Kimmeridgian ditch at the side of the road which I thought I'd pretty well exhausted over the last few years. I also said that I would probably go back again soon and true to my own word, I did. This time I took the car. I spent about 2 hours there and made some more good finds. They are all out of a concretionary horizon in the hypselocylum zone of the Lochen Formation sponge facies. It looks like there could very well be more to be found, so I guess I'll be going back there again before the snow sets in. Ataxioceras (Parataxioceras) hypselocylum, the ammonite which gives the zone its name. Parataxioceras sp. Streblites tenuilobatus together with a partial Ataxioceras sp. Taramelliceras sp. Taramelliceras sp., Lingulaticeras sp. and a Laevaptychus obliquus, part of the jaw aparatus from an ammonite.

In contrast to the present below freezing temps in my homeland, things over here in southern Germany are comparatively balmy at the moment. At least it's well above freezing, there's no more snow below 3000 feet and it only rains sometimes. So I took another trip out to my favorite ditch in the Danube Valley and did a bit of digging to see if I could uncover some more of the not-so-easy-to-reach early Kimmeridgian hypselocelum zone at the site. After an hour or so of scratching away at the overburden, I managed to expose some of it and came away with a few finds. The finds are not quite as spectacular as the divisum zone where I usually do my digs, since the preservation is often not good at all due to the mostly relatively soft clay in the fossiliferous layers, but every once in a while it gets concretionary and the occasional nice thing can then pop out. I found a few small ammonites and as usual in this reef, the sponges were abundant, so I couldn't resist taking along a couple of those as well. Ataxioceras perayense. 4.5cm. Streblites tenuilobatus. 5.5cm. Cnemidriastrum stellatum. 6x7cm. Unidentified sponge. 3x5cm. I had to piece this one back together.

Since the new collecting season is opening now that most of the snow has left the more populated areas in the northern hemisphere, I figured I could turn over a new leaf instead of posting in the old thread. For those of you who might not be familiar with it, it's a site in the upper Danube Valley that I've been excavating on and off for a good 2 years now and there's still no sign that it'll be drying up soon. It's in the Late Jurassic Kimmeridgian and most of the finds are out of what we call here the divisum zone, named after the ammonite Crussoliceras divisum, which occurs in it. As the title infers, the site is in a ditch at the side of a road cut. I manage to get out there at least once a month, when not more often and I was just there again this week. Here are some old photos of the site and some of the recent finds. Here is a Garnierisphinctes sp., which, although it has a diameter of 13cm., is still just the phragmocone. And here is a Discosphinctoides sp., also a phragmocone measuring 9cm. Here are 2 smaller ones which I have yet to identify. The second one has an Atreta sp. bivalve attached to it.