Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'st. joe group'.
-
I’m posting to see if you all can tell me anything about something I found. But first a little background. I went up to visit my family in NW Arkansas this weekend. I have a couple hundred acres I own that is about 15 min from where my family lives. It is just over the border in Oklahoma in Adair county. I bought it many years ago with hopes of one day moving near my family and also as an investment. I go out a couple times a year to one part of it, but the other part doesn’t have a road running through it and is a bit harder to access. It’s solid woods and fairly rugged. The back side of the property descends into the Illinois River Valley. I don’t own any valley land though. It all floods anyway. Anyway, there are some steep hills with a little rock exposed on the back of the property so I thought I’d take a drive out there to check it out for fossils since I’d never done that before. The area is early Mississippian and the formation is Keokuk and Reeds Spring Formations and St. Joe Group. It’s almost all chert. All that said I didn’t do any serious exploring because I had my kids with me and we had just spent 1.5 hours fossil hunting in another area and they were ready to go back to my brother’s. I just wanted to see if my land had fossils on it. I didn’t find much since I was just checking along the road. I found lots of chert with crystal in it. I found this piece and noticed the crystal and a crinoid impression. When I got it home I saw this structure on it that resembles maybe some kind of coral, but I honestly don’t know what it is. I am curious about the orange branching structure that is seen here in pic 1. It or similar structure runs throughout the rock for the most part. I’d like to know what it may be. Pic #1 This in pic 2 is the side to the right of pic 1. This is another branch that I believe may have gotten sliced through by the road grater at some point. The top of the branch has a cavity of crystallization. Pic #2 Pic #3 and 4 are the top of the rock that gives a cross section view of the structure. All I see is degrees of chert and possibly chalcedony where the tube structure is. Pic #4 same thing different angle. Pic #5 is the back side of the rock. It looks like there may have been more tube structures here that got knocked off or something. You can see thin layers of the tube surface remaining. On the bottom left there is an imprint cavity of a crinoid stem. You can’t see it well in this shot though. I have next to zero knowledge of Mississippian formations or fossils except to know that the marine formations often contain crinoids, brachiopods and horn corals. I know a little about Pennsylvanian fossils and know there is some overlap, but I know nothing about ID. I’d appreciate any ideas, thoughts and educational info you can provide.
- 6 replies
-
- adair county
- early mississippian
- (and 3 more)