Ontario Edrioastreroids

[Wrangellian]

I didn't take part in the Secret Santa this year but it almost feels like I did, as I received a package from @Nimravis the other day (not a surprise, I knew it was coming, but the timing was right for Christmas) - Edrio's from the Bobcaygen formation. Thanks again Ralph!

I could us a bit of help with IDs. I guess they could use a bit of prepping to make them easier to see, but maybe someone can recognize them the way they are.

I figure #3 is Belochthus orthokalus, and #4 is Cryptogoleus chapmani, but not sure of the other two. Is #1 a smaller Belochthus? It looks like there are two there but the 2nd one is even more buried so it may not be identifiable. And is #2 a larger Cryptogoleus, or something else?

Also, what is the small discoidal bryozoan?

 

[minnbuckeye]

Those Edrioastreroids are impressive!! It is a fossil, maybe at the top of my bucket list, to find. So far I have struck out. I may have to  plan a vacation to Ontario!! LOL@Nimravis, are these common from the James Dick Quarry? Also, I am confused. When googling the quarry, the info says it is in Caledon, an hour and a half from Brechin.

 

 Mike

[Kane]

10 minutes ago, minnbuckeye said:

Those Edrioastreroids are impressive!! It is a fossil, maybe at the top of my bucket list, to find. So far I have struck out. I may have to  plan a vacation to Ontario!! @Nimravis, are these common from the James Dick Quarry? Also, I am confused. When googling the quarry, the info says it is in Caledon, an hour and a half from Brechin.

 

 Mike

JD Quarry is in Brechin, but is now closed to all collecting. The only Ordovician-aged quarry in Ontario that permits collecting is St Marys Cement in Bowmanville, and at that twice a year with a recognized rock/gem club (and the Bobcaygeon Fm is not exposed there).

[FossilDAWG]

Also, I don't think I have heard of Bowmanville being an edrioasteroid locality.  So Eric those edrios are even more precious as there are no quarry sites where they can be collected.  There are a few roadcuts and exposures along rivers where they have been found, but these sites are heavily hunted and one would have to be very very lucky to find anything.

 

Don

[Kane]

3 minutes ago, FossilDAWG said:

Also, I don't think I have heard of Bowmanville being an edrioasteroid locality.  So Eric those edrios are even more precious as there are no quarry sites where they can be collected.  There are a few roadcuts and exposures along rivers where they have been found, but these sites are heavily hunted and one would have to be very very lucky to find anything.

 

Don

They are indeed ever more precious now.

There are a small handful of edrioasteroids reported in the overlying Verulam Fm (Edrioaster bigsbyi, Lebetodiscus dicksoni, Cryptogoleus spp.), but it would take an abundance of luck and time to find them (also, Bowmanville's Verulam doesn't cut quite deep enough).

[minnbuckeye]

27 minutes ago, FossilDAWG said:

these sites are heavily hunted and one would have to be very very lucky to find anything.

 

 

 I will second that!

[Malcolmt]

I would suspect that they came from an old site near Kirkfield , Ontario which is east of Brechin. It has been closed to collected for a very long time. 

 

JAmes Dick has another quarry and head office facility in Caledon. The James Dick fossil collecting site up near Lake Simcoe has been strictly closed to collecting for about 2 years now.

 

Sadly there are very few localities in Ontario , Canada left that you can collect that is technically not trespassing.

[Wrangellian]

Thanks all, I don't know the locations and what can be found at which, so I need the guidance. I'm trying to piece the info together based on what Ralph said and what you guys have said elsewhere on the forum. Maybe I need to try and get ahold of the original collector thru Ralph, to be sure.

Malcolm, are you saying that they could have come from one of two (or more) localities, and you think the Kirkfield site, based on the taxa or the overall appearance, despite the fact that it has been closed to collecting longer?

Do you think I've got the IDs right?

It seems to be the case all over the place that productive sites are being closed to collecting, here included.

[Wrangellian]

13 hours ago, minnbuckeye said:

Those Edrioastreroids are impressive!! It is a fossil, maybe at the top of my bucket list, to find. So far I have struck out. I may have to  plan a vacation to Ontario!! LOL@Nimravis, are these common from the James Dick Quarry? Also, I am confused. When googling the quarry, the info says it is in Caledon, an hour and a half from Brechin.

 

 Mike

Better get up there while it's still possible to find one! (if it is). On the other hand, I guess there are still locations in the US where they can be found?

I'll never get the chance to collect edrio's personally so if you manage to do so you'll have something over me!

[FossilDAWG]

Kirkfield has been inaccessible for 60 years or more. The quarry went out of business and was allowed to flood.  It was flooded when I visited in the late 1970s.  So it is very unlikely that your edrios came from there, they certainly came from Brechin, a quarry at Gamebridge, or the James Dick quarry.  Those quarries are/were in the Lake Simcoe area and exposed echinoderm-rich horizons in the Bobcaygeon and Verulam Formations.  If you look up Nimravis' thread on the "yard sale" where he got these fossils, I recall that Crinus had a post there with comments about the likely source.

 

BTW I think your 3rd photo shows a disarticulated Cryptogoleus chapmani, not Belochthus orthokalus .  The first photo almost certainly shows two Isorophusella incondita, although they could do with some careful prepping to uncover them better.  I think the fourth photo shows a fairly decent Cryptogoleus chapmani, and the last is not identifiable.

 

Don

[Malcolmt]

I indicated kirkfield because it looks more like material from there than JD. There were more locations in that area back in the day than just the quarry. Isorophusella were certainly the ones found most often on the hard grounds in that general area 

[FossilDAWG]

A lot of material came from the quarry at Gamebridge back in the 70's and 80's, but I never collected there (or at Brechin or James Dick either for that matter).  I have some edrios from Lakefield that look a lot like the material in this thread; unfortunately that site has been closed for a long time.  I also have a fair amount of edrio material from Ottawa.  None of my old collecting sites are accessible these days.  I feel fortunate to have found as much as I did, though I had to work very hard to get what I have.  I don't think it would be possible to build much of a collection of Ordovician echinoderms in Ontario these days.  I think "collecting" will pretty much be limited to purchasing fossils from old collections as they come on the market.

 

Don

[Wrangellian]

4 hours ago, FossilDAWG said:

Kirkfield has been inaccessible for 60 years or more. The quarry went out of business and was allowed to flood.  It was flooded when I visited in the late 1970s.  So it is very unlikely that your edrios came from there, they certainly came from Brechin, a quarry at Gamebridge, or the James Dick quarry.  Those quarries are/were in the Lake Simcoe area and exposed echinoderm-rich horizons in the Bobcaygeon and Verulam Formations.  If you look up Nimravis' thread on the "yard sale" where he got these fossils, I recall that Crinus had a post there with comments about the likely source.

 

BTW I think your 3rd photo shows a disarticulated Cryptogoleus chapmani, not Belochthus orthokalus .  The first photo almost certainly shows two Isorophusella incondita, although they could do with some careful prepping to uncover them better.  I think the fourth photo shows a fairly decent Cryptogoleus chapmani, and the last is not identifiable.

 

Don

I'll try to find that topic again.

Sorry, I meant to point out I have 4 items here - two pics of the first, and one pic of each of the others. The 3rd item (4th photo) I thought matched the Belochthus shown in Crinus' photo here:

http://www.crinus.info/echinoderm/data/crypt2.htm

and the 4th item (last photo) looked like the Cryptogoleus in the same photo. The relative sizes match, too. The disarticulated one is larger than the intact one, and is actually the largest one of the lot, and it doesn't seem have such a distinct single ring of larger plates as the smaller one has, though for all I know that could represent different growth stages of that species.

[Northern Sharks]

Just to clarify, the Gamebridge quarry IS the James Dick quarry, and the edrios would much more likely be Verulam  rather than Bobcaygeon formation. I agree that there are no Belochthus in this groups they don't have a border edge like Isorophusella and Cryptogoleus do. The original Kirkfield quarry is indeed flooded and is now a dive site, but there is another quarry there that did allow access to some people on some days, but that stopped a few years ago now too. And no, I never did get in there unfortunately.

[Northern Sharks]

Also, I'm not sure what the small bryozoans are, but we knew that if you started seeing them on a hardground surface, there was a pretty good chance edrios would be in the vicinity too.

[Wrangellian]

Thanks. So the James Dick quarry is in/near Gamebridge, not Brechin? I'm not really sharp on the geography of these sites any more than I am on the stratigraphy.

[Kane]

3 hours ago, Wrangellian said:

Thanks. So the James Dick quarry is in/near Gamebridge, not Brechin? I'm not really sharp on the geography of these sites any more than I am on the stratigraphy.

Gamebridge is about 5 minutes drive south of Brechin, but the JD quarry is in Brechin. The quarry address is listed as Brechin, but Brechin itself is a community under the Township of Ramara (Gamebridge is also a community under the Township). Ramara is a lower-tier municipality in Simcoe County.

[Northern Sharks]

1 hour ago, Kane said:

Gamebridge is about 5 minutes drive south of Brechin, but the JD quarry is in Brechin, which is itself about five minutes south of Ramara.

Gamebridge is a tiny little hamlet, Brechin is a small town. The JD quarry is basically between the 2, north of Gamebridge, but well south of the sign that says you've entered Brechin. I guess since they need to have an address, the larger community was used. Since there are so many quarries in the area - 6 I know of that have allowed collecting - we used Gamebridge as a location to signify JD for online pics and discussions, rather than naming the specific quarry. All other quarries are in or much closer to Brechin.

[Kane]

5 minutes ago, Northern Sharks said:

Gamebridge is a tiny little hamlet, Brechin is a small town. The JD quarry is basically between the 2, north of Gamebridge, but well south of the sign that says you've entered Brechin. I guess since they need to have an address, the larger community was used. Since there are so many quarries in the area - 6 I know of that have allowed collecting - we used Gamebridge as a location to signify JD for online pics and discussions, rather than naming the specific quarry. All other quarries are in or much closer to Brechin.

The boundaries are a bit fuzzy when it comes to legacy designations of communities/hamlets/villages. I would say for Eric's purposes of geographic record, he could go with Ramara Twp given that both Brechin and Gamebridge are under Ramara's municipal administration. However, the one major distinction according to Deb is that Brechin has the best butter tarts on the planet.  

[Northern Sharks]

23 minutes ago, Kane said:

The boundaries are a bit fuzzy when it comes to legacy designations of communities/hamlets/villages. I would say for Eric's purposes of geographic record, he could go with Ramara Twp given that both Brechin and Gamebridge are under Ramara's municipal administration. However, the one major distinction according to Deb is that Brechin has the best butter tarts on the planet.  

Maybe 2nd best as my grandmother doesn't live in Brechin. Ramara would certainly cover the location issue, as would the even more general Simcoe County.

[Wrangellian]

OK. Thanks again, guys.

I've found the info Ralph gave me - James Dick Quarry, Brechin - so I will go with "James Dick Quarry, Brechin/Gamebridge (Ramara Township)".

I guess I need to have Malcolm prep these for me someday, in order to get some IDs...

Crinus has Bobcaygeon for that specimen in the link I gave above. Which one should I go with? I'll put down both for the time being.

[minnbuckeye]

Not that it matters much. But I am a bit confused. Are there two James Dick Quarries?   When I look up James Dick, All I see is a quarry for recreational use in Caledon, 94 minute drive from Brechin.

James Dick Quarry - Caledon, Ontario - Beach, Sports .Cached

Address. 18119 Hurontario Street; Caledon, Ontario

 

 

Update Map Image

1 h 34 min (135.4 km)
via ON-400 N

[Kane]

9 minutes ago, minnbuckeye said:

Not that it matters much. But I am a bit confused. Are there two James Dick Quarries?  

They actually own and/or operate about 15 or more licensed quarries and pits: http://www.jamesdick.com/contact-us/

[crinus]

Ok, so here is my two American cents.

 

The first one look like Isorophusella  and could use some prep to be sure. That specimen has a possibility of being Bobcaygeon Fm., but I think it is Verulam.

 

The second specimen is also Isorophusella but now the matrix is starting to look like the Verulam of the '70/'80's.

 

The third specimen is Belochthus orthokalus  and the matrix is Verulam.

 

The fourth is Cryptogoleus chapmani  and it is Verulam.

 

As mentioned by someone else in the 1970's and '80's the top of the Jim Dick Quarry (then known as the Mara Quarry) in Gamebridge did yield thousands of edrio's from the very top layer of the quarry.  I actually collected those layers (yes, I am old).  The matrix was very distinct with many micro echinoderm pieces as you can see in the third specimen.  This is always a give away that it came from that layer at that time.  Once that layer was gone it was gone.  I have never seen it repeated in the quarry.  edrios were still found throughout the quarry but not like that one layer. That is why I think your first is also Verulam.

 

That is an error on my web page that I really need to fix. It has been wrong for a long time.  It should say Verulam and not Bobcaygeon.  In that specimen you can also see that very distinct Verulam layer that occured is ancient history (1970's).

Joe

[grandpa]

13 hours ago, Kane said:

They actually own and/or operate about 15 or more licensed quarries and pits

So, are ANY of them open to fossil collecting?