confusing paleontology article

[hadrosauridae]

Well, in my research to find a fossiliferous bed near me I have been struggling with the geology, and spending days driving around observing, taking notes and pics.  Well, I just found a published paper from one of the original paleontologists.  In it, he lists the location of each outcrop, but this leads to more confusion.  When I track the T,R,S locations listed, there is nothing there.  Every promising site I found while scouting is clearly visible on satellite mapping. When I look up the listed spots, I find NOTHING.  It's just plowed farmland.  I find zero evidence of buttes, mesas, draws, cuts or anything that could be an exposure of the formation.   I've obviously got to do some more "boots on the ground" stuff, but I'm not feeling hopeful for the listed sites.  Maybe I'll start by investigating any outcrops closest to the listed locations.

 

 

[connorp]

How old is the article? Many localities are lost over time, especially in populated areas.

[DPS Ammonite]

23 minutes ago, hadrosauridae said:

When I track the T,R,S locations listed, there is nothing there.  Every promising site I found while scouting is clearly visible on satellite mapping. When I look up the listed spots, I find NOTHING.  It's just plowed farmland.  I find zero evidence of buttes, mesas, draws, cuts or anything that could be an exposure of the formation. 

Are you looking for the fractions of sections correctly? You sort of have to read the descriptions from right to left. 

 

To read “N 1/2 SE 1/4 SW 1/4, S24, T32N, R18E” you first find section 24 using the guides of township 32 north and range 18 east. Find the southwest quarter of section 24. Then find the southeast quarter of the southwest quarter. Lastly find the north half of the southeast quarter. 
 

https://dnr.wi.gov/topic/forestmanagement/documents/plsstutorial.pdf

[hadrosauridae]

Yeah, I understand the township mapping, I'm just saying when I pull up the satellite imagery for the specified locations, I'm not finding anything.  There are some nearby (within a few miles) promising spots in the imagery however.  At least this may put me closer to the right outcrop.

[hadrosauridae]

38 minutes ago, connorp said:

How old is the article? Many localities are lost over time, especially in populated areas.

1940s.  yeah I thought about over building at the primary site listed, but that doesnt explain the others which are in the middle of un-populated countryside.

[connorp]

11 minutes ago, hadrosauridae said:

1940s.  yeah I thought about over building at the primary site listed, but that doesnt explain the others which are in the middle of un-populated countryside.

Assuming you have the correct locations, the outcrops may have just been destroyed for farm land. I've seen this a lot in both MI and IL – an old paper describes a promising outcrop, but when I look in the vicinity of the listed location on Google Earth, there's nothing but acres and acres of farmland.

[hadrosauridae]

14 minutes ago, connorp said:

Assuming you have the correct locations, the outcrops may have just been destroyed for farm land. I've seen this a lot in both MI and IL – an old paper describes a promising outcrop, but when I look in the vicinity of the listed location on Google Earth, there's nothing but acres and acres of farmland.

well, that would be disappointing.  Might explain why no further excavations have been done in 50 years.

[Pumpkinhead]

If its from the 1940s than the original outcrops being destroyed is very plausible

[connorp]

2 minutes ago, hadrosauridae said:

well, that would be disappointing.  Might explain why no further excavations have been done in 50 years.

So it goes. Many many important sites have been lost due to human activity.

[RuMert]

Sites tend to get covered  with soil and vegetation , landslides, dumps, farmland, housing, get flooded etc. We've lost a lot of them recently, stratotypes included

[Norki]

Best you can really do in this situation is to check out whatever outcrops are closest to the indicated site. Like you've already mentioned, satellite images can be useful for this.

[FossilDAWG]

Does the paper have any description of the outcrop besides the map coordinates?  Often the outcrop might be small, just a tiny exposure in a ditch or creek for example.  You would never see that on Google Earth.  Of course such outcrops tend to come and go.  Also the map coordinate system is the best they could do at the time, but it only narrows down the location to somewhere within a square that is 1/8 or 1/2 mile on a side, which is huge if the outcrop is only a few yards long.  On the ground searching is needed and still you may never find the exact site.

 

Don

[FranzBernhard]

47 minutes ago, FossilDAWG said:

Does the paper have any description of the outcrop besides the map coordinates?  Often the outcrop might be small, just a tiny exposure in a ditch or creek for example.  You would never see that on Google Earth.  Of course such outcrops tend to come and go.  Also the map coordinate system is the best they could do at the time, but it only narrows down the location to somewhere within a square that is 1/8 or 1/2 mile on a side, which is huge if the outcrop is only a few yards long.  On the ground searching is needed and still you may never find the exact site.

Every word is so true!!

Yes, outcrops go, but they come again, especially in creeks.

Even detailed ALS is not good enough to see small outcrops. If you see a small bump on an ALS map, you still don´t know if its just a heap of gravel, a large fallen tree (with fresh outcrop below the tree trunk?) or indeed an outcrop. And productivity does not depend on outcrop size. 

You can choose more prospective areas (= higher probability of outcrops) with satellite or similar imagery, but you can never be sure (except for big features, of course).

Just an example: In this ALS-map, the productive outcrop is at the tip of the green arrow, along a track. There are good outcrops in the nearby creeks, of course, but not productive ones. 

Again: Good luck!!

Franz Bernhard

[hadrosauridae]

41 minutes ago, FossilDAWG said:

Does the paper have any description of the outcrop besides the map coordinates?  Often the outcrop might be small, just a tiny exposure in a ditch or creek for example.  You would never see that on Google Earth.  Of course such outcrops tend to come and go.  Also the map coordinate system is the best they could do at the time, but it only narrows down the location to somewhere within a square that is 1/8 or 1/2 mile on a side, which is huge if the outcrop is only a few yards long.  On the ground searching is needed and still you may never find the exact site.

 

Don

Only very briefly with the fossil bearing layer description and thickness.  The majority of the article is about the descriptions of the fossils.   You're right, it could be from a tiny exposure that isnt identifiable from satellite.

[jpc]

11 hours ago, hadrosauridae said:

Yeah, I understand the township mapping, I'm just saying when I pull up the satellite imagery for the specified locations, I'm not finding anything.  There are some nearby (within a few miles) promising spots in the imagery however.  At least this may put me closer to the right outcrop.

Are you using some sort of satellite image that actually shows township and range?  If so I would love to hear about it.  If not, things could be getting mixed up in translation.  Meanwhile, this exploring maps is part of the fun.

[hadrosauridae]

45 minutes ago, jpc said:

Are you using some sort of satellite image that actually shows township and range?  If so I would love to hear about it.  If not, things could be getting mixed up in translation.  Meanwhile, this exploring maps is part of the fun.

No, using hard copy maps to locate then counting mile sections up/over/etc from a nearby identifiable feature such as highway intersections, then following the same count on the google-earth views.  I WISH T-R-S description was available on GE! 

[hadrosauridae]

2 hours ago, FranzBernhard said:

Every word is so true!!

Yes, outcrops go, but they come again, especially in creeks.

Even detailed ALS is not good enough to see small outcrops. If you see a small bump on an ALS map, you still don´t know if its just a heap of gravel, a large fallen tree (with fresh outcrop below the tree trunk?) or indeed an outcrop. And productivity does not depend on outcrop size. 

You can choose more prospective areas (= higher probability of outcrops) with satellite or similar imagery, but you can never be sure (except for big features, of course).

Just an example: In this ALS-map, the productive outcrop is at the tip of the green arrow, along a track. There are good outcrops in the nearby creeks, of course, but not productive ones. 

Again: Good luck!!

Franz Bernhard

OK, you're going to have to define ALS mapping, because when I search that term, I only get results for the disease ALS

[FranzBernhard]

Didn´t know, that ALS is a disease!

Its Airborne Laser Scanning:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar

 

Nothing of that kind available to the public in the US? You can not get full resolution for free here in Styria, but the free version is good enough for personal use :

 

If someone wants to play around:

Digital Atlas of Styria

 

Franz Bernhard

[hadrosauridae]

oh, lidar maps.  OK I understand now.  Sadly, I have never been able to find any for my area.

[Mark Kmiecik]

8 hours ago, FossilDAWG said:

it only narrows down the location to somewhere within a square that is 1/8 or 1/2 mile on a side, which is huge if the outcrop is only a few yards long.

Exactly, plus many roads have moved over the years to places that are better suited as road beds. The road may have had curves straightened or removed, or just been moved over a some distance for economical reasons. Some have entirely disappeared, others have been renamed, etc. I have seen this many times over the course of my life. Lots of roads that used to go right through the heart of all the small towns along the way back in the day when they were one lane in each direction, have been rerouted so they no longer go through town. The roadcut may still be there but now the road is known as "old route 53" or something to that effect. In the last 60 years I guesstimate that this has happened to close to 30 percent of all roads in this country.

[Nimravis]

You should check out a site called Historic Aerials, I use it to purchase old aerial views of fossil sites for Mazon Creek fossils. Some of the views go back to the 40’s and can show you how the area looked at that time. The site has the ability to pull up a current satellite view of the area in question and the by using a slide bar on your screen you can move from that view to an older aerial view, it is really nice. You do not have to make a purchase to you the site, but the company name is all over the screen when viewing. If you do purchase a particular view, like I have several times in the past, it gets downloaded to your computer. Recently I looked at a current satellite view of my house and I live in a suburb of Chicago that is very populated and I also picked a view from about 40-50 years ago and the only thing that was around was 1 farmhouse. Illinois and Iowa are very well covered with old aerial photos, I believe they may have been used for information on crops, but I could be mistaken. Either way, it is a great site to use to check out road cuts, etc.

 

Hear are 3 examples that I purchased showing the same exact area from different times. You can zoom in closer if you wanted too, I wanted these exact pictures for specific areas at Pit 11- Tipple Area.

 

[FossilNerd]

7 hours ago, Nimravis said:

Hear are 3 examples that I purchased showing the same exact area from different times

It’s wild to see how a landscape can change so much in such a little time. 
I have a historical aerial picture of my grandparents farm from the 70’s. Totally different than the shot of today.

[Shamalama]

This has turned into a good topic on long lost sites. Just yesterday I was lamenting the fact that a couple of type sections for rock formations, and the fossils contained within, in Pennsylvania are gone now due to overgrowth, erosion, and urbanization.  I've found that older literature will make reference to an outcrop which, in my experience, is often a small exposure of rock, not a huge road cut. Even old road cuts that are referenced in field guides might have been shallow exposures of just a few feet high and they get weathered and grown over quickly.  Sometimes they get reworked as a road is widened and the DOT will grade and cover the slope to prevent erosion onto the road thus eliminating the rock exposure.

 

I use Google Earth's historical imagery and terrain features to locate old and new road cuts then look at the geological maps to narrow down what is exposed.  The site that @Nimravis suggested might be another good resource. And then there are the old USGS topo maps that will note quarry locations, some of which get filled in or re-purposed as ponds.

[FossilNerd]

On 2/12/2020 at 7:47 AM, FossilDAWG said:

Often the outcrop might be small, just a tiny exposure in a ditch or creek for example. 

I can attest to this. One of my favorite road cuts is over 1/2 mile long, but the fossil bearing layer is only exposed in around 50 ft of that. Not a small exposure, but small in relation to the entire cut. Depending on where you park, you could find nothing, or a very productive spot.

[hadrosauridae]

Thank you to everyone who has replied!  You have given me a lot of things to consider and to look deeper into as I try to find this formation outcrop.