Jump to content

Rhynchosauroides trace (trackways) from Triassic in Pennsylvania


traveltip1

Recommended Posts

I found these Rhynchosauroides trace fossil trackways well-defined in the Triassic red bed sedimentary deposits in the Newark Basin in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Lincoln cent shows scale.

IMG_20200804_141625.jpg

  • I found this Informative 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

 

Only Americans know the size of the piece (of Lincoln or other character), don't use that ! We are a lot of foreigners on this forum. Nothing will ever be worth a rule in inches or centimetres to assess the size of the fossils. Otherwise, you can always give the size in the text of your message. And if you don’t have a rule, it’s easy to make one on cardboard to take your pictures.
 
Coco
  • I found this Informative 2

----------------------
OUTIL POUR MESURER VOS FOSSILES : ici

Ma bibliothèque PDF 1 (Poissons et sélaciens récents & fossiles) : ici
Ma bibliothèque PDF 2 (Animaux vivants - sans poissons ni sélaciens) : ici
Mâchoires sélaciennes récentes : ici
Hétérodontiques et sélaciens : ici
Oeufs sélaciens récents : ici
Otolithes de poissons récents ! ici

Un Greg...

Badges-IPFOTH.jpg.f4a8635cda47a3cc506743a8aabce700.jpg Badges-MOTM.jpg.461001e1a9db5dc29ca1c07a041a1a86.jpg

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very nice! Not easy to find those deposits

“...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin

Happy hunting,

Mason

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very cool!  
 

Not looking for specifics but as a lifelong South Jersey boy, I am curious what part of southeastern PA.... very generally speaking... you found those.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 7 months later...

Central Montgomery County is ichnite (tracks and footprints) fossil paradise (if you now where to look).  Here are some more, (all collected this year 2021) in the Perkiomen creek basin between Green Lane and Aracola.  The fossil bearing strata are red bed mudstones and v. fine grain sandstones.  Here's the geology and lithography for fellow fossil wonks:

 

Upper Triassic, Norian Period (~210 million years) Strata: Graters member of the Newark Supergroup, within the Passaic formation overlying the Lockatong formation. 

These mudstones are commonly associated with ripple marks and the desiccation cracks of drying silt banks.

 

Paleoenvironment: Revueltain Tetrapod fauna, found in Pangean lake basin, lake margins, or alluvial mud flats.  Most commonly found tetrapod ichnites include Rhynchosauroids,

Therapod grallators, and Atreipus (or related Ornithischian)  Most tracks range in size from that of a chicken peep to an adult crocodile.  Fossil producing beds are restricted to a

few distinct stata layers and can be challenging to locate--but are abundant in those layers.

 

Archosaur bone fragment.jpg

Atreipus.jpg

atrepius.jpg

grallator ichnite-sm.jpg

Norian grallator.jpg

Reptile track impression upper surface of track.jpg

Rhynchosaur Ichnite.jpg

rhynchosauroid 1.jpg

  • Enjoyed 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

40 minutes ago, Arwyn said:

Central Montgomery County is ichnite (tracks and footprints) fossil paradise (if you now where to look).  Here are some more, (all collected this year 2021) in the Perkiomen creek basin between Green Lane and Aracola.  The fossil bearing strata are red bed mudstones and v. fine grain sandstones.  Here's the geology and lithography for fellow fossil wonks:

 

Upper Triassic, Norian Period (~210 million years) Strata: Graters member of the Newark Supergroup, within the Passaic formation overlying the Lockatong formation. 

These mudstones are commonly associated with ripple marks and the desiccation cracks of drying silt banks.

 

Paleoenvironment: Revueltain Tetrapod fauna, found in Pangean lake basin, lake margins, or alluvial mud flats.  Most commonly found tetrapod ichnites include Rhynchosauroids,

Therapod grallators, and Atreipus (or related Ornithischian)  Most tracks range in size from that of a chicken peep to an adult crocodile.  Fossil producing beds are restricted to a

few distinct stata layers and can be challenging to locate--but are abundant in those layers.

 

Archosaur bone fragment.jpg

Atreipus.jpg

atrepius.jpg

grallator ichnite-sm.jpg

Norian grallator.jpg

Reptile track impression upper surface of track.jpg

Rhynchosaur Ichnite.jpg

rhynchosauroid 1.jpg

Very nice tracks! Congratulations and thanks for sharing them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very cool. Thanks for posting these.

I enjoy seeing  Triassic material from PA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

    Tim    VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

   MOTM.png.61350469b02f439fd4d5d77c2c69da85.png      PaleoPartner.png.30c01982e09b0cc0b7d9d6a7a21f56c6.png.a600039856933851eeea617ca3f2d15f.png     Postmaster1.jpg.900efa599049929531fa81981f028e24.jpg    VFOTM.png.f1b09c78bf88298b009b0da14ef44cf0.png  VFOTM APRIL - 2015  

__________________________________________________
"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."
John Muir ~ ~ ~ ~   ><))))( *>  About Me      

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very Cool! I grew up in East Greenville. I saw things like what you posted but never picked them up :DOH:. I saw the fossil tracks at the Limerick Nuclear Generating Station and dreamed of finding my own. When my parents moved away they dumped 5 Banana Boxes of fossil in the trash while I was at college. My only run in with the law in High School was getting chased out of the Hanes & Kibblehouse Quarry on the back road that ran up the hill from the base of the Green Lane Dam. 

“Beautiful is what we see. More beautiful is what we understand. Most beautiful is what we do not comprehend.” N. Steno

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, Arwyn said:

Central Montgomery County

Thought you meant Montgomery county MD for a hot second, was wondering what part of the geological map I missed!

“...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin

Happy hunting,

Mason

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Unfortunately the descriptive names of each fossil image did not carry over when I posted the pics---a little extra info always makes photo more interesting and sensible.

One of the pics was of a presumed archosaur bone fragment (much less common than ichnite impressions).  Bone fragments from ichnotype fossils are hard to identify in any case, so I just presumed it to be a fragment of an unidentifiable archosaur.  But a strikingly similiar looking fossil from Silesia Poland, dating to the upper Carboniferous, had me wondering if it might be a Nautaloid, (some genera survived the Permian extinction) so the area might have been beach front, brackish, tidal marshland.

 

Another photo hints at an archosaur with webbed footing.  Most of the larger imprints are tridactyl, usually with claw markings on one or more of the digits.  I think this impression was made by a phytosaur (a more unusual find). This group of archosaurs where ancestral to the crocodilians.

Archosaur bone fragment.jpg

web footed archeosaur.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...