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Took me a little while to post this trip report, I'm always a busy person. This trip is from October 3rd, 2020 in Ellsworth County, Kansas at a reservoir. The predominant formation at the site I visited is Kiowa formation; which is known for marsh and delta environments in the early Cretaceous (Albian). I found some interesting things and I'll show below.

 

Possibly some carbonized wood materials. Lignite or coal? It was flaky and would crumble if touched. It left some black powders on my hands after handling it. I found several large pieces of them together and partly encased in concretions. Putting them together would make them about a meter and half long.

 

Piece #1:

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Piece #2:

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Backside of #2. Notice the clutches of concretions.

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...continued on the next post.

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There are abundant of neat ichnofossils, mostly preserved burrows and ripple marks that was once part of the shallow sea floor.

 

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...continued on the next post.

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Those large slabs are mostly cone-in-cone structures and they are locally extreme abundant to the point they are actually a hindrance. Most of the fossiliferous layers are below the cone-in-cone structures layers.

 

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Sunset reminded me to go home. I am a little bit paranoid about driving in the dark because I had a couple bad experience involving a large animal-vehicle collision few years ago and I want to get home when I still can see easily. Luckily it's not a long drive.

 

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I only wanted a couple small samples of preserved worm burrows, so I found and took them home.

 

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8 hours ago, Darbi said:

Possibly some carbonized wood materials. Lignite or coal?

Yes, its coalified wood. Low-rank coal, maybe of lignite rank, but at least not higher than subbituminous rank.

Thanks for sharing, nice trace fossils!

Franz Bernhard

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14 hours ago, Praefectus said:

Nice pictures and cool fossils.

Thanks!

11 hours ago, Ludwigia said:

Thanks for the report and the cool photos.

Thanks!

9 hours ago, FranzBernhard said:

Yes, its coalified wood. Low-rank coal, maybe of lignite rank, but at least not higher than subbituminous rank.

Thanks for sharing, nice trace fossils!

Franz Bernhard

I'm glad you were able to confirm it, thanks!

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