Celebrating Veterans Day at the C&D Canal

[historianmichael 393]

I took advantage of the day off yesterday for Veterans Day to attempt to beat the rain with a quick stop at the Reedy Point spoils piles (Late Cretaceous; Mt. Laurel Formation) from the C&D Canal in Delaware. Unfortunately neither of those things came true - it began to rain about halfway through my visit and I collected there much longer than I expected. This was my first ever visit to the spoils piles since I have found very similar fossils before in Big Brook, which is a much closer drive for me. I didn't quite know what to expect when I arrived. What I thought were going to be large piles of dredge from the bottom of the canal turned out to be large fields covered in a layer of sandy gravel. Hence why my visit lasted much longer than I expected. For the good part of the morning and early afternoon, I scoured the area, mostly surface collecting with a little bit of sifting. I didn't find anything extraordinary, but the sheer size of the bivalve shells there was enough to make it a worthwhile trip. Notably I only ever found mostly complete shells - these bivalves must have been massive when alive!

 

There were quite a few fossils easily found just lying on the ground 

  

 

 

Here are my finds:

 

Gastropod Steinkern Pieces

 

I found two types of bryozoan on shell pieces

  

 

I was struck by the extent of boring by sponges (Cliona cretacica) on this shell 

 

I thought these worm tubes (Serpula implicata) were pretty cool, including one that extends from one side of the shell to the other side
  

 

The largest belemnite (Belemnitella americana) I found was about 7.2 cm, which is large but not as big as the 11.2 cm belemnite I found many years ago in Big Brook

 

Similar to the bivalves, some of the belemnites also exhibited traces of boring sponges

 

[historianmichael 393]

Ostrea falcata - the one on the bottom right is complete with both valves!

 

Exogrya costata - the big one at the top is about 10 cm wide!

 

Pycnodonte mutabilis - the largest one is about 11 cm wide!

 

 

My understanding is that each shell layer represents a new growth cycle - this would have been one old oyster!

 

 

 

[Tidgy's Dad 15,211]

Nice haul! 

Thanks for sharing.