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An Autumn Road Trip


minnbuckeye

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In September, the desire to collect the Burlington Formation, Mississippian of Iowa got the best of me, “forced” my truck to make a little road trip down that way. The trip was about 4 hours, necessitating an overnight stay. Covid was running rampant, compelling me to sleep in the back of my pickup and eat out of a cooler full of food instead of motels and restaurants. This left a 64 year old man a bit stiff in the morning. The nice thing about the Burlington, it did not tax my body too much, allowing me hunt my allotted 8 hours with ease. Normally the Burlington is searched for crinoid specimens, but on this trip, my goal was to find the fish layer and come home with shark specimens to prep out. Success was had and I even stumbled on a few nice crinoids too, as a forum member found out The stark contrast of the dark fish parts can be seen against the whitish matrix FULL of crinoidal debris in this chunk.  

 

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Extracting the teeth was very difficult due to their fragile nature. Many nice specimens were ruined as a result of my inadequate techniques. But I am proud of what I salvaged! After completing my preps, I placed the teeth in some plastic sleeves. However, I developed such a liking to the teeth that I couldn’t just bag them and file them away in my barn. So I decided to make an Iowa tooth display out of them, something that I can hopefully use on occasion for educational purposes. The result of my project is shown in the next photo. I used a red blanket from under the Christmas tree as a background.   

 

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 Not sure I like the Santa red so included another without it. Plus, as always, I forgot a scale!!

 

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Now I will show closeups of most specimens and attempt a CRUDE ID on them. First Cladodus??? 

 

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Next, Deltodus or possibly Sandalodus.  

 

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Then Chomatodus??  

 

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 Then Helodus?? 

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 Finally some unknowns.

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Thanks for looking and I hope you enjoy these as much as I do!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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WOW! 

I didn't realize that you could find so many teeth in that formation or from so many different species, I thought they were really rare. 

Just that layer, I guess you have to know where to look. 

Lovely finds, Mike. :b_love1:

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Life's Good!

Tortoise Friend.

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18 minutes ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

I guess you have to know where to look.

Thanks for the compliments. It has taken me 5 trips to the Burlington to understand the layer. Then it helps to have gotten to know someone for access purposes. 

 

PS, 

The matrix is full of little black "specks". Too small for my eyes. I took the time to extract 3 full test tubes . If anyone wants to look at this stuff, I will mail you a tube. It may or may not contain anything worthy of saving. All I would ask is to post any specimens so I will know if it is worth my future time keeping the small black material in the matrix. Just let me know.

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The variety of teeth in just one block is incredible! Nice find! 

Follow me on Instagram (@fossil_mike) to check out my personal collection of fossils collected and acquired over more than 15 years of fossil hunting!

 

 

 

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11 hours ago, historianmichael said:

in just one block 

 @historianmichael Sorry to mislead you. I had about 3 five gallon buckets full of material that produced the shown fossils and quite a few more.. I still have the pictured block intact and might leave it that way.

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Just now, minnbuckeye said:

 @historianmichael Sorry to mislead you. I had about 3 five gallon buckets full of material that produced the shown fossils and quite a few more.. I still have the pictured block intact and might leave it that way.

I apologies :DOH: Still some awesome finds, even if it took some effort to collect them all. 

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Follow me on Instagram (@fossil_mike) to check out my personal collection of fossils collected and acquired over more than 15 years of fossil hunting!

 

 

 

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32 minutes ago, minnbuckeye said:

@jpc, Yours is in the mail already. So should get there by Groundhogs Day!

Thanks.  New Year or Groundhog Day... I can't wait.  

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I'm not used to seeing so many Paleozoic teeth from one collecting trip. Most other places these would be super rare. Congratulations on a collecting trip that was well worth the big effort and thanks for sharing it with us. 

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Thanks everyone for the great comments. I will just have to see after the ground thaws next year if I can outdo this year's haul!

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  • 1 month later...
On 12/20/2020 at 9:43 PM, minnbuckeye said:

I had about 3 five gallon buckets full of material

This one makes me smile. I have a place I visit where I'm bringing back entire boulders to pick through at home.

Fossils of Parks Township - ResearchCatalog | How-to Make High-Contrast Photos

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I missed this thread in December, what a delightful assemblage of teeth! And so dense in the matrix- I love the stark black on white contrast typical of this formation. I still struggle to identify a lot of my Pennsylvanian teeth, too.

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