New Mexico/Texas/Mississippi fossil road trip

[phish92129]

Hello everyone,

 

I am pretty new to the fossil hunting game, mostly just picking up a few shells or leaf imprints when I am out hiking but when I returned to school in Florida I started to get a bit more interested in actually researching and exploring with the intention of fossil hunting.  On the drive back to Florida from Denver I decided to break the trip up into 6-8 hour drive days and camp while hitting some fossil opportunities.  Also it kept me fairly isolated with Covid restrictions.  With that in mind I planned a route to hit a few different sites:

 

Quay County, NM has reports of phytosaur teeth although I was mostly hiking at this locale.  Lots of literature on the area with some nebulous directions, I puddled around on a small streambed I scouted out prior to the trip and ended up finding a fossilized vertebra which I will call a phytosaur based on its size and reports that the area appears to host these species almost exclusively.  I was a little out of my element and spent a bit more time hiking and enjoying the West side of the US while camping at the free Mills Canyon Rim Campground which I enjoyed very much. 

 

Mineral Wells and Jacksboro Fossil sites, TX - well known sites that I spent a bit of time at.  Pretty much every other fossil I found on this trip came from these areas.  I made a mistake and passed up my planned campground at Kiowa instead staying at Possum Kingdom campground because the reviews were good and was sorely disappointed.  The area is very built up and it is more of a place to bring a boat and an RV than what I wanted.  But never know unless you try, there is a nicer campground at Fort Richardson near the Jacksboro locality I would recommend instead.  Found a few different specimens including an intact crinoid cup, a small trilobite, and some other common specimens.  Embarrassingly while at mineral wells I found what I initially took to be a trilobite in Matrix and was incredibly excited as it was by far the most distinguished find there.  Fast forward to being home I cleaned the specimen and started trying to id it only to find that it didn't really fit any description...then I gave it a quick lick and discovered that it was very much still organic and warm so I have included a picture if someone wants to tell me what strange bug eggs or cocoon I likely licked.  100% not a fossil though as it started to ooze once squeezed.

 

North Sulfur River, TX - Flooded and rained out so passed it up largely because I didn't want to try camping after wading in freezing water all day.  Campground is listed under freecampgrounds and is on the Ladonia Wildlife Area.  I'll hit this site on the way back.

 

Mississippi 'Red Hot Truck Stop' Locality, MS - No luck here either although I didn't put in much effort, the campground I selected was closed so I spent a night in the back of my car and felt like getting back to Pensacola.  In retrospect, I should have spent more time touring around this area but the Red Hot Truck Stop is now a Walmart parking lot and I didn't really feel like poking around that area after spending the past week hiking around some of the areas out West. 

 

So overall, a mixed success trip but, like I said I was more looking for a good way to split up a drive back home and my experience is pretty limited.  I've included pictures of the specimens I found with labels, if anyone from the areas wants to correct them please feel free, I am sure that many of them are wrong.  If you would like a better picture of a specimen just let me know.  

 

A: Phytosaur Vertebra

B: Assorted Crinoid Discs

C: Chonetinella sp. - Brachiopoda

D: Ditomopyge sp. - Arthropoda

E. Bactrites sp. - Mollusca...some sort of orthoconic nautiloid

 

[phish92129]

F - Punctospirifer sp. - Brachiopod

G - Palaecis sp. - Cnidaria

H - Tabulibora sp. - Bryozoa

I - Archaeocidararis sp. Plate - Echinodermata

J - Mollusca?  Brachiapoda?  Mud?

K - Bryozoan un. 

[PFOOLEY]

Heckuva road trip...I've always wanted to get over to Quay, Co.

 

You licked a praying mantis egg case.

[phish92129]

L - Lophophyllidium plummeri - Cnidaria

M - Lophophyllidium plummeri - Cnidaria

N -  Lophophyllidium spinosum - Cnidaria

O - Rugobactrites sp. - Mollusca

P - Worthenia Tabulata - Mollusca

Q - Shansiella beckwithana - Mollusca

R- Trepospina sp. - Mollusca

S - Gastropoda spp.

T - Meekospina choctawensis - Mollusca

U - Histriculina sp. - Brachiopoda

V - Domatoceras sp. - Mollusca

W - Paleoldia sp. - Mollusca

X - Condrathyris sp. - Brachiopoda

Y - Metacoceras sp. Gastropod

Z - Brachiopod un or mollusca un

Alpha - Bellerophon sp. - Mollusca

Beta -  Crinoid Cup 

Gamma - Straparollus sp. - Mollusca

Delta - Kozlowskia sp. - Brachiopod

[phish92129]

22 minutes ago, PFOOLEY said:

Heckuva road trip...I've always wanted to get over to Quay, Co.

 

You licked a praying mantis egg case.

Fantastic, glad to put that question to rest, my friends and I will have a great laugh at my expense when I tell them.

 

Also Quay county was very nice but I wish I had been able to find some better areas to roam, lots of barbed wire.

Edited January 8, 2021 by phish92129
More detail about quay county

[erose]

5 hours ago, PFOOLEY said:

Heckuva road trip...I've always wanted to get over to Quay, Co.

 

You licked a praying mantis egg case.

Oh, and they haven't hatched yet. Put it out in your garden for next spring.  If you keep it inside they will hatch early and you'll have hundreds of tiny mantids all ov er the place.

 

[Clint08]

Sounds like a fun trip. Licking the thought to be fossil had me cracking up. Thanks for sharing!

[jpc]

look like fun.  We need more closer shots of the Quay Co bone to ID it. 

 

I don't mean to be a nag, but I do this in the name of public education.  Did you actually get permission from anyone in Quay Co?  As someone who collects a lot of vertebrate fossils in the west, I can assure you that collecting them on BLM land (very little in Quay Co) is illegal without a permit, and that if you collect on private lands, you'd best have the landowner's permission.  I drove through there a few years ago, and  it does look really good... lots of Triassic outcrops.  But random trespassing is a good way to make private land unavailable to all of us.  

 

End of rant.

 

[phish92129]

28 minutes ago, jpc said:

look like fun.  We need more closer shots of the Quay Co bone to ID it. 

 

I don't mean to be a nag, but I do this in the name of public education.  Did you actually get permission from anyone in Quay Co?  As someone who collects a lot of vertebrate fossils in the west, I can assure you that collecting them on BLM land (very little in Quay Co) is illegal without a permit, and that if you collect on private lands, you'd best have the landowner's permission.  I drove through there a few years ago, and  it does look really good... lots of Triassic outcrops.  But random trespassing is a good way to make private land unavailable to all of us.  

 

End of rant.

 

That is a totally fair point, I am fairly certain that I avoided private land which was a worry I had when looking at sites but I did collect on BLM land.  When I was researching I found a site that said National Forest Service land was off limits for vertebrate fossil collection but the next site down on google confirms you are right about BLM land.  Do you know if there is a place to mail the fossil?  If there's a place that would like it I certainly don't need it, especially if it wasn't a legal collection. 

[FossilDAWG]

I'm afraid the old Red Hot Truck Stop has been defunct for several years now.  When the Walmart was being build they allowed the American Museum of Natural History to do a lot of "salvage paleontology" as the building foundations and lot were being dug up, and several important publications resulted.  There is a tiny area off to one side that was "preserved" as a geological reference, and you can see the giant concretions ("Bashi boulders") from the base of the Bashi Formation.  The area is posted, though.  Nevertheless you can see where people have dug underneath the boulders to get at the fossil-bearing shell hash.  That seems reckless to me (as well as trespassing) as the boulders weigh several tons and will come down, crushing the hapless collector, if undermined any further.

 

Don