More midwest mischief 5-1-2021

[Jackson g]

So to start the month of May off, I decided to go out and spend my Saturday fossil hunting. The water has been really high lately, so that's put a delay on my usual weekly walks. I decided to go to my favorite creek that has exposed Burlington Formation chert.

 

It doesn't look like much fun, but I sure enjoy walking it. The water was higher than I wanted, but it was searchable so I spent about 3 hours here, and didn't really find all that much today worth taking home here. Most of the good stuff I've found there requires splitting chert, which I didn't partake in today. I only took two spiriferid brachiopods home, although one did have some druzy brachidium perserved which was nice.

Here are those two clean up:

A nice spiriferid internal mold

 

Lovely golden spirals

 

After leaving the creek, I decided to go by my favorite arm of Truman Lake, and boy was it poppin today! Out of the 20 vehicles parked there, of course I was the only one fossil hunting. A lot of the nice crinoidal layer was unfortunately still submerged underwater, so I spent my focus on where the weathered chert layer met the top of the encrinite layer. Twenty minutes of walking, and I was there. This was all underwater for about the past month, so I was very excited to start my search.

 

I believe this is my first Burlington Formation hunt where I don't have any nice crinoids to share, as it ended up being the day of the Deltodus. I remembered to take some in-situ shots of some too! The first I found was very hard to miss due to the color. A big, very fresh find!

 

The second find wasn't so lucky. Only a partial, which is still pretty rare. These porous toothplates don't last long to the elements. Who took the rest of it, the bug there or the weather? 

 

And another big one! Feel free to try and find the next few in the in-situ photos!

 

They just kept popping up! A smaller partial, but still nice in my book.

 

I'll admit I got lucky on this next one.

 

The bottom of that toothplate was caked in some red muddy clay. If I didn't think to flip that one over, I would've missed it. The shape looked odd though, so I did. The clay is annoying!

 

If you thought that's all I'd find, think again! Here are a few other goodies I grabbed. A nice platyceras gastropod. Looks like it will prep out nice.

 

A nice terebratulid brachiopod plate. The one in the center has its brachial apparatus (small loop) preserved. Very nice! (Borat voice)! Should prep out to be amazing if the loop is perserved in the other brachiopod.

 

Funny enough the only crinoid I found was a small steinkern from the chert layer that was almost about to pop out of the rock. I picked it up and dropped the piece, and out came the steinkern. As I went to take a photo of it, my keen eye noticed something in the background of the shot.

 

A beautiful Burlington arrowhead! 

 

I picked up that treat, and wrapped it up immediately. As I thought about all the great things I had found today, I decided that was enough for today and it was time to head back to the car. Cleaned up finds will follow shortly!

[connorp]

Great finds! Those are some really nice crusher plates.

[Jackson g]

And it was complete as I thought!

Terebratulid brachiopod with brachial apparatus (small loop)

 

Deltodus crushing toothplates

Partials:

 

Big, complete plates:

 

Does anybody know if these plates where located on different sides of the jaw?

Left plate is 1 inch, right plate is 1.1 inches in length 

 

Platyceras gastropod 

 

Burlington chert arrowhead 

 

Edited May 2, 2021 by Jackson g

[Jackson g]

16 minutes ago, connorp said:

Great finds! Those are some really nice crusher plates.

Thanks, finding 4 rare plates in one day is my new record. I sure am setting the bar high for next time!

[Ludwigia]

Congrats on those Deltodus finds! And the arrowhead is the icing on the cake.

[Tidgy's Dad]

That Platyceras is gorgeous. 

[bthemoose]

Very nice Deltodus plates!