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Weekend Ordovician Galena Hunt


connorp

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This weekend I had the opportunity to spend a couple hours hunting in the Galena Group (Upper Ordovician) in northern Illinois. The Galena around here is mostly massive dolomite, so most fossils are preserved as molds. Mollusks dominate the fauna, especially gastropods, although other interesting specimens crop up from time to time.

 

Burrows

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A large orthoconic nautiloid

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Fisherites are fairly common in some beds, although extracting complete specimens is challenging.

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Thaleops sp.

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Some better gastropod examples

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Interesting minerals can be found, such as these pyrite crystals.

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Fisherites

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On occasion, fossils with remnants of their original shells do show up. The most common seems to be Pseudolingula.

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The best find of the day was this conulariid. I have never found a conulariid in the Galena before, so it was quite a surprise.

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And that's all. Hope you enjoyed!

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Very nice.

Love that Fisherites. 

And the conulariid is really special.

Edited by Tidgy's Dad
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Life's Good!

Tortoise Friend.

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Welcome to the conulariid club Connor! :yay-smiley-1:

 

Your other finds are nice as well. The Ordovician rarely disappoints! :) 

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.  -Neil deGrasse Tyson

 

Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't. -Bill Nye (The Science Guy)

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2 hours ago, Bev said:

Great job! And yes I enjoyed the pics!  :-D  Thank you!  :-D

Thanks Bev. Really makes me want to get up to Fillmore County this summer. The Galena up there is much nicer.

 

2 hours ago, FossilNerd said:

Welcome to the conulariid club Connor! :yay-smiley-1:

 

Your other finds are nice as well. The Ordovician rarely disappoints! :) 

Glad to finally be a club member :)

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Very nice!

 

Tammy and I just pulled into Galena on our first post-pandemic vacation with family. Might find a chance to get out and snoop around at the rock formations in the area to see if there are any fossils showing. Nice to be able to use the forum as a resource to know what to expect in the area. ;)

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

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24 minutes ago, digit said:

Very nice!

 

Tammy and I just pulled into Galena on our first post-pandemic vacation with family. Might find a chance to get out and snoop around at the rock formations in the area to see if there are any fossils showing. Nice to be able to use the forum as a resource to know what to expect in the area. ;)

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

If you have the time you'd have much better success around Dubuque. The Graf cephalopod beds are around 40 minutes from Galena and a must-see. There are also some Maquoketa sites 20-30 minutes both east and west of Galena I could point you to, although I have not stopped at any and don't know how productive they are.

 

The Galena Group around here is frustrating to hunt. It is by and large the most extensively exposed Ordovician unit in northern Illinois; there are many roadcuts along most major roads north and west of Rockford. But you need to either break rock or have a ton of rock to search through to find much of anything, which makes roadcuts not very viable. That's why I only really get a chance once a year to collect in it when my club takes a quarry trip.

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Thanks for the intel--I figured I'd check on the forum to see if anybody else had been hunting in the Galena area only to find you here this weekend. ;)

 

I drove by a number of tempting roadcuts that I eyed longingly on the ride out from the Chicago area. Even if they were sterile beds I like to imagine their being fossils there.

 

If chances of success checking random exposures in the general Galena area are likely to be limited then I won't bother poking around any. We won't be able to access any quarries on our own and I can live without filling the back of the car with rocks (for now). On our return trip to Florida we are stopping in to visit friends in Asheville, NC and we will be visiting a nice roadcut in Indiana to see if we can find some nice blastoids. I've have a lust for them for years--they are just do damn cute and pentagonal. :P

 

Hope you had a great weekend rockhounding--drive safe!

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11 minutes ago, digit said:

we will be visiting a nice roadcut in Indiana to see if we can find some nice blastoids

Sulphur? If so it's a nice site. The productive beds are about 2/3 of the way up in shaley layers. Watch out for ticks, they are bad there in the summer!

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Thanks for the confirmation on all points. I've purchased some DEET. If I can survive Mazon Creek in the summer I'll not be sucked dry by ticks at Sulphur. ;)

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

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