historianmichael Posted January 3, 2022 Share Posted January 3, 2022 Over the winter holidays I took advantage of the time I had off from work to go on a nine-day fossil collecting road trip through Mississippi and Alabama. Last week, while collecting at an exposure of the Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) Prairie Bluff Chalk in Alabama, I stumbled upon a fragment of a cidarid echinoid with six associated plates. After some research that night from my hotel room did not provide an identification, I sent an email to George Phillips, the paleontology curator at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, asking for help. What I initially thought was just a cool find turned out to be one much more significant. In his email response, George told me that associated cidaroid plates are quite rare and that in the museum's entire collection, they have only two examples of plates attached as pairs. He said that until then he had never seen one more complete than the one I had found. He further explained that the common Maastrichtian cidaroid of the Gulf Coastal Plain had only been known from isolated plates and spines as either of two genuses and that he strongly believed that this specimen could be enough to finally identify the cidaroid to genus level. Given the importance of the find, I was happy to donate the specimen to George and the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science for further study and publication in a future paper on Maastrichtian echinoids of the Gulf Coastal Plain. 9 7 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! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnJ Posted January 3, 2022 Share Posted January 3, 2022 Excellent discovery and contribution, Michael. Congrats. 1 The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true. - JJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digit Posted January 3, 2022 Share Posted January 3, 2022 Very very cool! Another great example of avocational fossil hunters having contacts with the professional world and being able to further knowledge. Cheers. -Ken Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
connorp Posted January 3, 2022 Share Posted January 3, 2022 Neat find and contribution! Also, nine days wow, sounds like a blast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Dente Posted January 3, 2022 Share Posted January 3, 2022 Nice. Makes me wonder if this is the same species we find in the Maastrichtian of North Carolina. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
old bones Posted January 3, 2022 Share Posted January 3, 2022 Excellent find and outcome! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Siphuncle Posted January 3, 2022 Share Posted January 3, 2022 Very cool. I’ve found similar in the Maas of TX. 1 Grüße, Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas "To the motivated go the spoils." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffrey P Posted January 3, 2022 Share Posted January 3, 2022 Big congrats Michael on your find and contribution. It sounds like your 9 day trip was very productive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FossilNerd Posted January 3, 2022 Share Posted January 3, 2022 Awesome find and contribution to science! Congrats and kudos! 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) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sixgill pete Posted January 3, 2022 Share Posted January 3, 2022 Congrats! Bulldozers and dirt Bulldozers and dirt behind the trailer, my desert Them red clay piles are heaven on earth I get my rocks off, bulldozers and dirt Patterson Hood; Drive-By Truckers May 2016 May 2012 Aug 2013, May 2016, Apr 2020 Oct 2022 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClearLake Posted January 3, 2022 Share Posted January 3, 2022 Very neat! Good job! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sjfriend Posted January 8, 2022 Share Posted January 8, 2022 This is why this forum / internet access is so good. So many finds would go unrecognized without ways to check our finds when we are not familiar with them. Great find! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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