An Ephemeral Mazon Creek Site

[connorp]

A couple months ago I received a message from a friend letting me know of an opportunity to collect a usually inaccessible Mazon Creek site. The area used to be a popular with collectors but has since been reclaimed as a subdivision. A house was finally being built on one of the last undeveloped lots, and this meant spoil piles while the foundation was being laid. I initially planned to go later in the week, but instead decided to wake up early the next day and drive down. This ended up being a lucky decision, as the foundation was filled that very next night. The site was not superbly productive - I only gathered about a gallon of concretions for the two hours I was there. I have finally finished processing them, and although I did not find anything super rare, I am still thrilled to be able to add specimens from this site to my collection.

 

The site

 

Some in situ concretions

 

 

Here are the finds I kept. Most of the other concretions were blanks or had poor quality plant bits.

 

Annularia inflata

 

Annularia radiata

 

Radicites columnaris (an indeterminate root)

 

A nice three-dimensional Myalinella meeki bivalve

[deutscheben]

I'm glad you found a few identifiable things, and that Myalinella is definitely well-preserved. Thanks for posting the report! 

[Crusty_Crab]

Good on you to recover what you can! Here in California, there is the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). I understand the "environment" has become a politically loaded word, but CEQA is far reaching and one of the criterion is archaeological and paleontological resources. In an area with known or suspected paleontological resources, a paleontological monitor (a trained paleontologist) will be assigned as a monitor, to watch the excavations and stop work to ensure that any fossils uncovered are recovered and documented prior to restart of work. I'm not familiar with other state laws but I understand that few other states have adopted the CEQA framework. In states that have not, amateur volunteers fill that void on their own dime, but it is haphazard. As part of the CEQA permitting process, the fossils that are uncovered go to qualified repositories (museums). In other states, that is obviously not the case. Anyway, thanks for fulfilling that vital role and reporting your finds!  

[Sjfriend]

On 1/5/2022 at 9:19 AM, Crusty_Crab said:

Good on you to recover what you can! Here in California, there is the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). I understand the "environment" has become a politically loaded word, but CEQA is far reaching and one of the criterion is archaeological and paleontological resources. In an area with known or suspected paleontological resources, a paleontological monitor (a trained paleontologist) will be assigned as a monitor, to watch the excavations and stop work to ensure that any fossils uncovered are recovered and documented prior to restart of work. I'm not familiar with other state laws but I understand that few other states have adopted the CEQA framework. In states that have not, amateur volunteers fill that void on their own dime, but it is haphazard. As part of the CEQA permitting process, the fossils that are uncovered go to qualified repositories (museums). In other states, that is obviously not the case. Anyway, thanks for fulfilling that vital role and reporting your finds!  

Too bad this wasn't followed when a bunch of houses were built near Roseville / Granite Bay about 20 years ago. Maybe they just decided they didn't need more if it?? I ended up finding the area one day for work and went back numerous times before the last house was put in. Every ditch and foundation dug pulled up petrified wood from the Ione formation. At one point someone had a pool put in and the hole uncovered a log at least 18ft long. Unfortunately they already had the wire form installed and the concrete truck was coming the next day I still managed to haul out over 300 pounds of wood. biggest was a short log section about 90 pounds. Some of it shows signs of rot and a lot has cellular structure visible.