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Miscellaneous Big Brook finds


Moses Oberlander

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Nice, I see a good Enchodus tooth there in the center of the bottom pic. The ridges on your top left fossil of the top pic are interesting

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3 hours ago, Jared C said:

The ridges on your top left fossil of the top pic are interesting

 

Reminds me of a ray mouth plate? Although for that the ridges run perpendicular to what I'd expect.

Edited by pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon
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The ridges remind me of a chimaera dental plate / jaw.

 

image.png.61d507b7e0c0b5428b8b2e9f0b00165d.png

 

They do look more pronounced than I would expect, but I believe I can see porous bone material. @Moses Oberlander, would you be able to post more pictures of this specimen? The ends would be useful.

 

image.png.7a5a571ba1174eeb804806aa27d400d1.png

 

These cylindrical objects (two on the right) look belemnitid to me, again, photos of the ends would be useful:

image.png.2948262bc30f4481bd7bd5766cba5293.png

 

Belemnites have these radial calcite crystals through the rostrum, which is very robust and fossilises readily.

 

 

If these are belemnitida, Belemnitella americana is the most likely candidate, being the most common cephalopod in Big Brook (by a long shot). It is even the index fossil for the Matawan Group!

 

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Could also be belemnite phragmacone bits.

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1 minute ago, Fossildude19 said:

Could also be belemnite phragmacone bits.

 

Phragmacones are more expected to be conical in nature (or crushed), but these just appear to be near-perfect cylinders.  

 

See image translated from Italian by me:

 

image.png.fd2154210399f27119fba579766678af.png

 

Belemnite · Type Fossils · 1A Collections

 

 

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3 minutes ago, IsaacTheFossilMan said:

 

Phragmacones are more expected to be conical in nature (or crushed), but these just appear to be near-perfect cylinders.  

 

See image translated from Italian by me:

 

Just going from personal experience here. ;)

The belemnites at Big Brook are all Belemnitella americana. They are all yellowish in color.

The dark brown color with smoothness are generally phragmacones from there.

 

 

B0B883D5-C125-4239-9C95-416E94E469A0.jpeg.7b7ac403f8a372d3de8c980b3f37d6c8.jpeg

 

 @Carl  may agree or disagree.

 

 

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See example taken from the species in this thread, Belemnitella americana:

 

IMG_0657.jpg.c7b45029a91fc759da0fb587cadb0b7a.jpg

 

From Monks, N., Hardwick, J.D. & Gale, A.S. The Function of the Belemnite Guard. Paläont. Z. 70, 425 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02988082, the anatomy of a belemnite:

 

image.thumb.png.5e4fe3a35f056cc62df0d68753db9446.png

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4 minutes ago, Fossildude19 said:

 

Just going from personal experience here. ;)

The belemnites at Big Brook are all Belemnitella americana. They are all yellowish in color.

The dark brown color with smoothness are generally phragmacones from there.

 

 

B0B883D5-C125-4239-9C95-416E94E469A0.jpeg.7b7ac403f8a372d3de8c980b3f37d6c8.jpeg

 

 @Carl  may agree or disagree.

 

 

 

I might suggest the cylindrical phragmocones have thus been mis-identified. :)

 

 

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7 minutes ago, IsaacTheFossilMan said:

 

I might suggest the cylindrical phragmocones have thus been mis-identified. :)

 

Perhaps phragmacone isn't the correct term.

Internal casts of hollow belemnite guards then.

 

The belemnites found at Big Brook are often hollow, and can have casts of the internal hollow  that connect to the phragmacone.  ;)

 

See this post by JeffreyP:

 

 

 

The picture in Jeff's post shows the hints of the hollowness of some of the specimens. These can produce the internal casts or molds in a cylindrical fashion, rather than just the conical "phragmacone".  :)

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2 hours ago, Fossildude19 said:

 

Perhaps phragmacone isn't the correct term.

Internal casts of hollow belemnite guards then.

 

The belemnites found at Big Brook are often hollow, and can have casts of the internal hollow  that connect to the phragmacone.  ;)

 

See this post by JeffreyP:

 

 

 

The picture in Jeff's post shows the hints of the hollowness of some of the specimens. These can produce the internal casts or molds in a cylindrical fashion, rather than just the conical "phragmacone".  :)

 

This hollow cavity is known as the "alveolus", and is an expected morphological feature in belemnite rostra.

 

belemnite_sezione.jpg.36096a2ab8b8d011ed3cf93880fee7c6.jpg

12517_2021_8272_Fig2_HTML.png.f3588920f5466bb2ff3730c06f36225f.png

1-s2.0-S0195667122001239-gr2.jpg.e59d7ee55215db0a163433481d3f2567.jpg

 

The alveolus, a part of the rostrum cavum, is where the phragmocone of the belemnite sits - the alveolus is a conical cavity, albeit of differing depths and gradients depending on the species - in Belemnitella americana, the phragmocone and the alveolus are typical of the third diagram above - the second diagram depicts a different species with a different length of phragmocone and alveolus.

 

As the phragmocone is not often preserved, the alveolus is often filled with sediment (diagram 2), but sometimes when filled with non-mineralised sediment, they can be hollow (diagram 1). Such casts produced by the alveolus are steinkerns of the alveolus of the rostrum, and, in a model specimen without crushing, are in the exact shape of the original phragmocone.

 

Hollow specimen's chambers are conical, and you can construct an cast of it's internal features using it! 

 

Hope you found this helpful :)

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Thus, this specimen is not a cast of the phragmocone, and, given that the specimens are obviously cast in calcite, instead of aragonite (the original phragmocone), or some other sediment (steinkern), they are without a doubt the rostrum of the belemnite guard. A cross-sectional view should hopefully show the radiating crystal structure of the rostrum - if they are weathered, a thin slice off of the side would be able to uncover this detail, proving the this hypothesis. ;)

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@IsaacTheFossilMan

Given your overwhelming flood of information, I must be incorrect.  I stand corrected. :)

 

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13 hours ago, Fossildude19 said:

@IsaacTheFossilMan

Given your overwhelming flood of information, I must be incorrect.  I stand corrected. :)

 

Happy to help. :D

 

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3 hours ago, IsaacTheFossilMan said:

Happy to help. :D

I still stand by the id of internal casts of ... something. 

They do not appear to have the typical calcitic features of belemnites that you mentioned.

 

 

B0B883D5-C125-4239-9C95-416E94E469A0.jpeg.7b7ac403f8a372d3de8c980b3f37d6c8.jpeg.18bbf627c0a3e30e40925e2ebc2f4241.jpeg

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1 hour ago, Fossildude19 said:

I still stand by the id of internal casts of ... something. 

They do not appear to have the typical calcitic features of belemnites that you mentioned.

 

 

B0B883D5-C125-4239-9C95-416E94E469A0.jpeg.7b7ac403f8a372d3de8c980b3f37d6c8.jpeg.18bbf627c0a3e30e40925e2ebc2f4241.jpeg

 

I would be inclined to disagree ;)

 

image.png.b5ed4c312ec5c4aacda00eb6cd01e351.png

 

Arguing over an image of this quality isn't the most scientific of methods, but there are definite radii present in the original unedited image. 

 

 

@Moses Oberlander Please could you attach photos of these two specimen in question.

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I agree - to disagree. ;)

Brightened:

 

image.png.b5ed4c312ec5c4aacda00eb6cd01e351.png

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6 minutes ago, Fossildude19 said:

I agree - to disagree. ;)

Brightened:

 

image.png.b5ed4c312ec5c4aacda00eb6cd01e351.png

 

Tim,

 

When you edit an image, you are re-applying a compression (likely based on discrete cosine transform (DCT)) - this reduces the quality of an image. 

Not to mention, editing images is an inherently bad thing to do when looking for details, as it can draw detail out that isn't necessarily there - much like the infamous David Peters.

Editing an image can cause the pixels to shrink and expand, and if the program you are using is a "smart" program, it will use some form of algorithmic pseudointelligence, which means the algorithm decides itself what pixels are useful, and what are not. This is inherently unscientific, and not useful in this context.

 

See obvious "artefacts" created when you edited my image.:

image.png.26be662d69f8b7b91f3f7954cc8c480f.pngimage.png.e5503b246232f5c70af6eb4b10c73863.png

 

Note the "recovering" of colour and detail under the reflection that wasn't present at all on the original image.

 

Further evidence can be seen on the colouration of the originally pure red outline:

image.png.e0383f23f261b88de41b608bc9e0b28d.png

 

Towards the left, the hexadecimal colour code of the red is #f8697c, whereas on the right, it is a much darker #f64655.

 

When the two are compared:

image.png.85f765245f6ebd53d76b3e1e4ce3ccb9.pngimage.png.2d18e5a17ce14d3e7e1f7d4ac1bdb407.png

 

They are blatantly different colours - further evidence that manipulating an image reduces original quality and detail.

 

Another mathematical proof of this is Benford's law. It is a law that applies to many random variables through nature and man made. When a picture of the real world is taken, if you count the number of "reds", "greens", "blues", "oranges" (e.t.c. until you have sampled a vast range of colours), and then you take the first digit of each of these numbers (first digit is 1-9) - it plots like this:

Benford's Law -- from Wolfram MathWorld

As you can see, the digit 1 appears more frequently than 2, 2 more frequently than 3, and so on - it is a logarithmic law.

 

 

So, a real picture, unedited, follows Benford's law. However, when you edit an image and save it, the image is recompressed and unnatural - if you apply the same thing as before to this new image, you get something like this:

 

2008-sett-img04.png

 

This is called violating Benford's law - as you can see, the image is not natural anymore, and has detail or information that did not apply to the original content.

The manipulation of images to "extract information" is wholly unscientific and unhelpful.

 

 

Hope this helps,

Isaac

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Wow dude. You do get into it, don't you.

I fully understand the degradation of the image quality.

Let's not clutter the topic any longer. Feel free to PM me to discuss further. ;)

 

Still waiting for other pics of the ends from OP  @Moses Oberlander to show what you are seeing. 

But even in the originals, I have a hard time seeing what you are. :unsure:

But you are younger than I, so maybe my eyes are just too old to see it. :shrug:

 

Let's let it rest until we get better pictures of the ends.

 

Still confident in my ID, given my experiences collecting there. ;)

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20 hours ago, Fossildude19 said:

@IsaacTheFossilMan

Given your overwhelming flood of information, I must be incorrect.  I stand corrected. :)

 

Here are the pics… I think I know who’s right but I’ll leave it up to you 2 to fight it out lol

F48F64A7-72A3-4B01-93D7-5F82D601E85E.jpeg

D5362744-8B28-492F-B8FA-EB260303A1D1.jpeg

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I personally do not think these are belemnite guards.

 

Cropped only.

 

F48F64A7-72A3-4B01-93D7-5F82D601E85E.jpeg.b3cb36ac23c20d24bdf33859557c35f4.jpeg

 

D5362744-8B28-492F-B8FA-EB260303A1D1.jpeg.f57e0898c6ae1fc00280d479bbd30197.jpeg

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On 7/14/2022 at 5:12 AM, IsaacTheFossilMan said:

The ridges remind me of a chimaera dental plate / jaw.

 

image.png.61d507b7e0c0b5428b8b2e9f0b00165d.png

 

They do look more pronounced than I would expect, but I believe I can see porous bone material. @Moses Oberlander, would you be able to post more pictures of this specimen? The ends would be useful.

 

image.png.7a5a571ba1174eeb804806aa27d400d1.png

 

These cylindrical objects (two on the right) look belemnitid to me, again, photos of the ends would be useful:

image.png.2948262bc30f4481bd7bd5766cba5293.png

 

Belemnites have these radial calcite crystals through the rostrum, which is very robust and fossilises readily.

 

 

If these are belemnitida, Belemnitella americana is the most likely candidate, being the most common cephalopod in Big Brook (by a long shot). It is even the index fossil for the Matawan Group!

 

Here are the picture of the other fossil you asked for…

9C109A7B-0CCA-4248-891D-913478FFB839.jpeg

90B08B6C-E63F-48CB-9DBA-E0F83B17DBE4.jpeg

11CC3CF3-247A-4136-B5B3-99E4C8F1EE3D.jpeg

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The black specks in the cylindrical items are interesting.
The last item looks like the imprint of a bivalve.

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Personally, these are either weathered belemnite guards, or steinkerns of belemnite guards - they can often be infilled with sediment and have the original material removed (as they are usually coated in silica). 

 

image.png.7b8dbd8b9c371b2b8b75758eca296ff7.png

image.png.edace45cb484b2357f35574ec3fb1030.png

 

 

I believe you can see the ventral groove on the bottom, and the hole for the siphuncle. 

@Moses Oberlander, if you shine a light at the specimen, does the fossil glow? Make sure you move the light throughout the whole specimen. The glowing areas will most likely be calcitic, and the non-glowing areas sediment. You can even rotate it around and get an image of how the sediment sits inside it, if it is partly calcitic!

 

I do also think we are seeing the same thing with the other one, I'm not going to highlight the features as they are certainly prominent.

image.png.37da5dc093d7d5057f1d56a2a8156ae9.png

(note that the siphuncle is warped as the cross-section isn't perfectly flat)

 

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1 hour ago, Fossildude19 said:

I personally do not think these are belemnite guards.

 

Cropped only.

 

F48F64A7-72A3-4B01-93D7-5F82D601E85E.jpeg.b3cb36ac23c20d24bdf33859557c35f4.jpeg

 

D5362744-8B28-492F-B8FA-EB260303A1D1.jpeg.f57e0898c6ae1fc00280d479bbd30197.jpeg

 

They remind me of old carbon battery rod fragments.

The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true.  -  JJ

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