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Cretaceous Woodbury Formation Surprises


Vordigern

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went to pick my wife up from work yesterday w/ the kids but she said she had to finish something up & to come back in 1/2 an hour, knowing my wife I knew she meant 45 minutes so when the kids asked what we were going to do, took all of 2 seconds for me to realize I had my gear in the back of the van & we were only 2 miles from the stream we hunt. 5 minutes later we were on the hunt. Knowing time was limited I decided to check a spot where a shell bed is exposed & before we even started sifting I caught sight of a metal disc about 3" above the water line, at first I thought it was an old metal slug, the kind you knock out of an electrical box when youre installing an outlet, but on closer inspection made out some very faint vertical lines and realized what it really was, a silver standing liberty quarter. I showed the kids, put it in a specimen container & got to work. the storms have been knocking off chunks of marl/shell bed and I break them open to see what theyre hiding, usually its just shell molds but every once in awhile you find something worthwhile and yesterday I was surprised to find what appears to be a trilobite head. It is well worn so at first I thought it was just another rock but then I noticed the pebble texture on the center hourglass like shape and that the 3 shapes to the left of the hourglass were repeated on the right. When I took it home I looked at it under 40X magnification and though it is mostly worn off there are several places on the shapes to the right and left of the hourglass that the pebble texture is evident. I looked through all my reference books but couldnt find a match. Im guessing it must have been a glacial deposit from some formation further north or nothwest. Set up a little home electrolysis and cleaned up the coin to see it is from 1926 and was minted in San Fransisco. A short trip but well worth it. I'll try to take a better pic of the trilo later, Im rushing to make this post before I run out the door.

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Nice finds! I used to collect coins long ago before fossils took over but I'd never pass up a FIND of a Liberty Quarter! As for the "trilobite" I think it is much more likely to be a Cretaceous crab. Either way, it is a fantastic score.

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seemed too fat to be a crab but if it is I like it even better, can anyone verify this is a crab? I'll post up some more pics later.

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yeah Trilobites got nuked long before K.

PUBLICATIONS

Dallas Paleontology Society Occasional Papers Vol. 9 2011

"Pennsylvanian Stratigraphy and Paleoecology of Outcrops in Jacksboro, Texas"

Author

Texas Paleontology Society Feb, 2011

"Index Fossils and You" A primer on how to utilize fossils to assist in relative age dating strata"

Author

Quotes

"Beer, Bacon, and Bivalves!"

"Say NO to illegal fossil buying / selling"

"They belong in a museum."

Education

Associates of Science - 2011

Bachelors of Science (Geology & Biology) - 2012 est.

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yeah I know ,thats why I thought it was from one of the older northern formations. I thought it was cool because I thought it was where it wasnt supposed to be but I already have trilobites, what I didnt have was a crab, I could only envy everyone elses crabs ;) so now ,as far as Im concerned, it was a better hunt than even I thought it was, thanks for the help guys, I'll be on the lookout for more now , lets see if I can find one with some claws or at least a couple legs:)

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ok using the info you guys provided I located some pics and its definitely australis. I checked the fauna list from the Deleware Valley Paleontological Society for the Woodbury formation and the only crustacea on the list are Hoploparia gabbi (clawed lobster) and Protocallianassa mortoni (ghost shrimp) so as far as I can tell Dakotacancer australis is new to the formation .

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Preservation of that crab resembles the ones found here in MS, which generally are (sadly) not articulated very often. Plentiful carapaces, leg parts, and claws though so I would think you should be able to find more

Edited by -AnThOnY-
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Preservation of that crab resembles the ones found here in MS, which generally are (sadly) not articulated very often. Plentiful carapaces, leg parts, and claws though so I would think you should be able to find more

do they get any bigger, this one is a little bit bigger than a quarter?

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Awesome! I wish I could find a trilobite fossil. I should go fossil hunting.

Edited by microraptor
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Biggest I have is about 2.5-3" for Dakotacancer overanus, Dakotacancer australis is average around that size (quarter or so) from my experience.

Oops, sorry had them backwards, australis is the bigger ones and overanus is the smaller ones.

I know its obviously not the same formation but this might be a good reference: http://decapoda.nhm.org/pdfs/26971/26971.pdf

page 426, and dont worry its not 400 pages long lol, only about 10

Edited by -AnThOnY-
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Biggest I have is about 2.5-3" for Dakotacancer overanus, Dakotacancer australis is average around that size (quarter or so) from my experience.

Oops, sorry had them backwards, australis is the bigger ones and overanus is the smaller ones.

I know its obviously not the same formation but this might be a good reference: http://decapoda.nhm.org/pdfs/26971/26971.pdf

page 426, and dont worry its not 400 pages long lol, only about 10

lol, thanks

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There is actually a pretty diverse crustacean fauna from NJ's Cretaceous but only Hoploparia and Protocallianassa show up in any reliable numbers. You should seek out Ralph Johnson and see his vast collection to compare.

ok using the info you guys provided I located some pics and its definitely australis. I checked the fauna list from the Deleware Valley Paleontological Society for the Woodbury formation and the only crustacea on the list are Hoploparia gabbi (clawed lobster) and Protocallianassa mortoni (ghost shrimp) so as far as I can tell Dakotacancer australis is new to the formation .

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There is actually a pretty diverse crustacean fauna from NJ's Cretaceous but only Hoploparia and Protocallianassa show up in any reliable numbers. You should seek out Ralph Johnson and see his vast collection to compare.

I will definitely do that, some of the coolest fossils Ive seen (at least to me)have been Crustaceans but except for the occasional claw or leg segment I had never found any and was always envious of those who had.

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Agreed, but I have found devonian coral fossils in the NJ cretaceous, sort of a fossil of a fossil if you will. My link

Very true. In fact, here is a partial trilobite from Ramanessin, a Cretaceous site.

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Very true. In fact, here is a partial trilobite from Ramanessin, a Cretaceous site.

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cool find! wonder where it originally came from

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cool find! wonder where it originally came from

After you have collected those stream gravels for a number of years you will build up quite a few paleozoic bits and pieces. I have numerous corals, trilobits, brachs and bryozoans from Big Brook and Ramanessin. The best guess would be from formations in NW NJ or upstate NY. That is based on the direction the glaciers and their outwash came from. Most are preserved as silica in the harder limestones. To my eye they often seemed to be Early to Middle Devonian. Older and younger rock units up that way are generally softer and wouldn't have held up to all that grinding and transportation.

But with all that said the crab specimen is excellent!

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There is actually a pretty diverse crustacean fauna from NJ's Cretaceous but only Hoploparia and Protocallianassa show up in any reliable numbers. You should seek out Ralph Johnson and see his vast collection to compare.

i have photo's of alot of Ralph's collection in my photobucket albums. i'll send you some for comparison if you want Mike. just let me know.

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I'm quite sure the crab is a Tetracarcinus subquadrata, and a nice specimen. It's a close relative of Dakoticancer, so the confusion is understandable, but the proportions of some of the body regions are slightly different. Weller described the species in 1907 from abundant specimens from nodules that used to wash up on the beach at Cliffwood Point on Raritan Bay; although the nodules were not in situ he thought the overall fauna correlated best with the Wenonah Formation. The species is listed from the Marshalltown and Merchantville Formations in the "Cretaceous Fossils from the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal", (Delaware Geological Survey Special Publication Number 18). So it probably is not new for your area.

Anthony, this crab it quite common at the northern Mississippi site (abbreviations BS, Rod asked us not to mention it by full name so I won't). I'm very sure if you have picked up any of the smaller crabs many of them will be Tetracarcinus. Look in Gale Bishop's paper to see the differences, they are kind of subtle.

Don

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From my understanding Tetracarcinus were significantly smaller, the one I have is about the size of a dime or slightly smaller. Didn't think they made it to quarter size, at least all of the ones from 'BS' I find around that size are Dakotacancer. Could be wrong though, and it doesn't quite look like his. The ridges on the back are more pronounced. Here is Tetracarcinus (Ref pic 1)

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Edited by -AnThOnY-
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