Fossils In Masonry?

[chutson99]

Has anyone seen any good fossils visible in the stone of buildings, walkways, etc? I just think it's kind of neat to stumble on a fossil unintentionally incorporated into the masonry.

Springdale cemetery here in Peoria has a somewhat delapidated walkway up to an area of graves made of tiles of some sort of slate-type stone with a number of ammonites visible in it.

Another instance was on a job i was doing, a big new house where some masons were building a retaining wall out back. My (biz) partner was walking by their pallets of stone and noticed a pretty sweet trilobite on the surface of one of the blocks, so we pointed it out to them. They were totally unimpressed but we convinced them to put that block on top anyway. Later on I brought it to the attention of the homeowner, who didn't particularly care either, but there you go.

Do you know of any particularly good urban fossil sightings?

[Auspex]

Here is some info on fossils in the architecture in Washington, DC:

>LINK<

[Roger]

When I lived in an apartment complex in Fort Worth in the early 2000's, they were rebuilding some of the retaining walls for the patios on the ground floor. I took two of my pachydiscus ammonites and had them incorporated into the stone work on my patio. I stopped by the old apartment complex early this year and sure enough they are still there - 10 years later. i doubt if anyone even notices them. . .

[jkfoam]

Years ago there was a magazine, I believe it was called "Earth Science Digest". In it I remember an article that was written about a fellow that led a fossil hunting trip in New York City. The object of the hunt was to find fossils in the building facades (not to collect them) and in the stone features in the building interiors. As I remember they did quite well in finding a diversity of fossils of all types and ages. Here locally in central Texas a lot of quarry material comes from the Austin Chalk Formation, Upper Cretaceous. This formation is very fossiliferous. Consequently quite a few fossils can be found on the facade of buildings constructed from this quarried rock. This is especially true for commercial buildings from the 1940's-1960's. Currently the quarry rock from the Austin Chalk is not in favor and another limestone rock also Cretaceous is in vogue for building construction. This new limestone rock is a little whiter than the Austin Chalk and not very fossiliferous. Also, on business trips to the Jacksonville, FL, I have seen buildings made from local quarried limestone that was very highly fossiliferous. Some of the marble tiles used in homes and commercial buildings can be very colorful as well as fossiliferous.

Jim

Edited March 5, 2012 by jkfoam

[nearpass]

Years ago, I took a 'Geology of the Finger Lakes' mini-course at the summer 'adult university' program that Cornell offers. We had a tour of the campus, as there were fossils incorporated in some of the buildings, and a walk way, I believe. Memory is shaky on this...maybe MarleysGhOst, who lives down that way, will chime in.

[Govinn]

I'm sure that most people have heard of this, but here is a very interesting >LINK< to a video where a company that builds coutertops in Italy found a whale skeleton in some of their countertops...

[ghost1066]

I have seen fossils in buildings. Today I went on a fossil hunt in a parking lot that used local limestone (some fairly large) for a cover plus the rain had created gulleys exposing existing limestone. I always find stuff there and picked up a couple of cephalopods and some other goodies on today's hunt.

[Sharks of SC]

I once found a nice little trilobite in my uncle's stone fireplace in NC.

Also, many of the paved roads on the southern tip of Oak Island, NC are packed with miocene-age shark teeth.

[Kehbe]

A fort made of NOTHING BUT FOSSILS! The fort at St. Augustine Fla. is made entirely of fossil coquina! Because it has so much air space between the shell fossils it is made up of, the cannon balls would just be 'absorbed' into the walls of the fort instead of shattering a harder more dense limestone. This is an interesting site! Check it out!

http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/BS-SA.html