Triassic Lockatong - Black Marks On Pinkish Substrate

[hitekmastr]

Triassic - Lockatong Formation - Montgomery County - Pennsylvania

This is another piece I collected March 2 at the Triassic Lockatong site I was exploring. The rock is a totally different color and the black marks on the pinkish rock are interesting but seem to be too indistinct to be fossils. My impression is that these are simply mineralizations and traces but since I've never seen these before I'm posting them here.

These are natural light photos that show the pink substrate:

These were taken with incandescent light:

In technology innovation (which is my profession) we talk about "weak signals" indicating trends and innovations that are just beginning to appear. My few Triassic visits have been focused on some very fossil-poor Triassic formations that run like thin ribbons through Montgomery and Chester County, PA. I keep wanting to return to our fossil-rich Devonian and Carboniferous sites that are 1 to 2 hours away but the proximity of these sites (10-15 minutes from our home) makes it easy to spend an hour or two exploring. The trace fossils and few fish scales that turned up so far suggest that something more meaningful will eventually appear. This weekend Nan and I also found a very large flat rock with what appear to be lizard tracks but they were eroded into round circles - arranged in track patterns, and one has a sharp toenail type point - not worth collecting but another weak signal that keeps drawing us back to these sparse Triassic formations...

Edited March 4, 2013 by hitekmastr

[Fossildude19]

Michael,

Don't know how I missed this post.

Not sure what you have there, I suspect mineralizations, or possibly root casts.

Keep looking there - you are sure to find something!

Regards,

[Plax]

looks like root casts or plant debris to me as well. have seen similar material at the Fossil Collecting in Pennsyvania book site in York County

[hitekmastr]

Thanks for the input - I was assuming it was some kind of plant material. Most of the substrate in this formation is red shale, with some spotty grey shale here and there, even some olive green in spots. On the same visit, I found some root casts on a large piece of grey shale but this one was pink colored with the dark markings which usually signify fossils but as you can see, nothing is readily identifiable. I am zoning in on something, though, and one of these days I may stumble onto something more significant (or not)...

[Terry Dactyll]

The tracks sound interesting... the harder stuff to find is always the ones you value the most....