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4Th Of July Trip Report - Site 1 - Tully Ny - Orthocones, Trilos & More


hitekmastr

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TRIP REPORT - TULLY, NY

Finds included Orthocone Cephalopods, Trilobites, Nautiloids, Devonian Assemblages

We didn't have much time for fossil site visits this year so our 4th of July weekend had to be special.

We decided to combine fossils and fishing which gave us 2 days at Tully NY for fossils, and 3 days at Lake Cayuga for boating/fishing and fossiling. This report covers the Tully site visit. I'll post a separate trip report for Lake Cayuga.

As our friends on the Forum know, Nan and I try to set specific goals and targets for each fossil site visit and that's what we did for our 4th of July fossil and fishing vacation. Our goal for the Tully visit was to find Devonian fossils that were unique and collectible. We also wanted to find larger Devonian fossils if possible.

I called and got permission in advance from the land owner to collect at our favorite Devonian site but when we got there, we were disappointed to find that our best spot had been picked clean and a lot of fossil rich rubble had been removed. Last year we found many large brachiopods, crinoids and several species of trilobites but this year there were no large specimens, only "baby fossils." Also, it was raining both days so we didn't do our customary cracking and fracking of shale which yields our best finds and this was a factor.

I immediately found 1) a large well-worn nautiloid shaped fossil, and 2) a smaller nautiloid shaped impression in shale. These are not well articulated but I haven't seen a lot of large nautiloids from Tully.

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I also noticed some very large diameter cephalopod segments about 2 inches in diameter. Often we find these flattened in shale but these pieces were fully articulated cylinder shaped segments. This clue suggested we might find more complete specimens, so we started looking for more complete specimens. Nan was looking at a vertical face exposed by the construction work and suddenly started screaming that she found something cool. I ran over and sure enough, there was a large tube shaped fossil with segments and a smooth skin...standing upright exactly where it was preserved.

In the first image below you can see the position of the tube in the formation and the relationship to the horizontal layers which suggests that this is NOT a concretion or geological anomaly, but a real fossil. The second image shows a closeup of the fossil in situ. Closer inspection shows a center stele at the tip of the top rounded segment which you can see in the image below.

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It took me about an hour to carefully extract the tube (Nan is better at finding fossils and I'm probably better at excavating them). Excited by the find, I kept excavating along the seam and soon discovered another fossil with the same shape, configuration and positioning. Later, I found another partial specimen about 300 yards away - ironically, at the same place we thought was devoid of fossils. All 3 fossils were the same relative size, shape and positioned vertically in the formation. As I excavated the fossils from the formation, I kept thinking about RomanK who has found tree and plant fossils embedded vertically and I was "channeling Roman" as I removed these finds.

As it turns out, these were not orthocones, but turned out to be Devonian tree fossils (Wattieza). I started a separate thread in the Fossil ID section.

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I don't think I can help with identifying the other specimens, so I'll go for the easy one. That enrolled trilobite looks like an Eldredgeops rana to me.

You've really got me curious about that orthocone cephalopod! I hope another forum member can contribute more to help.

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Thanks so much for the trilobite ID. I am photographing our trilobites found at Lake Cayuga today and will post soon - will appreciate any help with IDs for those.

The orthocone is intriguing to us since we found 3 of them which seem to be the same species and I haven't been able to find this exact size and shape anywhere on the Web although there are some that are somewhat close in morphology. I posted orthocone pix on the "orthocone thread" here on the Forum. Tough to find resources that show orthocone species to identify this. Orthocones come in many shapes and sizes and when we went to the Paleontology/Earth Museum in Lansing, NY, we saw some really interesting examples of orthocones and related species but nothing that looks like our find.

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Orthocones are tough when all you have is a cast like that. Many in my collection* are simply labelled: "Orthoconic nautiloid". If you are lucky thy are not flattened AND you can discern the position/size of the siphuncle. And good reference information for ID may not be easily available. I keep collecting them, especially if they have at least a few of those diagnostic attributes. And then of course there are the lucky finds that have shell material and all.

* I have orthocones from the Ordovician thru Pennsylvanian, including a bunch of NY Devonian material.

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Orthocones are tough when all you have is a cast like that. Many in my collection* are simply labelled: "Orthoconic nautiloid". If you are lucky thy are not flattened AND you can discern the position/size of the siphuncle. And good reference information for ID may not be easily available. I keep collecting them, especially if they have at least a few of those diagnostic attributes. And then of course there are the lucky finds that have shell material and all.

* I have orthocones from the Ordovician thru Pennsylvanian, including a bunch of NY Devonian material.

Thanks for the insights - I posted more photos on the "Show us your orthocones" thread on this Forum. The siphuncle is clearly shown as you can see from the closeup. Not sure if cleaning and closer examination will reveal more. Certainly unique and interesting and very large compared to the small cephalopods we usually find at the Devonian sites we've visited.

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