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Whiskey Bridge Break Down


squali

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I have some Whiskey Bridge matrix that I have started to break down

I'm attaching some pics of the material to date and will update here as I can.

Any and all help is appreciated.

I had the stupid bug yesterday as I was outside enjoying the 50^F day and picking micros

the wind blew and I lost a couple of otoliths. -- Micros=indoors.

Lots of micro material in here. The fossils on the plate are 5mm to 20mm.

They are the big boys.

for some reason my "retained on the forty sieve" didn't come out

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It's hard to remember why you drained the swamp when your surrounded by alligators.

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"Whiskey Bridge Breakdown" would be a heckofa' title for a Bluegrass song!

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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"Whiskey Bridge Breakdown" would be a heckofa' title for a Bluegrass song!

That's what I was ahummin during the rinse,

:D

It's hard to remember why you drained the swamp when your surrounded by alligators.

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Do a search on this site for the topic "Prepping Microfossils from the Gulf Coast Eocene". In that topic I outline two techniques for breaking down the glauconite matrix to recover the fossils. One technique uses mineral oil and the other uses 3% hydrogen peroxide. The hydrogen peroxide was, in my opinion, the preferred method because of the lower odor. Both techniques depend on the matrix being completely dry before treatment. If you have any questions about the procedure let me know.

Jim

The Eocene is my favorite

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Thanks Jim,

I have read that Excellent post several times in the last couple of years

I rinsed with water for the first go and now its dry after several hours in the oven

and a week sitting in my very dry house. H2O2 is my next step.

Just scanning with a 7x loupe I'm amazed at the prolific fauna

It's hard to remember why you drained the swamp when your surrounded by alligators.

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Is your matrix from the vertebrate layer? There is a distinct layer that contains Eocene fish, shark, ray etc.specimens in it in addition to the invertebrates. I found a lot of fish otoliths in matrix from this layer.

Marco Sr,

"Any day that you can fossil hunt is a great day."

My family fossil website     Some Of My Shark, Ray, Fish And Other Micros     My Extant Shark Jaw Collection

image.png.9a941d70fb26446297dbc9dae7bae7ed.png image.png.41c8380882dac648c6131b5bc1377249.png

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I was told that there is a possibility of fish otoliths and a rare possibility of shark teeth and squid beaks.

Since the matrix is almost all glauconite I'm hoping for a nice picture of the paleo environment.

I think I had found 2 otoliths in a cursory look and had pulled them out for a better view when they blew away.

There are a lot of shell fragments that look like something so I'm not positive. I'll be searching more later in the week.

It's hard to remember why you drained the swamp when your surrounded by alligators.

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all photos (except picture 009) are 20x taken with the Motis DS 300 microscope with didital camera attachment.

picture 009 is a 100x shot of a glauconite grain. I think there may be vivianite crystals visible.

the black space between the heavy white lines indicate 2mm.

just checking things out. will work on ID's soon

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It's hard to remember why you drained the swamp when your surrounded by alligators.

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those are some terrific shots squali, great depth of field you attained there, I think the only places the edges blur is more to do with the white lines on the scale than with the focus abilities of the unit. :)

"Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud by the operation of your sun; so is your crocodile." Lepidus

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thanks Xonenine.

the pics are very small file size but do look decent.

The focus problem is definitely operator related.

I think I should wear my glasses when focusing so

the pics are in focus for the rest of the world. Ha/

It's hard to remember why you drained the swamp when your surrounded by alligators.

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Really nice pictures. White specimens are really difficult to photograph. You do have good depth of field. A lot of times I don't notice a very slight out of focus of a picture on my computer screen until I go to a program like Paint to crop or rotate the image. The more pictures that you take the easier it will be. If I'm not shooting with a black background, which is a real pain, I can take 40 or so pictures in an hour. When I started with my current microscope it was more like 10 minutes or more per picture. Now it takes me the most time, because I'm a slow typist, to type in the file names.

Marco Sr.

"Any day that you can fossil hunt is a great day."

My family fossil website     Some Of My Shark, Ray, Fish And Other Micros     My Extant Shark Jaw Collection

image.png.9a941d70fb26446297dbc9dae7bae7ed.png image.png.41c8380882dac648c6131b5bc1377249.png

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Thank you Marco for the encouragement and the kind advice.

your right about the process time of the pictures, especially with large .jpg files

to render for post on TFF. This scope camera captures really small files

that are ready to post but are not very zoom friendly.

I'm thinking this scope may be a good candidate for stacking software.

I know there are some great posts regarding this and I have been checking them out.

Do you think a 'tan' background would help with white fossils?

I'll be searching again this weekend hopefully.

Jeff

It's hard to remember why you drained the swamp when your surrounded by alligators.

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Do you think a 'tan' background would help with white fossils?

I'll be searching again this weekend hopefully.

Jeff

Jeff

I have tried a lot of different background colors with a white fossil like tan, yellow, pink, red, orange, blue, green etc. All were easier to shoot than black. Black just shows absolutely every spec of dust and lint at the magnifications that I need for most of the micros that I'm taking pictures of. Almost all of the other colors gave better fossil detail than a white background. It winds up being more about aesthetics than being able to see detail. I guess I'm too traditional and just prefer the contrast of white on a black background.

I have experimented with taking color pictures of very dark colored fossils on different color backgrounds like yellow and orange where the features were washing out with the color pictures. Then I turned the color pictures to black and white and got some really interesting detail. See a few pictures below. The first picture was on a white background, then orange, and then yellow. The color pictures showed little detail at all:

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Marco Sr.

"Any day that you can fossil hunt is a great day."

My family fossil website     Some Of My Shark, Ray, Fish And Other Micros     My Extant Shark Jaw Collection

image.png.9a941d70fb26446297dbc9dae7bae7ed.png image.png.41c8380882dac648c6131b5bc1377249.png

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Now that's real depth of field.

Perfect balance with excellent detail fore and aft.

I see what you mean with the color background transferring

To black and white. I don't remember much

About light refraction but I think this a good lesson.

I really like the purist background as well.

It's hard to remember why you drained the swamp when your surrounded by alligators.

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Nice work with the Motic.

Thanks Mike I can too easily get lost in the lens.

It is working as a generic camera right now. Motic has come out with a patch for windows 7

I'm thinking of trying it on my company laptop.

Uhh yea Uhh sediment analysis yea that's it.

It's hard to remember why you drained the swamp when your surrounded by alligators.

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