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FPS Fall Meeting - Haile Quarry


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The Florida Paleontological Society (FPS) held its annual Fall meeting and field trip this weekend. Normally, I participate and meet other fossil enthusiasts at the meeting. This time I was raving about shells I found at SMR Aggragates on October 10th while at dinner with friends and they decided to join FPS and attend the meeting. Since they were going, my wife decided she too would participate in only her 2nd hunting with me. Miracle of miracles.

Also, Digit, his wife, and Khyssa all decided to join FPS (good choice!!!) and participate in the festivities.

This is a great event, Dinner/drinks on Friday, Field trip to Haile Quarry 9-1 on Saturday and a great meal/meeting at the Opera House in Newberry on Saturday night. Lots of good discussion on echinoids, shells, fossils, with friends, presentations from PHd students at UofF, Gainesville, an auction of paleontology items and books, and the opportunity to make plans for future trips. Great to meet up with Ken, Tammy, and Kara..

So , on to finds, some knowns and unknowns. FULL Disclosure : my better half found most of the pristine smaller stuff -- she has better eyesight, I guess.

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Going for a 2nd thread to post more, especially the CRAB....

The White Queen  ".... in her youth she could believe "six impossible things before breakfast"

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2nd Thread -- more photos

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I liked this shell fragment, any ideas on which shell(s) might be possibilities?

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and finally, Ocalina Floridana, A crab with a BIG claw, most of which I found -- the claw, not the crab..

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The claw is 7 inches around the circumference and 4 inches at widest point.

I had a great time...

We went to an Eocene area initially, then a Oligocene area, and finally a plateau whch should have been early Miocene. I had most of my finds in the first area, left some blood trying to climb the Miocene plateau, and thoroughly enjoyed the entire weekend.. Jack

The White Queen  ".... in her youth she could believe "six impossible things before breakfast"

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Thanks , Ziggie

EDITED to add a photo of the Haile Quarry, Alachua, Florida. This is the 1st Eocene location.

In the background, drilled and blasted rock walls down into a deep hole filled with water.

Foreground , crawling over a sand and rock landscape up mountains of gravel and rock to identify those fossil. That is my wife in red safety vest half-way up the mountain.

Fortunately we had a relatively cool day, with some breeze.

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The White Queen  ".... in her youth she could believe "six impossible things before breakfast"

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Hey Jack, sounds like a very good time---thanks for sharing the photos. I should join but gosh I'm not keeping with all of the other stuff I should be doing and want to do...front yard partially weeded this weekend, headlight bulb replacement in the van done tonight in the dark and the other car is now washed. I'm whooped but happy--2 things off the todo list! LOL. Got off at 630 night of your Lee county club mtg this month and aborted my drive south.

Anyways, maybe you already have seen this but here's a link that has a previous guidebook with all kinds of great pictures of your crab type and some of the echys...

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http://segs.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/SEGS-Guidebook-53.pdf

Regards, Chris

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Thanks Chris, !!!

I have to admit that the Crab on Plate #9 of your link is a lot more impressive than my claw, but I still like the claw because it is all mine!!! I think I have a few of those smaller echinoids also.. Jack

The White Queen  ".... in her youth she could believe "six impossible things before breakfast"

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I was on that trip. We need Fossil Forum t-shirts so we can identify each other.

"A problem solved is a problem caused"--Karl Pilkington

"I was dead for millions of years before I was born and it never inconvenienced me a bit." -- Mark Twain

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It was a fun day and I enjoyed meeting fellow members of the Fossil Forum. While I've sorted my finds I haven't taken any pictures yet. Most of them are fairly small but my favorites of the day are the mostly intact racoon incisor and a tiny but intact toebone. Pictures of that will have to wait until the microscope attachment I ordered for my phone gets here. My knees still hurt from all the time I spent crawling around on the gravel with my faces less then a foor from the ground!

Kara

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It indeed was a fun day out at Haile Quarry. I got to meet-up with Kara again this weekend and finally met Jack. I missed meeting Mike though. I assumed all TFF members give off a bioluminescent aura while out fossil hunting but I may be mistaken. TFF shirts, hats, patches, or maybe just a secret handshake would be useful in identifying each other on outings like this.

My wife Tammy and I were (finally) motivated to join FPS and meet some other Florida folk who are interested in fossils. As Jack mentioned the weather was perfect and the occasional breeze kept things from getting too warm--to all those who live in higher latitudes (and altitudes) and who may have already received the first frosts of the season, there is a reason I now live in Florida. After a short trip from our hotel amid a caravan of cars (many decked out with fossil related stickers or vanity license plates) we arrived at Haile Quarry. Roger Portell the Collection Director for FLMNH who led this trip gave us a briefing that covered both safety and the make-up of the Ocala Limestone layer and its fossils. He mentioned that in addition to echinoderms, corals, crabs, foraminifera and other items we might find that the majority of the mollusks we would find would actually be molds as their aragonitic shells would have been dissolved away over the 35 million years leaving voids behind. We would find negative impressions and some internal casts but not permineralized shells (with the exception of some of the oysters and scallops which had harder calcitic shells which stood the test of time). Many mollusks are identified by making silicone rubber "peels" to show what the "positive" image of the shells would have looked like (Roger showing such a peel below).

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With our safety briefing complete and wearing our duly distributed safety gear, we were then turned loose on the piles of freshly mined limestone to see what we could find. I thought I looked rather fetching in my neon yellow vest with white reflecting tape (I'm sure it will be all the rage in Paris next season). The hard hats were a bit troublesome though. When spending the say with my head pointed down scanning the ground in front of my feet while surface hunting I always wear my sun protection hat with the long cape that drapes down over my neck. With a hardhat stacked on top of this it often felt that the was hovering above my head rather than anywhere near my cranium. I chuckled at my wife's hardhat and she said mine looked even sillier. While the hardhats are a good idea when collecting from a tall pile of loosely mounded rocks it was sometimes difficult to keep the hat attached when bending over--I did my best though.

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-Ken

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We spent a few hours at the first site and clambered around the lower extents of some of the big piles (or collected along the flats between them).

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We mainly found the internal spiraled molds of gastropods and a few small scallop shells (which their calcitic shells allowed them to remain as positive images). My wife focused in on some shell molds and spent some time either collecting loose ones or chipping bound ones out of the very soft limestone matrix.

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I collected a few shell molds but was on the lookout for some echinoderms. After about an hour I spotted a nice Eupatagus antillarum (Florida’s long proposed state fossil). I didn't have the camera with me at the time and neglected to get an in situ photo of this find before I collected it but I assumed once I had the search image down I'd find several more--I didn't.

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-Ken

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Later in the morning we moved to a second site within the quarry. This location was a bit more productive for me. Either I had gotten better at spotting the smaller round echinoderms or this second location simply had more to find. Most of these were smaller species of sea biscuits and sand dollars just a couple of centimeters across. I had the camera this time and decided to take some in situ photos so the rest of the forum members could join the hunt vicariously and see what we were seeing. Here is what the second site looked like--basically more piles of harvested crushed limestone.

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Here's one of the first tiny echinoderms I spotted at the second location:

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-Ken

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Here's one of the bivalve internal molds I found--a good excuse to break out the fun term steinkern (from the German "stein" stone and "kern" kernel or grain).

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Here are a couple of tiny sand dollar echinoderms in situ:

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-Ken

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Here's another in situ sequence of another lovely tiny echinoderm:

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As we were leaving to head briefly to a third stop for the day (an area with a solution hole to look for vertebrate fossils) I showed my smaller finds to Roger Portell as we were walking back to the cars and he quickly picked out four different species in the selection I held in my hand. Of course the scientific names passed through my brain like a neutrino and didn't stick or leave a lasting impression in any way so I'll have to clean up my finds and see if he can give me some identifications through photos.

Back in my hotel room after our field trip I had a moment to sort and photograph some of my smaller finds. You can see in the photos below some of the shells (mainly internal molds), my nascent collection of small echinoids, and a few of the small forams (foraminifera) I collected. I think my favorite foram is the one that looks like a perfect little fried egg.

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Later that evening we met up at the Opera House in High Springs for the fall meeting of the FPS. We had an excellent dinner followed by three interesting scientific presentations and we got to bid on some items in the silent auction to benefit the society's Gary Morgan Award in Student Research. There were lots of interesting items to bid on and I won a Styrofoam and glass "Aqua-viewer" which I plan on using to do a little snooping on the bottom from the surface next time I'm at the Peace River. We met a lot of great people during the field trip and meeting. Jack introduced me to Gunther Lobisch, a long time echinoid collector who has quite the encyclopedic knowledge of this subject. I mentioned to him that I had an interest in echinoids ever since learning about Eupatagus antillarum and seeing a YouTube video of a couple of guys collecting these from the offshore spoil pile islands near Yankeetown (remnants of the ill-fated Cross Florida Barge Canal project in the 1930s). Gunther mentioned that I didn't need to go to the spoil pile islands to collect echinoderms as they could also be found in the spoil pile "ridge" that was created along side the canal. This got the little gears in my head turning--but I'll save that for a separate posting.

Cheers.

-Ken

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After work yesterday I did a quick clean up of the fossils I found and took some pictures. I found plenty of echinoids but at this time I can't identify any of them. A lot of the also still need a bit more cleaning. And a closer inpection of my toe bone revealed it wasn't quite as complete as I thought it was. Also included some of the better shells and castings I found, the pile of spine pieces, starfish bits, some sponges, and a mystery item.

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Holy-Smolly. Kara

You were busy and productive out there... In total, I found 7-8 echinoids.. Nice Haul. On the toebone, it seems a little small for deer, but then we are dealing with Eocene materials... :P

The White Queen  ".... in her youth she could believe "six impossible things before breakfast"

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I found most of the echinoids in the flat gravel area at the first site while I was crawling around on my hands and knees. The second site wasn't all that productive for me although I did find the two of the largest sand dollars there. I don't usually find many big fossils but I'm good at spotting the small stuff!

I'll take some better pictures of the toebone once my microscope attachment gets here.

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Your strategy of scouring the flats between the gravel piles really seems to have worked out for you. Looks like you pulled out more prized than both me and my wife combined!

My one tripmaker find for that outing was the nice Eupatagus antillarum that I spotted in the pile at the first site. Once I cleaned off the encrusting limestone I saw that there was a tiny bit of damage on the oral side near the mouth but it looks great from the top and cleaned up rather well. Here are the before and after images:

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Cheers.

-Ken

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My one tripmaker find for that outing was the nice Eupatagus antillarum that I spotted in the pile at the first site. Once I cleaned off the encrusting limestone I saw that there was a tiny bit of damage on the oral side near the mouth but it looks great from the top and cleaned up rather well. Here are the before and after images:

Looks nice. How did you clean it?

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Note to self: join the FPS! The main problem is, work and running a "hobby farm*" takes so much time I can never seem to get away for more than one day at a time. I joined FPS a few years ago, and couldn't get away for even a single field trip. I think my priorities need adjusting.

Don

*Regarding "hobby farm", there is actually no such a thing. "Hobby" and "farm" are mutually exclusive terms, I've come to realize.

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Acid. I first tried some of the broken bits of echinoids I kept specifically for testing purposes. I had some muriatic acid (strong stuff requiring a respirator mask) that I've used for cleaning the crud off antique bottles that I found in Bermuda (I do love "treasure hunting" trips). I tried a quick dip in the muriatic with some of the broken echinoids to verify that it wouldn't instantly dissolve the echinoid test. I'm guessing the test may be composed of the more stable calcite than the less stable aragonite and is therefore a bit more resistant to a dip in a low pH environment. I dipped the Yankeetown echinoids I found which rather quickly removed the accumulated surface blackening due to mildew returning the color to a pleasing white. It also seemed to soften the surrounding matrix a bit which was what I was after. Following the brief "cleaning" in muriatic acid I returned them to a soak in a bucket of fresh water. I should also add that acting upon Kara's suggestion, I soaked the echinoids in fresh water for some time before their acid wash so that the acid would have less of a chance to be drawn into the interior.

After their "bleaching" wash in stronger acid I've been soaking several different specimens in common white vinegar (dilute acetic acid) which is a much more gentle than the acetic acid. Every so often I pull out the echinoids to inspect them and scrub off any loosened matrix material from the outside. Some of the echinoids have larger chunks of matrix attached and as it softens I find that I can work off chunks with small tools (dental picks or jeweler's screwdrivers). I continue to monitor the progress to make sure no detectable damage is being done to the echinoid tests themselves during the cleaning.

So far it seems to be working for me.

Cheers.

-Ken

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Note to self: join the FPS! The main problem is, work and running a "hobby farm*" takes so much time I can never seem to get away for more than one day at a time. I joined FPS a few years ago, and couldn't get away for even a single field trip. I think my priorities need adjusting.

Don

*Regarding "hobby farm", there is actually no such a thing. "Hobby" and "farm" are mutually exclusive terms, I've come to realize.

Living in South Florida the trip up for the FPS meeting was a 320 mile (one way) road trip--I guess it could be worse if I lived in Key West. :P

The distances involved in making it to meeting is what has kept me from joining FPS before (or being a long-distance member to some of the west coast fossil clubs like Tampa Bay). As they are only quarterly meetings rather than monthly I decided it was time to make the leap and join. I tend to travel so much at times that I haven't made more than two of my monthly bromeliad society meetings (and they are relatively local). FPS is a great group of people and I'm glad we are now members.

Regarding "hobbies"--I believe that since there are 365 days in each year I should be able to have at least as many hobbies. I tend to jump in head first into new interests and learn as much as I can before being distracted by the next shiny object--sort of like a cross between ADHD and savant syndrome. If I had a motto it would likely be: "Jack of all trades, master of none." I believe in a Smörgåsbord approach to life sampling as many things as I possibly can. My idea of a "hobby farm" are the heirloom tomato seedlings I have sprouting at the moment---mmmmm.... :drool: (Yes, winter is tomato growing season in South Florida--they are after all originally cool-weather inhabitants of the Andes mountains.)

Cheers.

-Ken

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I was visiting friends in Florida this month and they signed me up for that trip and the dinner but I got food poisoning Thursday night. I hate food poisoning because it is almost always because someone thinks not washing your hands is a victimless rule violation. That put me in bed all day Friday with a shaky, uh digestive system, Saturday morning so I didn't go on the trip. I did feel good enough to go to the dinner.

I liked those posters they were giving away and took one home.

Jess

Later that evening we met up at the Opera House in High Springs for the fall meeting of the FPS. We had an excellent dinner followed by three interesting scientific presentations and we got to bid on some items in the silent auction to benefit the society's Gary Morgan Award in Student Research. There were lots of interesting items to bid on and I won a Styrofoam and glass "Aqua-viewer" which I plan on using to do a little snooping on the bottom from the surface next time I'm at the Peace River. We met a lot of great people during the field trip and meeting. Jack introduced me to Gunther Lobisch, a long time echinoid collector who has quite the encyclopedic knowledge of this subject. I mentioned to him that I had an interest in echinoids ever since learning about Eupatagus antillarum and seeing a YouTube video of a couple of guys collecting these from the offshore spoil pile islands near Yankeetown (remnants of the ill-fated Cross Florida Barge Canal project in the 1930s). Gunther mentioned that I didn't need to go to the spoil pile islands to collect echinoderms as they could also be found in the spoil pile "ridge" that was created along side the canal. This got the little gears in my head turning--but I'll save that for a separate posting.

Cheers.

-Ken

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Jess,

It was nice to meet you at the meeting. A real shame you couldn't make it out to the quarry as we had a good time and the weather was marvelous. You'll need to visit your friends in Florida again around another meeting/field trip and this time don't go out for food the day before. :blink::wacko:

Cheers.

-Ken

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