Ordovician Micromorph Fauna Near Cincinnati

[DPS Ammonite]

Amateur paleontologists and fossil hunters make important contributions to science and publish papers on their finds. Dry Dredgers' members Bill Heimbrock (a Fossil Forum Member) and Jack Kallmeyer have coauthored a paper with Benjamin Dattilo and several others about the description and origin of an Ordovician micromorph fauna near Cincinnati entitled: "GIANTS AMONG MICROMORPHS: WERE CINCINNATIAN (ORDOVICIAN, KATIAN) SMALL SHELLY PHOSPHATIC FAUNAS DWARFED?" They concluded that the phosphatic micromorphs were probably not dwarfed due to unusual environmental conditions. Rather, they were fillings and steinkerns formed in small portions of normal sized shells. There was a bias in the preservation against larger fauna preserved as phosphatized fossils. The size distribution of the phosphatized steinkerns did not represent the original size distribution of the fauna.

I remember being told that the micromorph fossils that I collected in the Pawpaw and Grayson Formations in North Texas might not be true micromorph faunas dwarfed due to unusual environmental conditions. They might occur because only the smallest animals and parts of animals were preserved and filled with pyrite, limonite and phosphate.

See this article:

http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=b48b5071fb345f72f528ad4b3&id=be84016073&e=8154ffd9f6

See the whole Palaios paper here:
http://palaios.sepmonline.org/content/31/3/55.full.pdf+html

See video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO0m3Y9ayAw

[minnbuckeye]

Way to go Bill !!!!!!!!!!!!

[JohnJ]

Great discovery, Bill. You've made us all a little smarter.

[billheim]

Thanks All!

I've been off of TFF for a while largely with non-paleo stuff so am just now getting back into it.

Ben Dattilo is a champion of helping amateurs like Jack Kallemeyer and myself.

Fellow Dry Dredger Matthew Speights is at GSA SE Section today and watched Ben's talk covering amateur paleontology and our contribution to the science. He smart-phoned me a photo of the session while Ben had a slide of me on the screen. I'll post it here as soon as I get permission from Matthew.

We have needed a paper demystifying the micromorph layers of the Cincinnatian Series for a long time. I was captivated by Tony Martin's 1986 master's thesis at Miami University on micromorph assemblages. There was not a lot of other studies out there on these layers that matched my observations while I was trying to identify my mystery microfossil (http://xfossils.com/billheim/mystery1.htm). Tony is now a co-author of our paper.

My "mystery fossil" was hard for everyone to identify because it is just a partial infill of a normal sized clam (presumably Lyrodesma sp.). I was finding thousands of these and other partial molds ("Teilsteinkerns" Dattilo) that were distinctly fossils but did not look like any fossil I've ever seen pictured. Once I got a good match to the grit between the dentitions of Lyrodesma hinges, it became the first of a growing number of examples of partial molds of regular sized shells. After mine, Ben Dattilo was able to discover that even the abundant Cyclora snail steinkerns were largely partial molds, with neither the apex nor the aperture preserved in most cases. They were not being correctly identified as adults or juveniles from this. Thus the confusion. So he launched a study at IPFW and the result is this paper. We have Ben to thank for making such great progress on this subject and seeing it through to a published paper while many of us were stabbing at answers.

Coauthor Rebecca Freeman of the Univ. of Kentucky had also encountered these phosphatic molds in her acid residues while examining brachiopods from the Fairview Formation. She became captivated with the puzzle just as I did. These tiny things really pull you in to studying them.

I have been finding other ways as well to use these phosphatic layers to discover fossils at a much higher resolution than is afforded by calcite. Michael Vendrasco of California State Fullerton contacted me asking for some of my samples to SEM in search of evidence of early nacre (mother-of-pearl) in late Ordovician mollusks. I gathered Cyclora from about 20 sites and mailed him samples for several years. We now have one paper done and at least one more in progress. I really appreciate that professionals such as Michael and Ben are willing to reward our hard work by making us co-authors of their papers.

There is lot of support in the paleontological community for amateurs. We are allowed to do science! Cool!

Thanks "DPS Ammonite" for bringing this up on the forum. Feel free to post questions here.

Bill Heimbrock

Edited March 31, 2016 by billheim

[billheim]

Here's the aforementioned slide picturing me and describing amateur paleontology from IPFW Ben Dattilo's talk at GSA SE on March 31, 2016.
Photo by Matthew Speights. Slide by Ben Dattilo.

http://xfossils.com/billheim/GSA_SE_Talk_Dattilo_March31_2016_slide.jpg

Bill

[Fossil Claw]

Very cool. Congrats! Mods get that man his paleo partner badge!

Edited April 2, 2016 by Fossil Claw

[FossilDudeCO]

Congrats! great work, keep it up!