From Bathon to Callov

[Ludwigia]

Yesterday I decided to go looking for new exposures in the Wutachtal. I did a bit of research beforehand which helped me get my bearings in the woods, but I still ended up clambering about for a couple of hours before I finally reached the level that I was looking for. There just aren't all that many exposures in the Callovian and Bathonian in the underbrush, but I finally managed to locate a roughly beaten bridal path that led me to the Bathonian varians-Schichten and the Callovian Wutach Formation which I was looking for.

 

The first is directly underneath the second and they are together only about 6 meters thick, so once you've found one, you've found them both. The horizons are made up of iron oolite and limestone sediments with some marl in between and they are reputed to be relatively fossiliferous. Fallen trees are a good place to look.

 

The iron was mined at various places in the area from the Middle Ages up to the end of WW2, but all of the old mines and quarries have been refilled or built over, which is why you have to go into the hills now if you want to find anything. Light is scarce at the moment, so I only had a few hours to do some exploratory digs, but I did get off to a relatively good start, having found a few fossils, some of which I've prepared today and am showing here. I'm planning to head out there again tomorrow to do some more intensive exploring.

 

Macrocephalites jacquoti. 6.5cm.

 

Procerites sp. 6cm.

 

Procerites sp. 10cm.

[Fossildude19]

Well done, Roger!  

Glad you were able to make some headway in finding new sites. 

Regards, 

[ynot]

Very good (re)discovery!! Good luck with the new site! Hope it produces some great new stuff for Us to look at!!

Tony

[doushantuo]

Magnificent Macrocephalites,Rog!

[Ludwigia]

Thanks, guys and good morning. Now let's see what today is going to bring.

[JimB88]

Awesome stuff already! So the matrix has already weathered away, and the fossils are loose  correct?

[JohnJ]

Stay safe and good luck, Roger. 

[Ludwigia]

4 hours ago, JimB88 said:

Awesome stuff already! So the matrix has already weathered away, and the fossils are loose  correct?

 

Some are weathered out, but others are still stuck in blocks. You'll see what I mean in a minute.

 

4 hours ago, JohnJ said:

Stay safe and good luck, Roger. 

 

Thanks John. No great danger here. I'll be ok.

 

Today I managed to get away as planned and had a bit more time at hand this time, since I new exactly where I was going. I'd seen a spot yesterday that looked like it could be fruitful.

 

 

And I was right. Hit paydirt, so to speak.

 

 

I believe I'm in the so-called grau-blaues Erzschicht here (Means grey/blue ore horizon). It's a mixture of clay marl and concretionary limestone blocks which were obviously formed under turbulent circumstances, since many of them are chock-a-block with fossil debris, mostly ammonite bits. Amongst the debris were a few that appear to be complete. Only prep will tell. The next time I come I plan to dig down deeper in search of the rote Erzschicht (red ore horizon)

 

 

Continued...

 

 

 

[Ludwigia]

After digging around there for a few hours I decided to go on an exploratory mission in search of the rotes Erzschicht and it didn't take too long before I found it tucked under two neighboring trees just around the corner and slightly lower on the slope. My first scratch in the soil immediately brought a couple of small weathered-out ammos and after another few minutes I really lucked out, finding a big fat ammonite. Not sure about the species yet.

 

 

Looks like I've got a bit of prep work ahead of me. I'll post them here bit by bit as I get them done.

 

[fossilized6s]

Way to go, Roger! New spots are so exciting, like Holy ground. Lol

 

Can't wait to see these cleaned up!

[FossilDAWG]

The abundance of ammonites there is amazing!  Thanks for taking us along for the ride.

 

Don

[ynot]

 

 

Tony

 

PS Sorry but it has been a long day.

[Ludwigia]

10 hours ago, fossilized6s said:

Way to go, Roger! New spots are so exciting, like Holy ground. Lol

 

Can't wait to see these cleaned up!

You said it!

 

5 hours ago, FossilDAWG said:

The abundance of ammonites there is amazing!  Thanks for taking us along for the ride.

 

Don

Particularly the red layer, which is why I was happy to have found a little exposure.

 

5 hours ago, ynot said:

 

 

Tony

 

PS Sorry but it has been a long day.

A picture is worth a thousand words

[Shamalama]

Great finds Roger, and a good look at how you actually go about acquiring them. Thanks for the photos!

[JimB88]

I see what you mean now!

Thats going to be an awesome spot.

[Fossildude19]

[Ludwigia]

On 30.11.2016 at 3:12 PM, Shamalama said:

Great finds Roger, and a good look at how you actually go about acquiring them. Thanks for the photos!

 

You're welcome. Glad you appreciate it.

 

On 30.11.2016 at 5:47 PM, JimB88 said:

I see what you mean now!

Thats going to be an awesome spot.

 

I sure am hoping...

 

On 30.11.2016 at 5:52 PM, Fossildude19 said:

 

Well, here comes a bit more...

I ended up chucking out some of the finds from the first site, since they weren't well enough preserved to keep, but I did manage to salvage these ones still.

 

This one has a diameter of 5.5cm. and has a rhynconelloid brachiopode in its navel. Im starting to have my doubts about my ammonite ids, so I'm leaving the giving of names for the time being until I've contacted someone in the know.

 

A Pygomalus ovalis echinoid. The preservation's not the best, the oolites adhering tenaceously to the delicate shell.  But you don't find them all that often, so this is a keeper.

 

A Modiolus bipartitus bivalve.

 

Now on to the first prep from the 2nd site. This ammonite was one of two in the big block laying on the hammer in one of the photos above. I was a little worried that part of it was missing, since that was the case in many of the extracted blocks which I left behind. Fortunately it ended up looking quite alright. Only the inner whorls are missing. I'm afraid that the other one won't turn out quite as well, but that's another story. I think it's another Procerites, but I'm not betting on that yet. This has a diameter of 20cm., although it's only the phragmocone. Must have been a pretty big critter.

 

 

 

[Jeffrey P]

Great report, Roger, so far, that is. Excellent specimens and wonderful prep. Can it get any better? Hopefully some day I'll get to see a site like this in person.

[Ludwigia]

Thanks, Jeff. Yes, I'm very happy to have discovered another hunting ground. I just hope I can get out there again this fall before the snow starts to fly. Also the next couple of days are filled with other things, so I probably won't get back to the workshop for a while.

[digit]

Spectacular posts and exceptional photography (as we've come to expect--you set a high bar). Really enjoying seeing the detective work behind all your awesome finds. Thanks for taking us along.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Ludwigia]

Thanks Ken. Nice to have you following. I particularly appreciate your compliment about the photography, coming from someone who in my opinion is a master of the trade. I just seem to have a good hand with a normal digital camera and a simple photo editing program.

[digit]

Photos (as they say) are worth 1K words (updated for technology). Remembering to take the camera out and document a trip for later reference as well as initiating the drool glands of the other TFF members is an important part of writing up a trip report (IMHO). My vacation photography finds me lugging a 35 pound (16kg) photo backpack along with me so I have a choice of lenses as I enjoy finding tiny macro subjects as well as shooting wide-angle panoramics (sometimes within minutes of each other). When I'm on a fossil hunt I usually unburden myself of that backpack to make room for carrying other heavy stuff (hopefully). For years I've used just a simple Olympus pocket camera with remarkably decent macro capabilities as well as a 7X optical zoom. I've killed two of those in the field and I'm on my third which is getting a bit dodgy now. Recently, I picked up a nice compact point-and-shoot camera that is waterproof down to 15m (an Olympus Tough) and I've started using it as an environmentally robust field camera between tossing it into the pocket of my buoyancy compensator jacket when I'm doing coral reef research training or survey dives.

 

For decades (back in the days of chemical photography) the saying was "the lens makes the image and the camera only records it" which indicated that spending more money on lenses (over camera bodies) would result in higher quality images. That seemed to get turned on its head with the new wave of digital photography. I've seen spectacular photographs come from smart phones with lenses no larger than the diameter of a pencil eraser. The ability to shoot raw images (my new Olympus Tough can even do this) along with modest images processing software can really help with the technical aspects of photography (reducing the number of crummy images). Regardless of the tools or technology, it still takes a human brain (thankfully, these are still useful for some things) to compose and frame a photo. I believe that photography is story telling in a non-verbal medium and my rule for including images in a presentation is that if you can't come up with a caption in your mind of what the photo is saying then it needs to be dropped.

 

In addition to the well-executed (properly lit, focused and cropped) images of your finds that make my keyboard sticky from all the puddles of drool your images (and accompanying story) of your quest to find new hunting grounds kept me captivated. Maybe one day I'll get to the point where I can read geological maps (and the landscape) to be able to do something like pulling ammonites out of a hillside the way magicians produce rabbits from hats. Till then I'll fossil hunt in more well-known sites and marvel at great trip reports like this that have me reaching for my passport.

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Ludwigia]

Thanks again, Ken. Yes, I actually do attempt to tell a story with my photos in a way and am quite concious of what I feel to be the appropriate presentation when I'm making them. I often end up deleting a number of times before I'm satisfied with the result. As far as reading maps and landscapes are concerned, it's taken me years of trial and error to get to the point where I can feel my way around more or less, so just keep at it and be prepared for lots of trips without success before you strike paydirt.

[digit]

When I'm at a site collecting and I have my camera for the purpose of posting a series of photos for a trip report on TFF, I try to think a bit like a photo-journalist and capture images that relay the various aspects of my experience collecting. Overall establishing shots showing the site from a distance helps readers enter the story and follow-up images at various steps along the way (like an Ikea instruction manual) help to explain the process and what I'm seeing while I'm collecting. I love in situ photos and from what I read others are appreciative of seeing fossils in place at the moment of discovery (or shortly thereafter). It takes patience to pull out the camera when the excitement of seeing a great find after a lot of effort makes you want to grab it before any photos can be taken. I'm lucky to be able to go to lots of places and have great experiences on my little treasure hunts. I'm also lucky to have TFF to be able to see so many other great trips unfold on the trip reports in this forum. TFF has made available so many destinations I'd never have known about and allowed me to meet great members that I'd not have known otherwise, I feel obligated to up my game and return the favor with good quality reports of my own.

 

One of the things I like about fossil hunting is that it can occasionally be done in public places and I like the "superpower" of knowing there is more to a place than most suspect. How many people pass a fossiliferous road-cut at speed in their cars, or camp next to fossil-laden spoil piles, or float down a river in a canoe over unseen meg teeth, mammoth molars, or piles of dugong bones and are not any the wiser of the true wonders just beyond their reach? Being a fossil hunter (or a rockhound, or a gold panner, or an antique bottle diver) is like being part of a special club that has secret knowledge of the existence of wondrous items only available to those possessing this knowledge. It's my kind of club.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Ludwigia]

I agree with your comments on photographing in the field. That's basically how I go about it as well. And there certainly were a number of times that I was so involved in the hunt that I forgot all about the camera until it was too late.

A street worker once stopped to check out what I was doing in the ditch in the upper Danube valley. I was afraid that I was going to get blasted, but as soon as I showed him a couple of ammonites that I had just dug up, his eyes lit up in amazement. He then said that what I was doing was ok and wished me good luck for the rest of the day.