Trip to Fleury la Rivière - Marne - France

[elcoincoin]

As stated in my previous topic. Here s the last part of my autumn trip to Champagne.

 

After 2 days we were done with our albian spots. So we decided to take the car and drive 2 hours from there, to totally different layer / fossils

The area of Epernay if reknown for the quality of its eocene shells, and specially its giant gastropod : campanile giganteum.

Those, can only be found by digging which is forbidden in most place. (those measure had to be taken after random badly educated people dug huge pits everywhere without  even carrying to fill them back once they were done)

 

For  some time we traveled the area looking for either work sites, road cuts or even sand piles.

We managed to actually find a sand pile and forest roads freshly covered with fossiliferous sand.

So we started to investigate.

 

I wasn't looking for more than 10 minutes that i spotted an unusual shape in the sand.

 

It was a (very) partial campanile giganteum (1 third of the beast maybe a bit more ), but still my best so far.

 

 

Then after 5 more minutes, the other catch of the day for me :

 

A croc tooth. I had never heard of croc in those layer / area. I knew it was a tooth, but took me quite some feed back tor realize who it belongs too!

After some reading (the complete listing of eocene fauna), there are 3  mentions of crocodile in the lutetian.

 

So  here it is : (size between 1,5 and 2 cm)

 

 

My girl friend catch of the day was a very nice conch : lapparia musicalis

 

No picture of this year specimen but here s one i found in 2011

 

 

Friend that came with us  found a partial Hypocrenes, but still a cool find.

 

To finish for today another cool find for the day :

 

Xenophora schroeteri, a fascinating gastropod which agglomerate random stuff around to protect itself (other shells, gravel or even shark teeth or coral)

Edit : "Carrier shells" is the english expression apparently

 

 

You can see more of that stuff either in TFF here : 2016 lutetian TFF galery

or on my flickr : 2016 lutetian flickr galery

 

Next post i ll present you some of the emblematic species !

 

[gavialboy]

wow that's some impressive finds

[FossilDAWG]

Beautiful, beautiful shells!  Just glorious.  

 

Don

[Vieira]

Beautiful finds.

 

Congratulations

[Plantguy]

Very nice finds.

 

That croc tooth is especially well preserved!  And that Campanile giganteum is really a monster sized gastropod isnt it-nice partial. Not sure if we have that particular genus/species here but I could be wrong--I see mention of a Jamaican species.  That barracuda tooth looks like an interesting find as well. congrats!

 

Regards, Chris 

[elcoincoin]

Finishing this report by a few shots of some of the emblematic species of the area

 

The first 4 are very very very common.

 

One of the very fine conch :

 

Athleta spinosa

 

 

The most common of them all next,  you literally find them by dozens

 

Sycum bulbus

 

 

Another common gastropod (actually 2 of the clavilithes are very common : noae and parisiensis) :

 

Clavilithes noae

 

 

then Amaurellina acuta :

 

 

then 2 of my favorites species

 

The beautiful Cryptochorda stromboides (hard to find complete)

 

 

and Pterynotus crenulatus

 

 

And to finish with this trip : 2 boxes with the species'  specimens  found during this trip.

 

Once again you can see the whole pictures set on my TFF galery : here

or on my flickr here ( the last 2 pictures there are the same as the last of this post but with the IDs)

 

Hope you enjoyed

 

 

 

[ynot]

Sweet collection!!

Thanks for sharing it.

Tony

[Ludwigia]

Very nice finds. That carrier shell certainly is fascinating.