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The Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center


Fossil-Hound

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Had a blast last weekend visiting The Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center. There is a ton of stuff there that's really worth checking out and I noticed an assortment of fossils. The first picture is a crinoid head.

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Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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Stromatolites helped to form our earths oxygen rich atmosphere during the Pre-Cambrian as their cellular respiratory by-product is oxygen.

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Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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Tree ferns. These are very common in north eastern Pennsylvania.

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Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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No museum is complete without a pristine trilobite. I'm not exactly sure what this species is known as but I have seen them around. Notice the nice preparation work that has been done around the fossil.

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Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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One of my favorite fossils, and the envy of many is the Eurypterid. There are only a few places in the world where these are found: New York, Ontario, and the Ukraine. I would absolutely love to get my hands on one of these and may just have to save up my pennies to purchase one as I don't have a lot of spare time to go out and hunt for these rarities.

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Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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This is an Ammonite. Notice the many chambers. Scientists theorize that the Ammonite used these chambers to trap gases to control it's buoyancy in the water, similar to how it's predecessor the modern day Nautilus does.

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Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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Dinosaur footprint. I would absolutely love to find one of these.

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Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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This is a cephalopod. I've found a few of these from Penn Dixie, but this one is pristine.

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Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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Sea turtle have been around since the early Cretaceous and survived the massive extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. If the earth was hit in the Yucatan by a massive asteroid, how did these Chelonioidea reptiles survive? This is a loggerhead, in a turtle nursery.

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Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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Massive shark teeth showcasing various sharks. The jaws might be real, but the single teeth are not as they are enlarged to show detail. The tooth on the right is from a great white, but would make for a killer foot long C. Megalodon tooth if it where real.

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Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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Corals have been around for a long time, ever since the Cambrian. I used to own a saltwater aquarium, and that's what helped me get into marine paleontology. Very neat stuff.

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Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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This is a Sandbar shark. I recently read an article indicating that juvenile Sandbars are preyed upon by Sand Tiger sharks.

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Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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Crazy to think that all of the aforementioned sea-life both past and present can be found in central and northeaster USA, and the Atlantic ocean. Here I am at Cape Henry, Virginia where the first settlers of the USA landed.

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Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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12 hours ago, jsnrice said:

Triassic era fish from Virginia.

 

This is actually a Triassic fish from Madagascar. ;) 

The Trilobite is a Dalmanites limulurus, probably from the Rochester Shale in NY.

The scale tree is a Lepidodendron sp

Thanks for the field trip. :) 

Regards,

    Tim    -  VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."

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11 hours ago, jsnrice said:

Crazy to think that all of the aforementioned sea-life both past and present can be found in central and northeaster USA, and the Atlantic ocean. Here I am at Cape Henry, Virginia where the first settlers of the USA landed.

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Nice report. There are always myths surrounding the first visitors to the New World and the area that became the US. Southern colonization has been ignored by many older history books. The Spanish had been in Florida almost a hundred years by this time of the Jamestown Colony. An English colony had come and gone in North Carolina 20 years earlier. Of course it was already populated by Native Americans for millennia. 

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11 hours ago, Fossildude19 said:

 

This is actually a Triassic fish from Madagascar. ;) 

The Trilobite is a Dalmanites limulurus, probably from the Rochester Shale in NY.

The scale tree is a Lepidodendron sp

Thanks for the field trip. :) 

Regards,

 

@Fossildude19 How do you know it's from Madagascar? I thought that bug looked familiar from somewhere. :D You're very welcome.

Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

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