Do These Count as Fossils & Can Anyone Provide Info?

[shorty]

Hello!  These are from McHenry County, in Northern Illinois. About 40 years ago, they dug a pond near my house.  When they got about 15' down, the excavator started bringing up large logs (they seemed like whole trees,) and lots of smelly gray clay full of shells, wood, and pine cones.  The explanation I heard back in the day was about 10,000 years ago, the glacier came through and buried everything.

The pictures show some of the items I collected back then.  I've gotten curious about them again and figured someone here might know about this kind of thing.

My questions are

Fossil doesn't seem like the correct term... What do you call these?

Does the glacier buried everything story hold up?

How unusual is this?

 

I'd appreciate any insight you have.  Thanks in advance!

Kim

[Uncle Siphuncle]

Subfossil may be the term you are searching for.

[shorty]

Thank you!

[FossilDAWG]

It would be interesting to ID the specimens and see if they are species that still occur in the area, or if they are more indicative of colder climates.  15 feet down could indicate a post-glacial or interglacial deposit.  If it is that old, it could be an interesting research site.  Perhaps you could try to run your specimens by someone at a local university geology department.  Of course it sounds like the deposit is now at the bottom of a pond, so it may not be very accessible any more.  

 

Don

[shorty]

Hi Don, thanks for the reply!

A friend id'd the pine cone as Picea. Said it currently grows farther north in Wisconsin. 

 

Yes, it would be great to have things ID'd or looked into.  Is there a best way to find someone who's interested?

 

Youre right, that particular hole is filled with water, but it's in a larger, low area between hills. So there's probably more on the next lot or across the road. 

Thanks again!

 

Kim

[Yvie]

I live in southern England,the glaciers here deposited rocks now found over in France or Scotland,miles away.

[Coco]

They look like freshwater gastropods. The rolled up in circle are doubtless Planorbis. They look like current species. If they are not, they aren'tt old fossils...

 

Coco

[shorty]

Yvie, thanks!  The hills in our area are materials left by the glacier.

 

Coco thanks for the info on the gastropods.  I'll look up Planorbis!

[FossilDAWG]

They are almost certainly "current species".  The question is, are they species that currently occur in that area or are they much more northerly species today?  There are lake/bog/wetland deposits that date to various interglacial periods or to the time right after the glaciers last retreated, that provide a record of the climactic conditions at that time.  

 

Don

[shorty]

Hi Don, 

Is this link similar to what you're talking about?  https://www.jstor.org/stable/30063563?seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents 

If so, maybe I could take better pictures and post them in the ID help section.

Thanks!

 

[ashcraft]

They look very similar to what you find in Coldwater Creek in St. Louis, which is an ice age swamp/bog deposit.  The nut appears to be butternut.  The snails are freshwater indicators, but can't say much more then that.

 

As far as being a fossil or not.  My definition is anything over 10,000 years old is a fossil, ever how it is, or is not, preserved, which i think is a fairly common definition. 

 

Brent Ashcraft

[shorty]

Hi Brent,  Thanks for the info.  I'll look into Coldwater Creek in St. Louis. 

I think the photo of the seed might be misleading.  I forgot to put something in for scale, sorry.  It's small - reminds me of a choke cherry pit.

 

Thanks!  Kim

[Doctor Mud]

based on your location, these are likely to be Holocene, or date to the last 12,000 years.

An ice cap extended pretty much just south of the Great Lakes in the Last Glacial Maximum 21,000 years ago. Glaciers don't tend to bury things, but actively erode the landscape. deposits from previous interglacials can survive on the sides of valleys or above the ice sheet within the limits of glaciers in rare cases but not usually under ice sheets. The ice was over 1 km thick in places.

 

Some people would use the term sub-fossil for Quaternary fossils but the word fossil is derived from the Latin word Fossilis meaning "dug up". It's a little bit of a grey area, but you could call anything buried a fossil. I saw road kill entombed in  bitumen called a fossil once.

 

As others have alluded to whether a species is extinct or extant isn't a definition of s fossil and many species survived for thousands of years. The environmental preference of many extant species are used to reconstruct or infer past climatic conditions during the Quaternary, including macrofossils (molluscs and seeds) and microfossils (fossil pollen).

Radiocarbon dating would be used to date anything up to ~50,000 years old and  molluscs and seeds could be good targets. Luminescence dating can date deposits older than this.

 

[Doctor Mud]

In rare cases pre glacial deposits can survive within the extent of ice sheets, e.g a sinkhole deposit. Here is an example of 800,000 year old deposits thought to have survived glacial advances as they were in a fissure in the bedrock. This example is from central Illinois, so proves there are rare exceptions.

 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033589484710404

[Deb in Michigan]

I grew up in Mc Henry County Illinois.  In some areas of that county and surrounding counties there are ancient peat bogs running just under the surface of the soil and some quite deep... and there are a few areas that were untouched by the glaciers very near...  i'll bet your specimens came from one of those old bogs.   Lots of good resources nearby in Chicago at the natural history museum... why not contact scientists there for more information?

 

[Bathollovian]

You have got, Planorbidae, Physidae, Lymnaeaidae and Sphaeridae for the bivalves. 

 

On 29/1/2017 at 10:46 AM, Doctor Mud said:

Some people would use the term sub-fossil for Quaternary fossils but the word fossil is derived from the Latin word Fossilis meaning "dug up". It's a little bit of a grey area, but you could call anything buried a fossil. I saw road kill entombed in  bitumen called a fossil once.

 

As others have alluded to whether a species is extinct or extant isn't a definition of s fossil and many species survived for thousands of years. The environmental preference of many extant species are used to reconstruct or infer past climatic conditions during the Quaternary, including macrofossils (molluscs and seeds) and microfossils (fossil pollen).

 

+1 It look likes indeed to an holocene freshwater fauna

[aplomado]

As ashcraft said, any remains or traces of ancient life (over 10,000 years ago) is considered a fossil, no matter what sort of preservation...

[shorty]

Thanks Doctor Mud for all the info & Deb in Michigan too

Thanks, Bathollovian for the ID's and aplomado for the clarification

And thanks to everyone one for their info and input. I'm sorry I haven't been back to visit this in quite a while. I still appreciate the help

Everything is now stored in an acid free museum type box, so hopefully it will last.  I'll put all this info with it, and maybe my grandkids will find it interesting one day.