Pocono Group Fossils

[Fossildude19]

Hmm. I find that surprising.  

Well,  quite apparently, spiders aren't my strong suit.    

Congratulations.

Regards,

 

[EMP]

My first whole one 

 

...well, mostly whole. 3 legs are missing and the ones that are there aren't complete, but still cool!

[EMP]

I've always been mentioning insect tracks that I've been finding at the site, but I believe I now have the culprit! It's a pretty small, partial impression of the body of a pill millipede, a squatter version of the more well known animal that has more robust tergites on its body. The fossil is the crinoid like impression in the center. This guy comes from the same layer of shale that seems to be the jackpot, as my two arachnids, all the tetrapod footprints, and now this millipede all come from it. Considering this diverse fauna  and lack of flora, this shale was probably deposited on the banks of a slow moving creek or pond where the animals gathered to hunt at the water's edge.

 

Hopefully I'll have a lot more stuff later this weekend, but this little guy should be enough for tonight.

[Fossildude19]

It's possible:  

 

 

I've been terribly wrong on some of these, so - I can't really say one way or the other. 

Regards,

[EMP]

Woo! Middle of February in Maryland and over 70 degrees! No better way to beat the heat than to go out fossil collecting. I had a great time at the outcrop, and found some really neat finds. The scenery driving out to the site was beautiful as ever, and luckily this time there weren't any bugs to pop out at me when I was flipping shale (I just learned that brown recluses have been reported from Maryland, so that helps me a lot now ).

 

I'll start with the usual suspects: Triphyllopteris lescuriana. I didn't find any whole fronds of this seed fern, but the pieces I did find are nicely preserved in coal rich shale, giving them a nice metallic sheen.

[EMP]

Triphyllopteris lescuriana continued:

[EMP]

Next up are the lycopods. This time around these guys were very finely preserved, better than in the past. I think it's Lepidondedropsis vandergrachti. Unfortunately there weren't any big ones like last time .

[EMP]

An uknown species of Lepidondedropsis, since my computer won't let me upload anything.

[EMP]

Ok, now with that out of the way it's time to move on to the more interesting specimens of the day!

 

First up is the tetrapod footprint I found on the trip. It's pretty small and hard to see, but if you look carefully enough you'll be able to see the toe imprints. I only found this one on the trip, so I average between one and two per visit at this site.

[EMP]

Next up are some finds brand new to the site.

 

My friend and I went over these, and I don't think it's placoderm (seeing as though those died out before these were alive!). It's definitely a bone material, so I have no real idea what it is. Our best guess was that it had something to do with either a tetrapod or fish like my later find, but since I had found these near where I've found the tetrapod footprints (a couple of feet away, actually) tetrapod seems most likely. Included in this post are some chips of bone, and in the next are vertebrae (I completely forgot to take an in situ picture! Anyways the fossil was on a couple of pieces of pretty fissily shale, and it broke up into this).  

[EMP]

Here are the vertebraes, since all of my pictures are apparently too big

 

 

 

[EMP]

And the trip maker- a Mississippian fish! It may not be the prettiest (it's been smashed and weathered really bad, and it's only the scales left I think), but you can see the tail and head region of the animal. I even found the inverse part of the tail (there wasn't one for the head), and a sort of in situ shot of it all (I placed the invert part of the specimen directly below, so they could all be shown together. The other two parts are legit). I have no idea what species it is, but it looks like a ray finned fish from the Red Hill website so I'll go with that. It's my first fish find ever!

 

After looking online a bit, I believe it could be the genus Gonatodus. The shape is similar, and Gonatodus has been found in rocks stratigraphically similar to the Pocono.

 

Apparently no amount of cropping can appease the system, so I just put all of the fish photos into imgur. Here's the link:

 

 

[EMP]

Aside from the computer's unwillingness to upload my pictures, it was a great day hunting. Fresh air, my first fish, no bugs.

 

I've already talked about the geology of the site, but I found this great picture:

 

This picture gives a good idea about where the different plants would have lived in relation to the river channels and ponds of the early Mississippian world of 350 million years ago. The large, tree like lycopods stood out in the water similar to the modern day cypress while the smaller ones grew closer to shore to stay above the tide (hard to imagine these ancient rivers flowing what's now west to an inland sea). The seed ferns, like Triphyllopteris, grew on the bank above the river while the Archaeocalamites (I've only found a couple, badly worn specimens) were on the hills above the valleys. Each level represents a different soil condition (ie - type of rock they're found in), which probably explains why some plants are abundant in some layers but virtually absent in others.

 

Here's some pictures of what the environment may have looked like 350 million years ago. Note that none of these pictures are mine.

 

 

 

[Fossildude19]

I'm having a hard time seeing some of the things you are.  

 

I think you should invest in a decent camera,  to get good images of your fossils.

Then,  use a computer, and a  photo editing software to get the best pictures you can.

It would make identifications much easier.

 

By vertebrates do you mean back bones?

I think you might mean Vertebrae.  

I'm guessing an auto correct misspelling.

[EMP]

You're exactly right on the typo.

 

I think the problem is that for some reason I couldn't upload these pictures as whole size, and that somewhere in the cropping process they got all blurry.

[EMP]

Could the fish be an acanthodian spiny shark?

[Fossildude19]

Unfortunately, ... I can't make out anything fishy from those photos.  

I don't see anything resembling acanthodian spines. 

 

[EMP]

A couple of recent finds.

 

Both are tetrapod footprints; the first one is a bit deformed so I circled it in red to see it better and the later is a smaller pair of prints that come from a smaller animal.

 

 

[EMP]

I'll post some of my other finds later. I want to make sure if they're fish teeth or not. 

[EMP]

Some recent finds.

 

Undichna (?) sp., a fish swimming trace fossil made by the tail as it moved.

 

Two fish teeth, from an unidentified species. The other ones I have are pretty small, so I don't know if I'll be able to get good pictures of them.

 

Triphyllopteris alleghanensis. I used this piece to write down some notes since it was on my desk and the rock is high in carbon!

[EMP]

Another new find. This time it is a tetrapod footprint, with a clear one showing about five toes on the right, and a smaller more poorly preserved one on the left (it shows just the toes).