Cretaceous Anthills - FINAL report (Misc, Gastropods, etc.)

[Arizona Chris]

HI all,

 

Well, we finally got through the last batch of scrapings from the sides of the giant ant hills up east of  Show Low in the Cretaceous Twowells Tongue of the Dakota formation.  About 2 gallons worth of gravels were gone through, pinch by pinch and the finally tally of micro fossils can now be fully evaluated!  In this last posting on this subject, Ill show a few microscope shots at 10x of some of the left over categories of what we  pulled out of the tiny gravels brought to the surface by huge red fire ants.  

 

Only a few tiny sideritized gastropods were found.  They are truly treasures.  They are internal casts in the iron mineral siderite, and show a minor fauna in the underlying cretaceous limestones beneath the surface of the hill we were on.  Here is a shot of the gastropods.

 

Next, we have sideritized worm burrows.  Many segments of these were found, and some of them had pointed ends.  

 

And while we spent many hours picking through the gravels with a 5x optivisor in a black gold pan, to alleviate boredom we often pulled out anything else that was interesting, like these awesome clear quartz gravels:

 

Finally, a big surprise - half a dozen extant LAND SNAILS that were ultra tiny showed up in the fines.  We did not expect these!

 

Well, thats it for now.  Until we get back to that area and find more fossiliferous ant hills where our insect worker fossil friends have pulled out more micro fossils for us, we bid farewell for now on this subject.  Thanks for looking, its been fun!

[ynot]

Nice finds for an ant hill.

Thanks for sharing.

[Darktooth]

Very cool stuff!

[SailingAlongToo]

@MarcoSr

[RJB]

Wow, those are really cool.   and by the way, did you get attacked by any ants?

 

RB

[gavialboy]

Very cool finds. Congrats.

[Arizona Chris]

Thanks everyone!  Only once did we get attacked, those suckers poured out to greet us with fiery fangs and quite an attitude!  Fortunately, there were dozes of abandoned mounds to explore.  We must get back and get more material.  

[Wrangellian]

Nice photography.

[Chase B.]

Dear Arizona Chris,

 

Congratulations on the wonderful microfossil finds. 

 

Regards,

 

Chase