Miocene_Mason Posted July 23, 2017 Share Posted July 23, 2017 I was going to go hunting with a relative at his property, but he was away. Having already driven to Annapolis, i decided to try to find another place to hunt. I found a place within the Paleocene Aquia formation. There was no macrofossils, other than a shell piece, which may not be a fossil (although I would then wonder how it got there, I was a long way from the water). There was a ton of these (ironstone?) Concretions in the sandstone. I'm breaking down some sandstone with water and manual labor, when the sand drys out, I'll see if I can find any microfossils. This is my first experience with microfossils, and I don't have a good microscope, so a magnifying glass will have to do. I also found two (oyster?) shell pieces on an eroding mound of sand, presumably a more recent (but still old, it's way above sea level so it's at least a few hundred or thousand years old) sand dune. They are worn, but I don't know if they somehow they got up there anthropengenicly, or if they are fossils. I'll use this thread for microfossils if I find any microfossils.heres some of the stuff I found, starting with the shells, the first is the one possibly from the Aquia. “...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin Happy hunting, Mason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cck Posted July 23, 2017 Share Posted July 23, 2017 That sandstone looks like the Potomac formation, rather than the Aquia...I don't think there are marine fossils in it.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miocene_Mason Posted July 23, 2017 Author Share Posted July 23, 2017 Just now, cck said: That sandstone looks like the Potomac formation, rather than the Aquia...I don't think there are marine fossils in it.... That would be strange, according to the geologic map, thats a ways away. The map is however outdated, and may be inaccurate. If it's Potomac that would be cool, should be late Cretaceous right? Guess not gonna find any ostracods, but I'll look at it under the microscope anyway. “...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin Happy hunting, Mason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cck Posted July 23, 2017 Share Posted July 23, 2017 And I could be wrong, but I grew up on Aquia creek and have seen a lot of that sandstone....Sometimes you can get wood/plant imprints Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miocene_Mason Posted July 23, 2017 Author Share Posted July 23, 2017 14 minutes ago, cck said: And I could be wrong, but I grew up on Aquia creek and have seen a lot of that sandstone....Sometimes you can get wood/plant imprints It's a while away, and I searched for a while, and I didn't find anything, so that site must not be great. Maybe I will go to another later. Thank you for the information! It's very helpful! “...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin Happy hunting, Mason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plax Posted July 24, 2017 Share Posted July 24, 2017 if the sandstone is what the shell bit is setting on I think I see a shark tooth in cross section. Pic 1 to the right of the shell. The sandstone could be weathered aquia or most anything else from the area. Nice bog iron. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miocene_Mason Posted July 24, 2017 Author Share Posted July 24, 2017 10 minutes ago, Plax said: if the sandstone is what the shell bit is setting on I think I see a shark tooth in cross section. Pic 1 to the right of the shell. The sandstone could be weathered aquia or most anything else from the area. Nice bog iron. It's sitting on my concrete porch, maybe a someone dropped a shark tooth “...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin Happy hunting, Mason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plax Posted July 24, 2017 Share Posted July 24, 2017 our concrete and macadam here in Se NC is loaded with sharks teeth (am not joking). the result of the ag being from the new Hanover Member of the Castle Hayne formation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miocene_Mason Posted July 24, 2017 Author Share Posted July 24, 2017 Just now, Plax said: our concrete and macadam here in Se NC is loaded with sharks teeth (am not joking). the result of the ag being from the new Hanover Member of the Castle Hayne formation. Wow, that's cool, probably not the case with mine though, Carroll county is not typically (okay, ever) a good place to hunt for sharks teeth, or in this case make concrete out of. “...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin Happy hunting, Mason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plax Posted July 24, 2017 Share Posted July 24, 2017 I see what you mean. I grew up in the metamorphic mess of SE PA near the Delaware line (Boothwyn) and can sympathize. Went on google earth and didn't see any sand pits in your county though. That's definitely rounded sedimentary sand and not fines from a crushing mill. The black objects I'm seeing are probably something added to the mix from recycled materials and I'm biased toward black bits being vertebrate material. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miocene_Mason Posted July 24, 2017 Author Share Posted July 24, 2017 1 minute ago, Plax said: I see what you mean. I grew up in the metamorphic mess of SE PA near the Delaware line (Boothwyn) and can sympathize. Went on google earth and didn't see any sand pits in your county though. That's definitely rounded sedimentary sand and not fines from a crushing mill. The black objects I'm seeing are probably something added to the mix from recycled materials and I'm biased toward black bits being vertebrate material. Yeah, my house sits upon diabase and phyllite/schist, no fossils to be found. The rest of the county is pretty similar, the only fossils I've been able to find are recent rhizoliths, although the northeast of it may have some, but none of that is accessible. My house is also rather old, to my knowledge it was built around 1900, give or take a few years, as a farm house so I'm thinking it was made rather cheaply, probably from unprocessed sand in the state, maybe from the bay? I'm gonna do some research into it, and keep an eye out for small fossils. Thank you for alerting me to this possibility! “...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin Happy hunting, Mason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miocene_Mason Posted July 26, 2017 Author Share Posted July 26, 2017 On 7/23/2017 at 9:41 AM, cck said: That sandstone looks like the Potomac formation, rather than the Aquia...I don't think there are marine fossils in it.... After examining it under magnification (Albeit crappy magnification) I have determined you are correct, and that this is the Potomac Formation, which means the map needs some modifications. You said that you would find plant fossils in this formation, would they be found in these iron formations? That's pretty much all that was there... “...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin Happy hunting, Mason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plax Posted July 26, 2017 Share Posted July 26, 2017 what did you see under magnification that determined the bog iron was Potomac formation? All this bog iron looks the same to me. Can only ID the formation by context/provenance myself. Just curious. I recall someone finding footprints in a Pleistocene bog iron in Virginia? on this forum. I think a paper has been published or is in the works. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miocene_Mason Posted July 26, 2017 Author Share Posted July 26, 2017 25 minutes ago, Plax said: what did you see under magnification that determined the bog iron was Potomac formation? All this bog iron looks the same to me. Can only ID the formation by context/provenance myself. Just curious. I recall someone finding footprints in a Pleistocene bog iron in Virginia? on this forum. I think a paper has been published or is in the works. First off, all the stuff was sand, the Aquia is almost always a clay. Secondly, the usgs has a description of the sands, and it fits better the Potomac, it's got Quartz and feldsparic sand of varying sizes, less glauconitic (clay). Also, it matches the color better. I'll look for that post, I doubt there's anything there, it all seemed like concretions of varying shapes. I felt like I was on a big ball of iron covered with sand. I know other places in the formation to produce things, but none legal to take things from. I am still trying to find out where Ray Stanford hunts, I've narrowed it down quite a bit, but I still have a ton of rivers to check out. “...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin Happy hunting, Mason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SailingAlongToo Posted July 26, 2017 Share Posted July 26, 2017 1 hour ago, Plax said: what did you see under magnification that determined the bog iron was Potomac formation? All this bog iron looks the same to me. Can only ID the formation by context/provenance myself. Just curious. I recall someone finding footprints in a Pleistocene bog iron in Virginia? on this forum. I think a paper has been published or is in the works. Hey @Plax, Dr. Robert Weems has been studying / looking for prints in the bog iron found along the Potomac with @MarcoSr for a couple of years. I've seen a few of his "finds" and the fox print(s) was/are really cool. Looked just like a modern fox print. They have even found some really small (micro) prints in some of the iron pieces. As Marco Sr. has been helping him with this project, he is well versed in the specifics. I think they are hunting for more specimens a couple days this week. I'm pretty sure Marco Sr. posted something here on TFF about the project a few months ago. Cheers, SA2 Don't know much about history Don't know much biology Don't know much about science books......... Sam Cooke - (What A) Wonderful World Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plax Posted July 26, 2017 Share Posted July 26, 2017 thanks SA2. This old brain remembers facts but no references! didn't mean to question you whodamanHD. Just that I've collected similar chunks of bog iron all over and they just look the same to me. Have collected bog iron in the pine barrens of New Jersey from Pleistocene? deposits, The Magothy and merchantville which are cretaceous and a few others. Am thinking it forms in weathering and isn't actually part of the formation as it was originally deposited. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miocene_Mason Posted July 26, 2017 Author Share Posted July 26, 2017 16 minutes ago, Plax said: thanks SA2. This old brain remembers facts but no references! didn't mean to question you whodamanHD. Just that I've collected similar chunks of bog iron all over and they just look the same to me. Have collected bog iron in the pine barrens of New Jersey from Pleistocene? deposits, The Magothy and merchantville which are cretaceous and a few others. Am thinking it forms in weathering and isn't actually part of the formation as it was originally deposited. It didn't come off that way, and even if it had, I would have welcome it, I need to be questioned most of the time, makes me reconsider my evidence. I don't think these are redeposited, it's a solid face, only the outer layer is weathered. From what I can gather, the iron seeps down and replaces/ sticks to the sediment. Maybe I'll get back there someday, now that I know what I'm looking for (footprints apparently). Embarrassingly, I just remembered I've actually seen footprints in Potomac formation iron, or at least its surrounding stone (it was under "protective sandbags") at NASA Goddard, down in pg county. “...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin Happy hunting, Mason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarcoSr Posted July 27, 2017 Share Posted July 27, 2017 11 hours ago, SailingAlongToo said: Hey @Plax, Dr. Robert Weems has been studying / looking for prints in the bog iron found along the Potomac with @MarcoSr for a couple of years. I've seen a few of his "finds" and the fox print(s) was/are really cool. Looked just like a modern fox print. They have even found some really small (micro) prints in some of the iron pieces. As Marco Sr. has been helping him with this project, he is well versed in the specifics. I think they are hunting for more specimens a couple days this week. I'm pretty sure Marco Sr. posted something here on TFF about the project a few months ago. Cheers, SA2 The Pleistocene bog iron on the Potomac River can look very different. Some is yellowish in color. Some is reddish in color. Some is tan in color. Today we found some that looked almost blackish in color. Other minerals mix in and change the color. The surface texture can really vary also with some very smooth, some like extremely coarse sand paper, and some that is really bubbled up. We have found mammal, bird, reptile and amphibian prints in this bog iron. Some prints really take visual gymnastics to see but others are really obvious like the gray fox print below. Dr. Robert Weems will publish a paper on these prints at some point. We talked today about trying to get a grant so we could expose a few areas of the Pleistocene bog iron with heavy equipment and try to find track-ways and/or track concentrations. We also talked about using various laser measurement equipment to get electronic representations of the tracks so we could make a lot of the tracks easier to see and recognize. A lot of the tracks are not recognizable, like the track above, with traditional photographic methods. Marco Sr. "Any day that you can fossil hunt is a great day." My family fossil website Some Of My Shark, Ray, Fish And Other Micros My Extant Shark Jaw Collection Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miocene_Mason Posted July 27, 2017 Author Share Posted July 27, 2017 16 minutes ago, MarcoSr said: The Pleistocene bog iron on the Potomac River can look very different. Some is yellowish in color. Some is reddish in color. Some is tan in color. Today we found some that looked almost blackish in color. Other minerals mix in and change the color. The surface texture can really vary also with some very smooth, some like extremely coarse sand paper, and some that is really bubbled up. We have found mammal, bird, reptile and amphibian prints in this bog iron. Some prints really take visual gymnastics to see but others are really obvious like the gray fox print below. Dr. Robert Weems will publish a paper on these prints at some point. We talked today about trying to get a grant so we could expose a few areas of the Pleistocene bog iron with heavy equipment and try to find track-ways and/or track concentrations. We also talked about using various laser measurement equipment to get electronic representations of the tracks so we could make a lot of the tracks easier to see and recognize. A lot of the tracks are not recognizable, like the track above, with traditional photographic methods. Marco Sr. Interesting! Pleistocene footprints on the Potomac, that's new! I am looking forward to the paper and I hope you get that grant, it seems incredibly important, I've seldom heard of Pleistocene ichnofossils. “...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin Happy hunting, Mason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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