Discoveries amongst the Pierre Shale of Colorado Springs

[cleanbreaks719]

took a recent trip to an old honey hole in the springs with reserved thoughts that it may...no longer exist.  I was pleasantly surprised.  When I was a kid it was essentially a mud hole and fairly exposed to the average passerby so I tried hard not to get my hopes up, plus it had been a while since I had attempted any type of fossil hunting.

 

Following a creek bed, I pushed my way through surprisingly thick brush, thick with sticks and severely overgrown trees and bushes.  Even the small game trails along the bank of the creek were difficult to discern. As I walked, my hopes began to climb and I started noticing strange wet, muddy, shale-like geology creeping up higher and higher along the river bank until a significant outcropping presented itself dead ahead of my line of sight.  I immediately recognized several red-brown concretions sticking out of the wall of the muddy shale-like embankment.  I pulled them loose, others unnoticed dropped to the ground and when I went to inspect I saw the dry creek bed below my feet littered with red-brown clam-like fossils.  Many of the were poorly preserved in my newbie opinion but I began to hoard several on the side of the creekbed as I went back to dig out more and more.  I began to notice that by following the small pockets of calcerous deposit in the muddy wall, soon to follow were more clams, some nicely preserved and covered in a brittle iridescent layer.  Soon after I grew tired of pulling clams from the muddy wall, I looked up on the short, grassy cliff edge to notice a piece of some yet-to-be-identified ammonite.  I picked it up and began digging carefully around it.  My digging dislodged additional pieces of the ammonite and I began to speculate that it had fractured--its pieces scattered along a path nearby.  I climbed up the short cliff face and walked up the grassy hill above, scanning the ground.  I found a few more pieces of the same ammonite and was able to pull the largest piece from a nearby loose dirt wall.  

 

tine was running short so I carefully wrapped what I found interesting and brought it back to the car.  Most of the specimens appear to be poorly preserved clams or maybe bubbles of mud?  My research thus far has me suspecting the clams to be either inoceramus or ctenodonta.  The ammonite, when assembled, appears to spiral up and away...difficult to describe, easier to see.  I have a book that would suggest it to be turriltes but it lists the usual specimen size around 1 1/4".  The partial specimen I have, when assembled is approx 4".  A complete, similarly sized specimen would probably be around 6-10".  Correct me here if I'm wrong and please, any advice, input, or insight would be greatly apprecoated.  Thanks for reading 

More photos

[Macrophyseter]

Woah, I really like that hetermorph ammonite. Keep up the good finds!

[jpc]

Nice Didymoceras.  

[Monica]

I love the iridescence - great finds!

[Shamalama]

Agreed, Didymoceras is your heteromorph Ammonite. I found a partial section very similar to yours years ago up near Longmont.

[FossilDAWG]

Looks like Didymoceras stevensoni.  I have collected it south of Colorado Springs and near Pueblo, and the D. stevensoni zone of the Pierre Shale does cut through part of Colorado Springs.  The clams are Inoceramus; Ctenodonta is a very different Ordovician clam.  The preservation of the shell is very nice on your specimens.  Looks like you have a special spot to collect.

 

Don

[RJB]

i know a couple of ammo guys who call those Didy's macaroni ammo's.   One guy has a very large box of pieces and once in awhile he will composite one together.  You have a very nice find.

 

RB

[cleanbreaks719]

Thanks everyone for your help identifying the ammonite.  Very cool looking creature.  I'm going to try to keep the site in good shape and try to select only similarly well preserved specimens in the future.