Gilboa NY area Devonian tree fossil

[Dsailor]

I looked at the weather and my schedule and realized that today was really the only good day in a while to get out. It was very foggy until I drove into the valley area and then the sun came out at about 10:45 am when I pulled in. The water was really low and I think they are working on the dam again. Anyway, I walked for a bit splitting rocks and did not find much but plant hash and seafloor hash. I switched sides of the river by jumping on rocks ( the water was really low) and then found this really cool Eospermatopteris branch. I've never seen anything that large before and, no joke, I heard something in the air behind me and saw a Bald Eagle fly over me head right after I found it. Luckily, I was able to chip it out complete and take it home. It was a really nice day and I wandered around splitting rock but not finding anything else of note. I was also being pretty picky and only looking for identifiable new fossils. So there you have it.

 

The first pic is in situ, next one at home in crappy light and lastly the area I was in

[fossilized6s]

Nice piece. Congratulations! 

[Fossildude19]

Great find, Dom.   

At least you had a nice day out there. 

Regards,

 

[Jeffrey P]

Glad to see you took advantage of some decent December weather. That site looks gorgeous and that chunk of Devonian tree bark is definitely a keeper. Congratulations Dom on finding it and successfully removing it from the matrix. Love to see a better picture of it. Thanks for sharing. 

[Wrangellian]

Interesting fossil.

Your 1st and 3rd pics look like oil paintings...

[Dsailor]

30 minutes ago, Wrangellian said:

Interesting fossil.

Your 1st and 3rd pics look like oil paintings...

Yes, those were taken on my crappy phone. I am not sure why they look that way

[Wrangellian]

I don't use phone cameras but my guess is there is a setting, or it is permanently set, to compress the file so it takes up less space.

[Shamalama]

Nice find! That looks like Stigmaria, which is a root structure, more so than a branch or bark. But then again, there are no lateral root structures coming off it either so I could be wrong. Interesting fossil for sure.

[Dsailor]

Here are a couple sightly better pictures. I need to go over my Gilboa articles again as they combined a couple species after new finds in 2010 or 12 and Id'd a new one

a little more close-up 

[Kane]

That's definitely a great find, and that site looks like one could spend some good time there.