Shark, ray, and bony fish coprolites from an early Eocene marine site in Virginia

[MarcoSr]

Below are shark, ray, and bony fish coprolites from three trips from matrix that I collected from an early Eocene marine site in Virginia awhile back.  I would find around 1,000+ coprolites from eight 5 gallon buckets of formation (40 gallons) per trip; so they were pretty common at the site.  A good number are very small only a few millimeters to 10 millimeters. Lots of them have fish bone inclusions.   I’m finishing searching the matrix (two trips worth left) that I collected from this site.  I’ve donated thousands of these coprolites to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science.

 

 

 

 

Marco Sr.

[Nimravis]

Very cool stuff Marco- I love micros.

[MarcoSr]

4 hours ago, Nimravis said:

Very cool stuff Marco- I love micros.

 

I also love micros.

 

Marco Sr.

[Nimravis]

4 minutes ago, MarcoSr said:

 

I also love micros.

 

Marco Sr.

I know you do and reference your posts often.

[Carl]

Simply fantastic!

[MarcoSr]

6 hours ago, Carl said:

Simply fantastic!

 

Thank you.  When the paper is published on the coprolites from this Virginia site, I'll post a link to it here on TFF.

 

Marco Sr.

[Carl]

17 hours ago, MarcoSr said:

 

Thank you.  When the paper is published on the coprolites from this Virginia site, I'll post a link to it here on TFF.

 

Marco Sr.

Eagerly standing by!

[MarcoSr]

1 hour ago, Carl said:

Eagerly standing by!

 

A Brazilian researcher spent 3 months studying the coprolites ( 20,000+ that I donated from this VA site) at the NMMNH&S this summer and took a number back to Brazil to photograph and chemically test.  Spencer Lucas from NMMNH&S and Adrian Hunt have been collaborating with her.  Supposedly she will be spending a lot of time on the paper in early 2018.  I've already written small sections on the collection methodology of the coprolites and on the site itself and e-mailed pictures for use in the paper.  So I'm also eagerly standing by.

 

Marco Sr.

[ynot]

8 minutes ago, MarcoSr said:

So I'm also eagerly standing by.

+1

[Gizmo]

Great job Marco!  And thanks again for sorting all the CMM material last year.

[MarcoSr]

28 minutes ago, Gizmo said:

Great job Marco!  And thanks again for sorting all the CMM material last year.

 

Walt

 

Thank you.  I'm always willing to look at matrix for the CMM.  Now that I'm done looking at matrix for a while from the boys' Nebraska ranch for that group of researchers, I have more time available.

 

Marco Sr.

[Plantguy]

Man thats quite a haul...very very interesting. I can see that I've been overlooking stuff in some of the sediments down here...oh I didnt need to see this..I'll be looking even closer now...LOL. 

 

But Thanks for the photos! 

Regards, Chris 

[MarcoSr]

1 hour ago, Plantguy said:

Man thats quite a haul...very very interesting. I can see that I've been overlooking stuff in some of the sediments down here...oh I didnt need to see this..I'll be looking even closer now...LOL. 

 

But Thanks for the photos! 

Regards, Chris 

 

Chris

 

A good number of collectors collected this site over the years but I seem to be the only one who pulled out the coprolites from the matrix in any quantity.  A few collectors did keep some very large ones that showed up in their sifts.  Because they were so common and numerous, everyone else just ignored them.  Now that the area is pretty dug out or in a sediment pond for houses or in a nature conservatory and can't be collected like in the past, I'm really glad I pulled out the coprolites.  I and a few others have permission to collect adjacent properties because we've known the land owners for years.  However we just haven't found the high density fossil layers on the adjacent properties.

 

Marco Sr.