Mckinney, TX fossil hunting trip

[KimTexan]

I had about an hour and a half to go hunt for fossils today. Someone had been asking to go hunting with me and today was the only time I’d be free to go until after New Years. 

 

There has been a lot of construction on highway 75 in McKinney, TX and they took a lot of the rock dug up during construction and dumped it in a field by 75 just north of the county courthouse on the east side of 75. I had seen the piles of construction rock several times and wanted to check out what fossils might be in the McKinney underground.

I doubted there would be much of interest, because it’s the Austin Chalk and I live near and on it and there are very few fossils in the chalk that are preserved well and they are mostly chalk clam casts from what I’ve seen. The other things I’ve seen where the actual clam was preserved mostly had fragments of the shell and nothing whole. But I was hoping if it had been dug up maybe it would be preserved better. No such luck, but it was interesting to see.

Here are a few pics I took. There were lots of clam remnants, some quite large. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe they are Inoceramus clams.

This was the dump site. It had been there a while.

 

This is a good example of the colors you will see.

The brown to taupe color (on the right) I believe to be the outer layer of the original shell.

The yellow and rust color (on the left) is where the original shell pulled away from where the clam was when the chalk split. 

 

This slab is about 2 feet long and about as much wide at the top. You can see numerous layers with clam spanning the whole width and length. Sometimes multiple clams were overlaying one another.

 

I put my key fob on this for scale. I think there were 2 clams here. One on top left and another that is only a fragment, but still looks to have been well over 12 inches wide.

 

There were a few specimens where the whole layer of the outer shell was preserved fairly well. This is one of them. I put my hand in the pic for approximate size. I think my hand is about 8 inches long. So this clam was about 5 inches wide. I left my heavy duty hammer and chisel in the car. I tried breaking the rock so I could carry it out, but I didn’t manage to break it. 

Heres another one of similar size.

 

This one must have been quite large by my estimation, but nowhere near as big as Inoceramus clams get. I read in Wikipedia that one over 3 meters had been found. This could easily have been 20 inches across or more.

 

Most all of the slabs were 2 feet plus. The chalk often split or broke easily, but it was hard to pull apart in the plane of the clam shell in one piece. The fossils were quite fragile and not of the best quality, but they were cool to see.

It was an interesting visit, but I wasn’t able to bring much home sad to say.

[Fruitbat]

Looks like you had a lot of fun!  You're definitely right about them being inoceramid clams...definitely the most common fossil in the Austin Chalk in many areas in this region.

 

-Joe

[Nimravis]

Great trip report Kim and I love the pics.

[Tidgy's Dad]

Very interesting. 

And I love that you can use even 90 minutes to do some profitable prospecting. 

[Heteromorph]

Great trip report Kim! I love the pictures. The chalk can be very rewarding... sometimes. And then other times you get skunked. But, when you DO find something it is quite exciting! 

[JohnBrewer]

Great report Kim.

 

Weather looks a lot better than here in the uk!

[Brazos Aaron]

Good stuff!  My father has some Austin chalk on his land with a UT paleontologist confirmed articulated mososaur in it, but I was told that it would be near impossible to get it out. 

[Monica]

On 12/16/2017 at 10:43 PM, KimTexan said:

 

 

Nice clams, Kim!  The one pictured above is beautiful!!!  Thanks for sharing!

 

Monica

[RyanNREMTP]

Great pictures.