Hash Plates- A Snapshot In Time

[Nimravis]

@digit Thanks Ken and I bet that it is really nice to photograph underwater. I do like that magnifier function and I like it more since @Bobby Rico found out that you do not need to take a screen shot- I don’t think I would ever have tried the edit button.

[digit]

The things we learn on this forum are boundless. And yes underwater photography is fun (but no more so that topside). The real fun is searching for subjects to photograph and the underwater realm is sometimes a target rich environment. Fulfills my inborn desire to hunt (when I can't hunt fossils).

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Tidgy's Dad]

2 hours ago, digit said:

I've got a few hash plates from St. Leon in Indiana and I too love the assemblage of species that can be seen while searching the plate. When I dive, I spend a lot of time methodically searching sections of the reef for interesting critters (usually to photograph). For me, hash plates allow me a time-traveling "dive" into the past. Love the tutorial on how to include zoomed-in sections with your smart phone--maybe others will use that to good effect in some future posts. For me, I'm pretty certain I'd have to be a genius to be able to pull that off with my "dumb" phone--an old Samsung flip phone from the Silurian.

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

Silurian?

Oh I see, you can't unlock your phone but you can Wenlock your phone? 

[JohnBrewer]

2 hours ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

Silurian?

Oh I see, you can't unlock your phone but you can Wenlock your phone? 

Christmas cracker jokes already eh Adam?

[Tidgy's Dad]

6 minutes ago, JohnBrewer said:

Christmas cracker jokes already eh Adam?

Well, cheesy does go with crackers. 

[Troodon]

Nice plate love your photo work really enhances the image. Need to try it looks pretty simple and quite effective.

[Nimravis]

5 minutes ago, Troodon said:

Nice plate love your photo work really enhances the image. Need to try it looks pretty simple and quite effective.

If I can do it, it is. I want to try it on other types of fossils to pinpoint an area of interest.

[digit]

3 hours ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

Oh I see, you can't unlock your phone but you can Wenlock your phone? 

Nice--Silurian puns!

 

This is basically my fossil phone (no, not like the Fossil watch company--more like the kind that Fred and Barney might have used--Bedrock Cellular?).

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

[Tidgy's Dad]

6 minutes ago, digit said:

Nice--Silurian puns!

 

This is basically my fossil phone (no, not like the Fossil watch company--more like the kind that Fred and Barney might have used--Bedrock Cellular?).

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

Well  m'Lud lowly as your phone may be look at mine:

I rest my case

 

[digit]

Agreed! We both need techo-dino awards.

 

Why do I need a smart phone when I spend most days sitting behind a keyboard?....

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Jeffrey P]

Thank you for displaying those Ordovician hash plates. The ones with all of the faunal diversity I could spent a lot of time examining with a magnifying glass. A lot of story there and those crinoid stem piece slabs are a site to behold- truly cool. 

[Nimravis]

53 minutes ago, Jeffrey P said:

Thank you for displaying those Ordovician hash plates. The ones with all of the faunal diversity I could spent a lot of time examining with a magnifying glass. A lot of story there and those crinoid stem piece slabs are a site to behold- truly cool. 

Thanks- and some of those crinoid plates I did not post had all kinds of trilobite pieces- very nice.

[doushantuo]

I take it a lot of people more or less equate hash plates with the "smothered paleocommunity*"/high resolution timeslice model?

*"obrution deposit"

[digit]

7 hours ago, doushantuo said:

*"obrution deposit"

Yes--for "mortality plates" in places like Kemmerer where you might suddenly encounter a layer while splitting the oil shale that contains an unusual abundance of fishes at exactly the same layer. These are assumed to be mass die-offs due to some event like a volcanic eruption or an anoxic algal bloom.

 

I've got a few hash plates from the St. Leon road-cut in Indiana that are inches thick and just packed with brachiopods with occasional bits of trilobite, bryozoan, and crinoid stem segments. Those to me seem to be areas (possibly low-lying depressions) where bits of the paleocommunity aggregate over time. I think I read one paper that was trying to intuit the conditions at the time of the deposit by looking at the alignment of flat objects like brachiopod/mollusk shells or flattened echinoids (sand dollars). The takeaway message as I recall was that relatively laminar deposition with most all flat objects lying in the same plane were thought to accumulate slowly over time but a jumble of orientations inferred a more storm-like piling up of previously laid down pieces into a random (non-laminar) arrangements. I do enjoy reading the occasional paper on taphonomy--inferring events or processes from the past based on subtle clues left in the fossils (very Sherlock Holmes).

 

I'd love to know what happened to produce those awesome hash plates with all of the crinoid stem segments. It kind of reminds me of when I was a wee tot and would go out panhandling for candy on Halloween. At the end of the night the insufficiently wrapped rolls of Sweet Tarts^(tm) would end up spilling their contents all over the bottom of my goody bag.

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

 

[doushantuo]

For the Green River a combination of of solar forcing of microbial/and/or algal productivity,possibly in relation with periodic overturn of the oxycline?

 

The Green River knows varves,so solar forcing SEEMS reasonable.

 

 

I seem to remember something about crinoid epiboles

meanwhile:

llewellynMessingcarbonatetaphonomypalaiComposition&Taphonomy_Modern_Crinoid-Rich_Se.pdf

 

[digit]

Ah, I know Chuck Messing well. He works out of the NSUOC lab over in Dania. He knows his echinoderms well and we rely on him as a taxonomic resource when needed for the underwater field guides that friends of mine publish (and I copyedit). One of Chuck's recent areas of interest are the deepwater crinoids off Roatan. A friend of mine produces a public TV show out of our local (Miami) PBS station. She did an episode that featured Chuck. For those who are partial to "living fossils" this may be of interest. You can watch the episode here:

 

http://www.changingseas.tv/episode601.html

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Nimravis]

I know there was another post on Hash Plates, I believe that @Bobby Rico made it, but I can not find it for the life of me. Here are a couple pieces from my recent visit to the Ordovician road cut of Lawrenceburg, Indiana.