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A couple of months ago I collected a small bucket of shale from the Stark Shale Member in the Dennis Formation of the Kansas City Group.  My purpose was to find conodonts. Today, I had a chance to look at the shale and I found a conodont this afternoon--the first one I've ever found :).  I was able to extract this with a small needle in a pen vise.  I took the pictures with a Celestron MicroCapture Pro.  For any locals that are interested, this came from the Firemen's Memorial.

 

Russ

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 I know next to nothing about conodonts, but that is extremely beautiful and so very tiny! 

You must have felt pretty good when that was discovered. 

Diligence pays off! :)

Life's Good!

Tortoise Friend.

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20 minutes ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

so very tiny

Yep.  I am glad I did not loose it somewhere in the extraction and photographing stages.

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18 minutes ago, Bullsnake said:

fragile and hard to get out of the black shale

Well, it was partially beginner's luck.  I had never even identified a conodont before, and the first one I saw came out easily, entire, and photogenic.

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Nice! I don’t have any yet, but formations near me are rumored to contain them (that being said, they are also supposed to contain many other things I have yet to find)

“...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin

Happy hunting,

Mason

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They're normally extracted by treating samples with formic or dilute acetic  acid,washing the residue with deionized water,

more often than not followed by heavy liquid separation( e.g. sodium polytungstanate)(apatitic fossils*!).

*mostly francolitic

Looks slightly gondolellid*,but the preservation is mediocre

*that's not a "taxonomic assignment",which would not be warranted in this case

Glad you like your find!

 

 

 

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9 hours ago, doushantuo said:

gondolellid

Thanks, doushantuo.  I know little about conodonts, but one of the two fossil-invertebrate reference books I own is Moore, Laliker, and Fishcher's Invertebrate Fossils (1952), and I saw on a page of drawings of conodonts (p. 735) that the genus Gondolella was similar and that it is known in the Pennsylvanian subsystem.    So, I was pleased to find something similar to my specimen and to see that you saw the similarity too.  My interest is piqued, so perhaps if I find more with better preservation I'll be able to confirm an ID.

 

Russ

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10 hours ago, doushantuo said:

treating samples with formic or dilute acetic  acid,washing the residue with deionized water,

more often than not followed by heavy liquid separation( e.g. sodium polytungstanate)(apatitic fossils*!).

*mostly francolitic

Thanks for the information.  I plan to try some of this.  I am of thinking of using white vinegar.  Is there another readily available source of formic or acetic acid? I see some undiluted acetic acid available online.  If I got this, how would I dilute it?

 

Russ

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4 minutes ago, KCMOfossil said:

If I got this, how would I dilute it?

Water, just measure it out to whatever dilution you would want and mix.

 

“...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin

Happy hunting,

Mason

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" Approximately 1 kg of bulk material was processed for each sample. Limestones were dissolved in 15% (by volume) acetic acid, and shales were disaggregated in bleach (5.2% or 7.5% sodium hypochlorite) or 12% H2O2. Shale samples took up to six months to break down in bleach, although 12% H2O2 disaggregated gray shale in 2–24 h. Black shales disaggregated more rapidly in H2O2 than in bleach but still required several months. After dissolution/disaggregation, we used tetrabromomethane (Austin, 1987) and a magnetic separator to concentrate the conodonts."

(Bright et al(GCA /2009))

THIS IS NOT a recommendation from me to be fooling around with miscellaneous chemicals.

I hope everybody realizes that

A lot of Carboniferous(/(Paleozoic) shale is chemically heterogeneous.

 

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, doushantuo said:

THIS IS NOT a recommendation from me to be fooling around with miscellaneous chemicals.

Thanks for the information and the reminder.  I need to do more reading.  I am readily finding conodonts on the surface so I assume there are more in the matrix.  

 

Russ

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27 minutes ago, KCMOfossil said:

Thanks for the information and the reminder.  I need to do more reading.  I am readily finding conodonts on the surface so I assume there are more in the matrix.  

 

Russ

Thought I would add, be careful when diluting any acid other than acetic (in Muriatic f and others it will start to heat up and boil the water, shooting acid everywhere which is not ideal)

“...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin

Happy hunting,

Mason

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1 hour ago, WhodamanHD said:

Thought I would add, be careful when diluting any acid other than acetic (in Muriatic f and others it will start to heat up and boil the water, shooting acid everywhere which is not ideal)

It’s not a problem if you add the acid TO the water which is standard lab practice as the endothermic reaction will be negligible. :) 

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3 hours ago, WhodamanHD said:

be careful when diluting any acid other than acetic

Thanks for the word of caution.  I have no experience with this at all.

2 hours ago, JohnBrewer said:

add the acid TO the water

Thanks, John, for the tip.

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1 hour ago, KCMOfossil said:

be careful when diluting any acid other than acetic

No, be careful with all acids acetic or otherwise. I use glacial acetic acid amongst many other chemicals. It’s particularly nasty on skin   

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