Bone guy Posted July 24, 2018 Share Posted July 24, 2018 I remember reading a fact about heliobatis radians a while ago and I'm annoyed because I can't remember what it was.......it was something like "1 out of every 120/1200/12000 fish recovered from the green river formation is a heliobatis radians." Anybody know what I'm talking about? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digit Posted July 24, 2018 Share Posted July 24, 2018 Definitely not 1 in 120 (there are a lot of Knightia found in the Green River Formation). I've seen a few of these freshwater rays/skates pictured online (and offered for lofty prices) so I'm not sure of 1 in 12,000 would be about right but my gut tells me it is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of the two latter numbers. It is possible that @sseth might be able to weigh in as he owns a quarry and has probably seen more Green River fossils than most of us here. Cheers. -Ken Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miocene_Mason Posted July 24, 2018 Share Posted July 24, 2018 I remember a fact like that too, Sorry I don’t remember it either. I also remember it was put as a percent of finds. “...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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piranha Posted July 24, 2018 Share Posted July 24, 2018 FBM collected stingray specimens from 1870-2010: Heliobatis radians ~1000 Asterotrygon maloneyi ~30 abundance and distribution table from: Grande, L. 2013 The lost world of Fossil Lake: Snapshots from deep time. University of Chicago Press, 425 pp. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miocene_Mason Posted July 24, 2018 Share Posted July 24, 2018 Nothing on Amyzon. Hmm. 1 “...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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piranha Posted July 24, 2018 Share Posted July 24, 2018 3 hours ago, WhodamanHD said: Nothing on Amyzon. Hmm. Amyzon is only found in the Laney Member of Lake Gosiute: lt is odd that neither the catfish order Siluriformes nor the carp and sucker order Cypriniformes is present in the FBM (or anywhere in Eocene Fossil Lake as far as I know). In the late early Eocene Laney Member deposits of Lake Gosiute, catfishes are abundant and represented by two families: Hypsidoridae and Ictaluridae (Grande 1987; Grande and Lundberg 1988). Hypsidoridae is an extinct family known only from the middle Eocene, and Ictaluridae is survived by 46 species living in North America. Suckers (family Catostomidae) are also abundant in the Laney Member Lake Gosiute deposits represented by the genus Amyzon (Grande, Eastman, and Cavender 1982). Catostomids are survived today by over 70 species in North America and one in Asia. There are two possible explanations for the absence of catfishes and suckers from the FBM: time differences or ecological differences. With regard to time, the FBM deposits (52 million years old) are about 3 million years younger than the Laney Member Lake Gosiute deposits (49 million years old) (for dating of these members see Smith, Carroll, and Singer 2008; Smith et al. 2010). lt may be that suckers and catfishes did not invade the Green River Lake Complex until well after the FBM phase of Fossil Lake had ended. With regard to ecology, the lake-bottom ecology of Fossil Lake may not have been as suited to suckers and catfishes as the lake-bottom ecology of Lake Gosiute. I would favor the time argument over the ecological one, because if it were only an ecological difference I would have expected to see at least one accidental immigrant into the lake from one of its tributaries, particularly in the Thompson Ranch sandwich beds, where we see other occasional immigrants such as Esox. Of course, time will tell, and it is possible that we may one day find such an accidental invader. text from: Grande, L. 2013 The lost world of Fossil Lake: Snapshots from deep time. University of Chicago Press, 425 pp. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bone guy Posted July 25, 2018 Author Share Posted July 25, 2018 Mathematically if you add up all the fish on this list and divide that by the 1000 heliobatis you get a result that's in the ballpark of 1200. So I'm going to guess the ratio was 1/1200 chance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sseth Posted July 27, 2018 Share Posted July 27, 2018 I would suggest that is is much lower than the 1/1200 based on years digging the formation. I keep record of most fossil counts form our quarry. My stats from our quarry show it is closer to 1/3000, although that may be different for other quarries. It also varies depending on the horizons you are digging. The bottom 6 feet have a much higher concentration than the rest of the Fossil Butte member combined so that also skews the data. Not sure if this is helpful or not. Seth 7 _____________________________________ Seth www.fossilshack.com www.americanfossil.com www.fishdig.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digit Posted July 28, 2018 Share Posted July 28, 2018 I think it is--directly form the horse's mouth as it were (if you don't mind the comparison). Cheers. -Ken 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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