Plant Fossils or bust at Alum Bluff

[dalmayshun]

Last Thursday I headed out with friends to camp at Torreya State Park, and to fossil hunt the Apalachicola and Chipola rivers. I did my homework by checking the waterlevels, and while higher by 2 feet than the last time I hunted, I knew my location was a good 6 feet above the level I had seen for my last three trips. Surprise, surprise...rain rain go away, come again some other day. By the time I had settled in to my campsite, putting up my tent, the water level on the Chipola had gone from 6.5 feet to 12.2...one afternoon. Its discharge rate from from 900 to 3150....Kayaking in water moving at 900 cu meters per second is easily doable....3150....not so easy. So I scrapped the Chipola, besides my collection locations there were at water's edge when it was 4.5 feet in depth. Eventually over the weekend it crested at 16.85 on Sat and then started coming down. 

  Wood with a row of little insect holes , fern impression in clay, willow like leaves in sandstone matrix, and a broad leaf, dark veined plant...unknown category in sandstone also. 

[dalmayshun]

Sorry, my comments somehow posted before I finished...I wrote another two paragraphs about my adventures on the apalachicola, but that too got lost, and so fossil forum readers will have the advantage of being able to go right to the pictures.  

      The  spiny oyster came from a tribulary, a little rivulet I know that discharges into Farley Creek...So did the cup and saucer shell, my first from that area. It is Chipola formation, upper Miocene. The interesting thing for me this time was the finding of two spondylus species...the large one with the beautifully gentle hinge, and a smaller one, deeper, more rounded in form, with a hugh primitive looking hinge. 

     

 

[dalmayshun]

Oh, I wanted to say, when I get the rest of my chipola fossils cleaned, I'll add photos, the usual strombus aldrichi, several different shells that are chipolanus, and even tube worm casings. 

[MikeR]

The Chipola is that way.  If it's low it's fantastic but just a little bit volume and it's wasted trip.  I believe both of your valves are Spondylus chipolanus (Dall, 1898).  One is a left valve and the other a right.  The two teeth on the valve on the left fit into the two sockets of the shell on the right.

 

Mike

[MikeR]

The tube worm that you describe is actually a bivalve Kuphus incrassatus Gabb, 1873.  Here is a discussion on tube forming bivalves LINK.

[dalmayshun]

thanks, know anything about the plants at alum bluff?

[MikeR]

23 minutes ago, dalmayshun said:

thanks, know anything about the plants at alum bluff?

I know that they are there between the Chipola and Jackson Bluff Formations but I have not actively collected them.

 

2010Jarzenetal.AlumBluffPollenPalynol.pdf

[piranha]

 

This is a palm: Sabalites apalachicolensis

 

This paper has a lot of info:

 

Corbett, S.L. 2004

The Middle Miocene Alum Bluff Flora, Liberty County, Florida

MSc Thesis, University of Florida, 97 pp.  PDF LINK

[caldigger]

The palm piece is pretty nifty. How big is it?

[ynot]

Nice finds.

[dalmayshun]

palm piece is aobut 10 inches high...and the high light of our trip, I believe. 

[piranha]

Welcome to "Club Sabalites"  This one is from my collection: Sabalites ungeri - Middle Eocene, Chuckanut Formation, Northwestern, Washington