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Pagurus

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My wife and I are on a short trip through south eastern New York State, in the Catskill Mountain region. We had a more adventurous trip in mind but after some recent car trouble we didn't feel quite as adventurous as we did a week ago. We stopped today at a site on Schoharie Creek, a bit south of Gilboa. The heat and humidity kept us from spending more than a half hour at the site today, but we plan on going back tomorrow morning when it will be somewhat cooler. The river tumbled stones were mostly eroded, and I didn't bring my hammer down to the beach crowded with swimmers, but we did make one find worthy of bringing back to the motel. 

 

Leila usually makes the best finds when we're just scanning the ground, and she came up with this worn but still attractive horn coral. I love the way it's still attached to the matrix. It almost looks like it's been prepped:

 

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The same rock also shows off some nice specimens of what appear to be tube worms.

 

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Despite the heat we're enjoying our trip so far, and we're very happy with our motel except for one disturbing problem. Clinging to the door inside our lovely room is a five-foot-long mirror, and I am periodically startled by the strange old man peering at me. What's he doing in my room?!

 

Mike

Start the day with a smile and get it over with.

 

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There's a strange old man in my mirror too, it's a common problem, it seems. 

I think that last picture might be a tabulate coral like Aulopora.

Image result for aulopora

Life's Good!

Tortoise Friend.

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Nice coral, Mike. 

Hope you find some more good stuff. 

:) 

    Tim    VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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Are you sure that was found south of Gilboa? I believe the bedrock in that area is non-marine. Could be float material. That area experienced glacial activity and there's always human transport. South of Gilboa I would have my eyes looking for plants.

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@Pagurus that's a neat find Mike. Sorry to hear about the car trouble shortening your trip. I was in the Catskills on Saturday, doing some fly fishing. I didn't have much luck. Only caught a creek chub. But the area was absolutely beautiful. I did have a brown trout on my line for a few seconds, then it shook free.

Dipleurawhisperer5.jpg

I like Trilo-butts and I cannot lie.

 

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What a relaxing little trip this was.

 

This was our old-timers game. No pressure. No expectations. We already knew we were headed for Cooperstown and the baseball hall of fame. Really.   

 

After the pleasing find of a well-traveled horn coral in Schoharie Creek, we spent the night at a motel sitting near the edge of another, smaller creek. The Catskills are beautiful, as @Trevor noted.

 

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We returned to our spot on Schoharie Creek the next morning.  As Jeff @Jeffrey P pointed out, our location south of Gilboa displayed mostly plant material. Our little horn coral and the brachiopod hash we occasionally found were likely transported by glaciers, floods or even as fill for the dam projects.

On this weekday morning, now that school has started, we had this lovely creek to ourselves.  

 

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We scanned the bars for awhile, we split some mudstone and sandstone, we waded in the cool water and we found an occasional bit of a plant worth holding on to. 

 

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We came across a chunk too large to bring home, but it made us wonder if it held an unidentifiable piece of the 380 million year old Gilboa Forest. Maybe. Or maybe just a stain. It didn't really matter that morning, we were enjoying the day.

 

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***

 

Our next stop was the Gilboa Fossil Museum. We knew it would be closed, unfortunately, as it was a weekday, but we were hoping to see a few of the famous middle devonian tree stumps outside the museum. I think we were both impressed. I know I was. 

 

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                  The brass sign lying next to this stump reads:


                                        EOSPERMATOPTERIS


"These fossils were found in 2010 during the Gilboa Dam reconstruction project. They are sandstone casts of tree stumps from the famous Gilboa Fossil Forest dating from the Middle Devonian Period (380 million years ago). Donated by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection" 
 
I will have to come back again when the museum is open, but their website  is quite informative. 

 

***

 

We continued up the road to Mine Kill State Park, had a picnic lunch, and drove down to the boat ramp to see if we could access the creek down there. It was another pretty spot (other than the power plant across the creek) but it was all marsh and I doubt collecting would be allowed anyway. Another fine view though, on a very fine day, and while we were there we took an easy stroll along a path parallel to the creek, where a chipmunk froze at the intrusion of two bedraggled hikers.

 

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***
We swung and missed several times that afternoon, finding no-trespassing signs or following trails to a dead end in a swamp, but even the dead ends were fun and humorous. At least we weren't lost. Until we were. 
We took quite a few "shortcuts" but we did end the day in Cooperstown. We didn't actually make it into the Hall of Fame, but baseball paraphernalia was everywhere.

 

***

 

After a couple of omelets the next morning we headed a little north of Herkimer where we found a fishing area and fairly easy access to West Canada Creek, where we scared the minnows with every step. We couldn't ask for more.  Well, maybe a fishing pole, like Dave @Darktooth

 

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This was a fun place to hunt, with an interesting mix of tumbled shale cobbles with many graptolites and some other fossils, along with very hard dolomite with lots of druzy quartz and some small double-terminated quartz crystals too, the "Herkimer diamonds" everyone looks for.  The shale looks to me like the Ordovician shale at Little Falls, NY, with the same fauna. I found one tiny partial trilobite, a Triathrus, I think.

 

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My most interesting find of the trip came from this creek. I'm not sure what it is.  The larger central portion looks like it could be a cephalopod, but what are the triangular shaped things?  Maybe hyoliths? Maybe the larger middle part is also a hyolith?   Help, please. :trilosurprise:

 

Alright, alright, that's enough for one post!  I will bore you with the rest of the trip soon.

 

Mike


                          

 

NYCAT-18.jpg

Start the day with a smile and get it over with.

 

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What a nice landscape, such beautyfull creeks, perfect wheater and even some fossils! Everything you want. Thanks for sharing!

Franz Bernhard

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I can confirm that as a Triarthrus cephalon. I have collected them from the Utica Shale in that area. I think the graptolites are Geniculograptus (formerly Climacograptus). The triangular thingies could be small cephalopods but I can't see them well enough in the pics. Keep it coming...

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20 hours ago, Pagurus said:

My most interesting find of the trip came from this creek. I'm not sure what it is.  The larger central portion looks like it could be a cephalopod, but what are the triangular shaped things?  Maybe hyoliths? Maybe the larger middle part is also a hyolith?   Help, please. :trilosurprise:                         

 

NYCAT-18.jpg

 

 

Congrats on finding this unusual and incredibly rare Ordovician sponge: Polyplectella mira

 

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Here is the original description from:

 

Ruedemann, R. 1925

The Utica and Lorraine Formations of New York: Part II: Systematic Paleontology.
New York State Museum Bulletin, 262:1-171   LINK

 

Genus Polyplectella nov. Polyplectella mira nov.

The National Museum contains two specimens of a fossil from the Frankfort shale, "three miles north of Rome," (Six Mile Creek), that represent a sponge of decidedly new habitus and for this reason have been made the types of a new genus and species. The distinguishing character of the genus consists in the support of the body of the sponge by numerous basal tufts, if we conceive the fossil cortectly. While there are good examples of such sponges known among the recent Hexactinellida, as, for example, in Polylophus and Pheronema (see Schulze, 1887), we are not aware of a similar occurrence among Paleozoic forms. Separate basal tufts of Lyssakina have long been known from the Cambrian and Ordovician and united under the term Pyritonema McCoy, and Dawson has also described species of Protospongia with simple basal tufts, consisting of only a few spicules. In Polyplectella the sponge body which is cylindrical, and possesses a large paragaster, gives off, from its entire exterior surface, bundles of spicules that distally spread out brushlike and apparently served to support the sponge or rather to prevent it from sinking into the soft mud. Polylophus phiIippinensis Gray (Schulze, 1887, pl. 54, fig. I), in a like fashion, produces tufts of spicules all over its surface which bend downward and often unite into a single mass of spicules at the base, while in Pheronema annae Leidy (ibid. pl. 42, fig. 1) ten or more tufts proceed downward from the basal surface of the sponge. In the smaller of the two specimens the body of the sponge is 8.3 mm long and uniformly 2 mm wide. Its basal extremity is rounded, the distal one, which is obliquely compressed, exhibits a wide circular osculum (diameter I mm). There are sixteen basal tufts observable now, but more were undoubtedly present originally. Most of these originate in the basal portion of the sponge, but three proceed from points within 2 mm of the osculum. The tufts are in the type specimen which is not a full-grown individual about 12 mm long and expand from an initial width of .5 mm to as much as 3 mm. In the second specimen the sponge body is apparently compressed in a vertical direction and a confused radiating mass of basal tufts results. These number about thirty; they reach a length of 25 mm and a distal width of 4 mm.

 

The basal tufts are flexible to some degree; they consist of slender spicules, which in most cases, through gradual compression suffered by the fossil, have been arranged into wedge shaped bands, that appear, under the lens, uniformly striated, the spicules being in contact. In this condition sixteen are counted in the space of 1 mm. Under the microscope it is seen that the spicules are pressed in some places irregularly into and upon each other; and also that the finely granulose surface of the spicules is due to their composition of pyrite granules; the pyrite having in the Frankfort shale at Six Mile Creek replaced most delicate structures which thus have been preserved as neatly as the famous appendages of Triarthrus and Cryptolithus from this locality. Anchorlike terminations have not been discerned attached to the basalia, but minute four-rayed spicules which lie at the extremities of the basalia in the larger specimens, may well represent the anchoring portion of the spicules which then were pentactins originally. The sponge body, under the lens, shows a rough, nodular surface, with numerous openings in the lower part, which suggest ostia surrounded by thin sponge tissue. Viewed under water, minute four-rayed spicules are seen, probably hexactins or pentactins and apparently of the nature of dermalia, and in the lower portion a confused mass of twisted fiberlike spicules, which undoubtedly are basalia. Three of the four-rayed spicules were observed arranged in parallel direction; they may therefore he elements of the par'ietal wall (parenchymalia). In this case, the skeletal elements were not connected and the form was a true member of the suborder Lyssakina of the Hexactinellida; and probably of the family Protospongidae Hinde.

 

 

Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology (E) Porifera 2004

 

Polyplectella RUEDEMANN, 1925, p. 32 [* P mira RUEDEMANN, 1925, p. 35; OD].  Cylindroid to vasiform with terminal osculum; sponge body composed of stauractines, pentactines, or hexactines, and described as having numerous openings in lower part, presumably skeletal canals; long, separate tufts of prostalia (rhabdodiactines or pentactines with elongate, distal ray) distributed over much of sponge body and extending outwardly for at least one sponge diameter; lower part of sponge said to contain a "confused mass of twisted fiberlike" basalia (RUEDEMANN, 1925, p. 34). [The presence of possible skeletal canal openings suggests a closer relationship to Cyathophycus and the Hintzespongiidae, but Polyplectella is here retained in the Dierespongiidae on the basis of the more certain tufts of prostalia. In any event the Dierespongiidae and Hintzespongiidae are quite similar, both morphologically and phylogenetically, despite their seeming distance in the present classification, where the latter have been separated out as a stock possibly leading to the Pattersoniidae and  Brachiospongiidae.] Upper Ordovician: USA (NewYork).--FIG. 229, 3a-c. *P mira, Frankfort Shale, Rome; a, holotype, cylindrical sponge with basal root tufts, approximately X5; b, drawing of sponge body with a large osculum at top and possible ostia on side, showing cylindrical form of holotype and irregularly distributed tufts of spicules with hexactine-based spicules between, US1 M, X5; c, associated specimen with long root tufts, X 1 (Ruedemann, 1925 ; courtesy of New York State Museum, Albany).

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"Congrats on finding this unusual and incredibly rare Ordovician sponge: Polyplectella mira"

Wow!  Thank you for that ID. I never would have figured that out. If it's scientifically important, or at least helpful to a researcher, I would be pleased to donate to a museum if it's a fit with their research and collections. I'm not sure how to go about finding an interested researcher. Any suggestions from anyone?

One problem with this specimen would be the inexact location in which it was found. I only have a general idea where I found it, probably only within fifty yards, and it was just a loose cobble in a creek bed. Whether or not it's useful to a researcher, it still seems to be a rather rare specimen. I'm excited.

 

(Would it be helpful for me to repost this in the ID section of TFF?)

Start the day with a smile and get it over with.

 

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29 minutes ago, Pagurus said:

Wow!  Thank you for that ID. I never would have figured that out. If it's scientifically important, or at least helpful to a researcher, I would be pleased to donate to a museum if it's a fit with their research and collections. I'm not sure how to go about finding an interested researcher. Any suggestions from anyone?

One problem with this specimen would be the inexact location in which it was found. I only have a general idea where I found it, probably only within fifty yards, and it was just a loose cobble in a creek bed. Whether or not it's useful to a researcher, it still seems to be a rather rare specimen. I'm excited.

 

 

NYSM has the type material described by Ruedemann.  I would suggest contacting them to place it with the other specimens. 

The specimen you found is spectacular by comparison! :fistbump:  

image.png.a84de26dad44fb03836a743755df237c.png

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With all due respect, I'd like to suggest an alternative ID.  I think this fossil is a colony of Sphenothallus attached to an orthoconic nautiloid.  The nautiloid is broken open at the apical end and flattened towards the proximal (upper right) end.  

 

Below is a photo of a Sphenothallus colony, posted some time ago on the Forum by @fossilcrazy.  The thread can be found here.

 

Don

Sphenothallus.jpg

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I must have been mesmerized when I saw the drawing from Ruedemann :o  The description also seemed like such a good match ...but too good to be true!  lol mail?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmail.yimg.com%2Fok%2Fu%2Fassets%2Fimg%2Femoticons%2Femo76.gif&t=1536439996&ymreqid=2b37d289-e028-403a-1cf9-e30002018700&sig=_VhEzO8oQjXG5FRrHnH9Iw--~C:P

 

image.png.a84de26dad44fb03836a743755df237c.png

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Thank you for your input, Don @FossilDAWG. A Sphenothallus colony attached to a nautiloid looks like a good possibility too. It's ironic that I even found a few Sphenothallus specimens at Little Falls a few years ago (as shown in the TFF thread you linked to). I'm still not sure though, if these are the same. The midlines look different to me, but that might just be the preservation. I'm including a few more photos. Maybe it will help. What do you think, @piranha ?

 

 

 

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Start the day with a smile and get it over with.

 

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3 minutes ago, piranha said:

I must have been mesmerized when I saw the drawing from Ruedemann :o  The description also seemed like such a good match ...but too good to be true!  lol mail?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmail.yimg.com%2Fok%2Fu%2Fassets%2Fimg%2Femoticons%2Femo76.gif&t=1536439996&ymreqid=2b37d289-e028-403a-1cf9-e30002018700&sig=_VhEzO8oQjXG5FRrHnH9Iw--~C:P

 

 

Well, it looks like it's more or less settled that it's a Sphenothallus colony , huh? Still pretty cool.

Start the day with a smile and get it over with.

 

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See the little ovals, they are definitely Sphenothallus holdfasts. It is very neat seeing them on a Cephalopod host.

 

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2 hours ago, fossilcrazy said:

See the little ovals, they are definitely Sphenothallus holdfasts. It is very neat seeing them on a Cephalopod host.

 

Now it all makes sense, even to me. The bulb is finally lit. All the pieces fit. Thank you all!!  Sure, I was getting excited about finding a fossil worthy of a museum, and that was really fun for awhile, but this is terrific too. It's a wonderful slice of life from 450 million years ago.  Thanks for the lessons. :dinothumb:

Start the day with a smile and get it over with.

 

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I am truly glad you and your wife had such a great trip. Beautiful surrounding, interesting finds, and great company. It doesn't get any better than that.:)

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I like Trilo-butts and I cannot lie.

 

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Great report, Mike. 
Glad you were able to get out there. :) 

    Tim    VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."
John Muir ~ ~ ~ ~   ><))))( *>  About Me      

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I wouldn't be at all disappointed with the Sphenothallus ID.  Yours is the best specimen I've seen, and the attachment to  nautiloid tells a story one rarely glimpses with these fossils.

 

Thanks for your travelogue as well.  The Catskills are beautiful and it's great to be reminded of that.

 

Don

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I was getting ready to comment on why I don’t believe it is the proposed sponge, but thought I probably need to finish reading the post before I comment. I’m glad I finished reading. I certainly didn’t have the insight @FossilDAWG did.

Very cool find!

 

thoroughly enjoyed your trip report! The scenery was beautiful.

Relaxed pace trips to peaceful, beautiful green setting are my favorite types of trips.

I liked the little chipmunk. We don’t have those down here.

 

I love to hunt in creeks. The creeks in my immediate area of Texas are not usually so green and they’re more often muddy, silt filled with fewer rocks.

 

I like your writing style and your presentation of the sites and your finds. It was enjoyable and relaxing to read. Thanks for sharing it with us.

 

Kim

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21 hours ago, FossilDAWG said:

With all due respect, I'd like to suggest an alternative ID.  I think this fossil is a colony of Sphenothallus attached to an orthoconic nautiloid.  The nautiloid is broken open at the apical end and flattened towards the proximal (upper right) end.  

 

Below is a photo of a Sphenothallus colony, posted some time ago on the Forum by @fossilcrazy.  The thread can be found here.

 

Don

Sphenothallus.jpg

That was my thought. We used to find these on cephalopods all the time in the Bear Gulch LS.

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