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5 hours ago, jj_MT said:

I didn't find anything that looked similar to this one.

 

20181121_170626.thumb.jpg.9aa859b4e9e4efc23f30ab092c6b8593.jpg

Don’t take my word on it. I’m just guessing. It look looks like something in the Fabaceae  family. Possibly something similar to a locust tree, which is the genus Gleditsi.

@Wrangellian may know.

Are you familiar with Cache Creek, McAbee Quarry fossils from BC? I believe they are Eocene though. There may be some crossover. McAbee Quarry was very well researched and the plants identified. There are a lot of photos of plant fossils from there on TFF.

 

Love the plant fossils.

 

I’m from Texas, but I remember one summer, when I was 11, being up on a mountain above White Bird, Idaho to the south of White Bird. My dad was doing contract work for the National Forest. I was playing along an embankment and the layers of rock looked almost exactly like yours there. I split a few layers and there were actual leaves in the layers that you could pick up without the rocks. It made a profound impression upon me of their absolute coolness. They were very fragile. They were perfectly preserved in between the layers. I don’t remember them being in the matrix of the rock. I didn’t have a concept of fossil leaves back then, but I knew enough to know they were from a different era. The trees all around were evergreens. I imagine my dad still has some of those somewhere.

Those would have been the first fossils I ever found.

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@KimTexan Thanks for all the tips! I haven't looked into anything to the north, but I think I should.

 

What a great story from your childhood! That's exactly how some of the leaves I found where, felt like the actual leaf and not a fossil. Unfortunately none of those made it off the road cut. I will have to go back with better preservation methods in mind. 

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1 hour ago, jj_MT said:

@KimTexan Thanks for all the tips! I haven't looked into anything to the north, but I think I should.

 

What a great story from your childhood! That's exactly how some of the leaves I found where, felt like the actual leaf and not a fossil. Unfortunately none of those made it off the road cut. I will have to go back with better preservation methods in mind. 

The McAbee Quarry is closed to the public now. Some government boondoggle, political hot button or something like that were the government took the lease away from the guy who had it.

There are a few people on here who hunt plant fossils. If you look at the thread on the owner of the lease for McAbee Quarry. It’s the thread remembering him after he died, I think you’ll find others TFF members who hunt in the area.

There is also a place on here that has hunting locations. Some locations may be on there.

 

Do you hunt cephalopods? Montana has some amazing cephalopods.

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5 hours ago, KimTexan said:

Don’t take my word on it. I’m just guessing. It look looks like something in the Fabaceae  family. Possibly something similar to a locust tree, which is the genus Gleditsi.

@Wrangellian may know.

Are you familiar with Cache Creek, McAbee Quarry fossils from BC? I believe they are Eocene though. There may be some crossover. McAbee Quarry was very well researched and the plants identified. There are a lot of photos of plant fossils from there on TFF.

 

Love the plant fossils.

 

I’m from Texas, but I remember one summer, when I was 11, being up on a mountain above White Bird, Idaho to the south of White Bird. My dad was doing contract work for the National Forest. I was playing along an embankment and the layers of rock looked almost exactly like yours there. I split a few layers and there were actual leaves in the layers that you could pick up without the rocks. It made a profound impression upon me of their absolute coolness. They were very fragile. They were perfectly preserved in between the layers. I don’t remember them being in the matrix of the rock. I didn’t have a concept of fossil leaves back then, but I knew enough to know they were from a different era. The trees all around were evergreens. I imagine my dad still has some of those somewhere.

Those would have been the first fossils I ever found.

Sorry, I don't know as much about those. I would have thought that was a fern, but you may be right. I never saw anything like that at McAbee other than Metasequoia but I don't think that's a Metasequoia.

Kim, are you referring to the Clarkia fossil beds or something near there?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarkia_fossil_beds

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12 hours ago, jj_MT said:

A much more manageable piece.

 

20181121_165728.thumb.jpg.fab4e5e164f2bc18f37c66255d64500f.jpg

Is that what all those 'lumps' look like in your exposure shot above? They look like stromatolites to me.

Interesting stuff...

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10 hours ago, KimTexan said:

The McAbee Quarry is closed to the public now. Some government boondoggle, political hot button or something like that were the government took the lease away from the guy who had it.

There are a few people on here who hunt plant fossils. If you look at the thread on the owner of the lease for McAbee Quarry. It’s the thread remembering him after he died, I think you’ll find others TFF members who hunt in the area.

There is also a place on here that has hunting locations. Some locations may be on there.

 

Do you hunt cephalopods? Montana has some amazing cephalopods.

 

McAbee really has some great preservation. Looks like it is now a Provincial Heritage Site so no private collecting. I would love to find a metasequoia (or a gingko) or insect like some of those pictured. The sequoia was actually what piqued my interest in that specific area and formation here in Montana. 

 

I haven't looked for cephalopods, yet... I sort of just hunt where ever I'm going to be, if that makes sense. And always looking to diversify. I try to do at least one specific fossil trip a year, instead of just a side activity, we'll see how next year goes! Have you spent much time in Montana?

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6 hours ago, Wrangellian said:

Is that what all those 'lumps' look like in your exposure shot above? They look like stromatolites to me.

Interesting stuff...

Exactly! I got lucky finding this solo one laying around. Many (maybe all) of the peaks in this range have stromatolites just below the summit, some are quite expansive.

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On 11/29/2018 at 1:06 AM, Wrangellian said:

Sorry, I don't know as much about those. I would have thought that was a fern, but you may be right. I never saw anything like that at McAbee other than Metasequoia but I don't think that's a Metasequoia.

Kim, are you referring to the Clarkia fossil beds or something near there?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarkia_fossil_beds

I believe @KimTexan is referring to a Latah Formation (Miocene) near Whitebird. May be the same formation as Clarkia, just another locality down the road. Or is this whole formation referred to as the Clarkia fossil beds? Both sound very similar to the site I was at.

 

This 1934 USGS paper, Micoene Plants from Idaho by Edward Berry https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/0185e/report.pdf has some great specimens from the Whitebird area. No mention of Clarkia, potentially due to the fact that area wasn't documented until the 1970's.

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On 11/28/2018 at 7:11 PM, KimTexan said:

Don’t take my word on it. I’m just guessing. It look looks like something in the Fabaceae  family. Possibly something similar to a locust tree, which is the genus Gleditsi.

Good call on the Fabaceae! I found a plant list that included the genus Sophora. Thank you!

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On 11/29/2018 at 6:54 AM, jj_MT said:

 

McAbee really has some great preservation. Looks like it is now a Provincial Heritage Site so no private collecting. I would love to find a metasequoia (or a gingko) or insect like some of those pictured. The sequoia was actually what piqued my interest in that specific area and formation here in Montana. 

 

I haven't looked for cephalopods, yet... I sort of just hunt where ever I'm going to be, if that makes sense. And always looking to diversify. I try to do at least one specific fossil trip a year, instead of just a side activity, we'll see how next year goes! Have you spent much time in Montana?

Montana seems to have a great range of ages and fossils.. from the 1.4by Horodyskia of Glacier Park area, to the Paleozoic stuff you're finding, and the dinosaurs of the east, to Clarkia and maybe younger?

On 11/29/2018 at 7:06 AM, jj_MT said:

Exactly! I got lucky finding this solo one laying around. Many (maybe all) of the peaks in this range have stromatolites just below the summit, some are quite expansive.

 

3 hours ago, jj_MT said:

I believe @KimTexan is referring to a Latah Formation (Miocene) near Whitebird. May be the same formation as Clarkia, just another locality down the road. Or is this whole formation referred to as the Clarkia fossil beds? Both sound very similar to the site I was at.

I'm not sure but they do sound like similar preservation and age.

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On 11/29/2018 at 2:06 AM, Wrangellian said:

 

Kim, are you referring to the Clarkia fossil beds or something near there?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarkia_fossil_beds

No, the location was southwest of White Bird, Idaho up in the mountains at least a 30 minute drive from White Bird. The dirt road we were on, when I found the leaves was running east west and the road had a bit of a view looking south. The real view was back down the road a bit east of where we were. I think it was at least half was up the mountain to where we and our crew were camping on the summit.

Someone may say “She was only 11, how would she know?” I have had a gift for orienteering (navigation) since I was maybe 7-8. I started hiking in thousands of acres of forest when I was 7 by myself. I’d hike miles through the woods, exploring all day and never once got lost. 

 

It was the National Forest that I believe adjoins the Hells Canyon Recreatioal area over in Oregon.

I think we stayed there maybe 3 weeks in May, 1980. We were camped out on the top of the mountain when Mount St. Helens erupted. I remember driving to White Bird with my mom and seeing a very ominous, dark cloud coming from the west. We thought we were in for a horrible storm like we’d never seen. We didn’t know it had erupted. It was May 18, 1980. The rain never came. When we woke up in the morning everything was covered with maybe an inch of ash. I still have the ash I collected. It left a deep impression upon my mind.

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2 hours ago, jj_MT said:

Good call on the Fabaceae! I found a plant list that included the genus Sophora. Thank you!

You are welcome. Glad I could help and that I was actually on track. I use to be good at botany like 30 yrs ago, but I haven’t kept up with it. I still remember a few things now and then.

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27 minutes ago, KimTexan said:

No, the location was southwest of White Bird, Idaho up in the mountains at least a 30 minute drive from White Bird. The dirt road we were on, when I found the leaves was running east west and the road had a bit of a view looking south. The real view was back down the road a bit east of where we were. I think it was at least half was up the mountain to where we and our crew were camping on the summit.

Someone may say “She was only 11, how would she know?” I have had a gift for orienteering (navigation) since I was maybe 7-8. I started hiking in thousands of acres of forest when I was 7 by myself. I’d hike miles through the woods, exploring all day and never once got lost. 

 

It was the National Forest that I believe adjoins the Hells Canyon Recreatioal area over in Oregon.

I think we stayed there maybe 3 weeks in May, 1980. We were camped out on the top of the mountain when Mount St. Helens erupted. I remember driving to White Bird with my mom and seeing a very ominous, dark cloud coming from the west. We thought we were in for a horrible storm like we’d never seen. We didn’t know it had erupted. It was May 18, 1980. The rain never came. When we woke up in the morning everything was covered with maybe an inch of ash. I still have the ash I collected. It left a deep impression upon my mind.

OK. I wouldn't know, I don't know the area (never been there) but what you said about un-petrified leaves reminded me of what I understand of Clarkia.

 

You sound like a good person to have around while fossil hunting - do you ever forget where you found something?

 

I guess seeing the ash/cloud from a volcano would leave an impression. All I know was I was about 4 when it happened and my mother says she heard a bang on that morning (here on Vancouver Island!) and thought that I and my brother had tipped over a dresser in our bedroom or something. Later in the day found out it was St Helens. Of course I don't remember it myself.

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I was looking at the formations in the area in Idaho. Pretty much all I see there is something called Blue Mountains Islands a Triassic-Permian and some Tertiary. There is also some Mesozoic. The only Miocene I see is over in the Hells Canyon area to the West of the mountain we were on. 

Further south on the mountain near Pollock is some Quaternary. I suppose we could have been out scouting the mountain that far south, but I sure thought it was the road to our camp. Or maybe all the exposures are not fully documented. The road cut was only an embankment about 3-4 feet tall. The layers of leaf fossils were pretty close to the surface of the forest floor.

Our camp on the top of the mountain had a direct view of the Seven Devils Mountains.

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On 11/28/2018 at 1:02 PM, jj_MT said:

  

20180802_124039.jpg

One of the places I've always wanted to go fossil hunting besides Utah is Montana. Just gorgeous country. Have you ever hunted in the badlands?

Each dot is 50,000,000 years:

Hadean............Archean..............................Proterozoic.......................................Phanerozoic...........

                                                                                                                    Paleo......Meso....Ceno..

                                                                                                           Ꞓ.OSD.C.P.Tr.J.K..Pg.NgQ< You are here

Doesn't time just fly by?

 

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12 hours ago, UtahFossilHunter said:

One of the places I've always wanted to go fossil hunting besides Utah is Montana. Just gorgeous country. Have you ever hunted in the badlands?

I haven't spent anytime hunting east of the Continental Divide, but its definitely on my list. I know I have to get into the Breaks at some point.

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On 11/28/2018 at 2:11 PM, jj_MT said:

And a slightly smokey sunset from the tower. 

 

20180729_210326.thumb.jpg.c1b7dc81275928e7e58afff5848f5ace.jpg

 

Thanks for looking!

Beautiful shot! 

 

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On 2/11/2019 at 12:44 PM, gwestbrook said:

Beautiful shot! 

 

Thank you! It's a nice spot to spend a couple of nights.

 

On 2/12/2019 at 5:21 AM, 5 Humper said:

Although your plant fossils are magnificent, I like those public lands more than the fossils! Thank you for showing.  

Public lands are open to all, so come on out!

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