ID Help: Devonian fossils in Milwaukee Formation (WI, USA)

[bcorder]

Hey all! First time poster. 

Found a few fossils along the Milwaukee River in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Looking online, it appears this area was a Devonian Reef.

 

I don't have a lot of experience in fossils besides plants, so any ID or commentary is helpful. A few of these I just found as pieces in big piles along a rock formation, I tried to put up a ruler for scale. For the one piece in situ, I didn't have anything handy, but it wasn't more than a few cm across.

 

Thanks!

 

[bcorder]

[Raggedy Man]

Hello and welcome to the forum. Depending on where you are along the Milwaukee River, it switches between the silurian and devonian. Were you at a park, possibly Estabrook park? If so, it is devonian. I can't see too much of anything on the first image. The second image looks flat and hard to tell. Does it have any depth? It looks like it could be a horn coral thats been flattened. The 3rd image doesn't show enough structure to say whats there. The last image looks like a brachiopod indentation. You can sometimes find trilobites at that park, but they're rare to find whole. Typically, you only see a cephalon(head) or pygidium(tail). Branching coral and some bryozoan can also be found there.

[Monica]

Hi there!

 

I have some suggestions for a couple of your specimens, but please don't take my word for it - I'm not familiar with where you are hunting - they are simply suggestions to possibly guide your research.  Anyway, here goes:

 

Item #1 (the dark things) - graptolites possibly?

 

Item #2 - possibly a bryozoan such as Prasopora?

 

Good luck with identifying your finds!

 

Monica

[Tidgy's Dad]

Hello, and a very warm welcome to TFF from Morocco! 

1. Graptolite or plant material.

2. Possibly an inarticulate brachiopod along the lines of Orbiculoidea or one of the other Discinidae.

3. Maybe the impression of a trilobite? 

 

[daves64]

2 could be an attachment point for an urchin spike.

[Fossildude19]

I agree, ... #1 may be graprolite - need better pictures to be sure. 

 

 

# 2 has the possibility of being an internal cast or steinkern of a gastropod, ... something like Bembexia. 

 

#3 I cannot make out anything specific.  Maybe 2 different shell imprints?? 

 

 

 

#4 Looks like the imprint of a shell, either a pelecypod or brachiopod. Not enough there for me to tell. 

 

[bcorder]

Thank you everyone for the help  looking forward to learning more about fossils!

 

18 hours ago, Raggedy Man said:

Hello and welcome to the forum. Depending on where you are along the Milwaukee River, it switches between the silurian and devonian. Were you at a park, possibly Estabrook park? If so, it is devonian. I can't see too much of anything on the first image. The second image looks flat and hard to tell. Does it have any depth? It looks like it could be a horn coral thats been flattened. The 3rd image doesn't show enough structure to say whats there. The last image looks like a brachiopod indentation. You can sometimes find trilobites at that park, but they're rare to find whole. Typically, you only see a cephalon(head) or pygidium(tail). Branching coral and some bryozoan can also be found there.

It was indeed at Estabrook Park. I found it by chance interestingly, just moved to Wisconsin from Florida for graduate school. Very cool place! I’ve been meaning to find some outcrops in the central WI area next.

[Raggedy Man]

14 minutes ago, bcorder said:

Thank you everyone for the help  looking forward to learning more about fossils!

 

It was indeed at Estabrook Park. I found it by chance interestingly, just moved to Wisconsin from Florida for graduate school. Very cool place! I’ve been meaning to find some outcrops in the central WI area next.

There a few ordovician outcrops around Madison, but there are slim to no fossils. They cut them to make the roads so theres not much erosion happening. You can see fossils at Devils Lake, but you can't collect. Theres a well known site in Greenbay if you're interested. 

[Kenneth Gass]

Nice fossils, especially the possible graptolite. The Milwaukee Formation and Thiensville Formation are both exposed along the Milwaukee River in Estabrook Park. The Theinsville has very few fossils except for the large, conspicuous stromatolite domes upstream of the falls. The fossils you show appear to be from the Milwaukee Formation. I agree with most of the proposed identifications, although we can't get too specific without seeing the fossils in the flesh. From top to bottom, I would suggest: graptolite?, possible lingulid brachiopod (such as Orbiculoidea), strophomenid brachiopod, and atrypid brachiopod. I am glad to see this interest in the Milwaukee Formation. Its biota is in bad need of modern analysis. Don Mikulic, Carl Brett and I are finishing up a book tentatively titled Fossils of the Milwaukee Formation: A Diverse Middle Devonian Biota from Wisconsin, USA. It will be published in the first half of 2019 by Siri Scientific Press. The book covers roughly 250 species from four kingdoms and includes nearly 600 photographs of foraminifers, graptolites, conodonts, a wide range of fishes, a multitude of shelly animals and calcareous colonial ones, trace fossils, and even terrestrial organisms that washed into the sea. I'd better end my discussion here, before I start sounding like an infomercial. Incidentally, we won't get paid for this book. We wrote it because we saw a need. 

[Fossildude19]

9 hours ago, Kenneth Gass said:

Nice fossils, especially the possible graptolite. The Milwaukee Formation and Thiensville Formation are both exposed along the Milwaukee River in Estabrook Park. The Theinsville has very few fossils except for the large, conspicuous stromatolite domes upstream of the falls. The fossils you show appear to be from the Milwaukee Formation. I agree with most of the proposed identifications, although we can't get too specific without seeing the fossils in the flesh. From top to bottom, I would suggest: graptolite?, possible lingulid brachiopod (such as Orbiculoidea), strophomenid brachiopod, and atrypid brachiopod. I am glad to see this interest in the Milwaukee Formation. Its biota is in bad need of modern analysis. Don Mikulic, Carl Brett and I are finishing up a book tentatively titled Fossils of the Milwaukee Formation: A Diverse Middle Devonian Biota from Wisconsin, USA. It will be published in the first half of 2019 by Siri Scientific Press. The book covers roughly 250 species from four kingdoms and includes nearly 600 photographs of foraminifers, graptolites, conodonts, a wide range of fishes, a multitude of shelly animals and calcareous colonial ones, trace fossils, and even terrestrial organisms that washed into the sea. I'd better end my discussion here, before I start sounding like an infomercial. Incidentally, we won't get paid for this book. We wrote it because we saw a need. 

Spelling error corrected.