Bison creek, bone and stones

[KimTexan]

I made a trip to bison creek yesterday. Not it’s real name, but where I found the bison. So it seems an apt name. I packed my backpack and hip waders in my trunk and headed out. I got a half mile down the road and realized I’d forgotten to bring a change of pants. I told myself “I’m running late. I’ve got my hip waders to cover my pants. I’ll be fine. I only had 2.5 hours to explore, splash around the creek and play with any new fossils or rocks I might find of interest. I needed to leave by 3:00 so I could go to a send off party for a friend who is going to go minister to the Lakota tribe in South Dakota for 2 years and hopefully establish a thriving Celebrate Recovery group there.
Anyway, as I was putting on my waders I could see sunlight passing through in a few places. I guess they weren’t made for kneeling and digging and excavating fossils.
I got my gear and headed down to the creek. It was bright and sunny and in the low 50s. Great weather for hunting.

I stopped by the bison dig on my way downstream. The last cavity I had dug the articulated leg out of had collapsed in on itself. We had rain one day last week so I’m sure that helped it along. 
I thought I’d dig through some of the old collapsed dirt where I’d found bones before. I found one more vert.
Hard to tell, but there is bone there.

I moved on down the creek. There aren’t many obvious fossils in the creek, but there are lots of cool rocks, concretions and minerals. If you know me I’m fascinated with concretion.
Here is a view of the creek. Notice the layers on the right. The gray extends 3-4 feet up into the bank. Then the Pleistocene layer begins. There is s small tan layer. I think the Pleistocene begins above that.

Here is a cool looking septarian concretion. I call these turtle rocks. They’re aren’t turtles, but that’s what they reminded me of. It has strong mineral veins of brown, most likely aragonite running through it.

The other side. I like the richness of color. It’s probably just iron stain, but I like it. Most septarians around these parts are a dull gray. 

I walked a little further and came to this part of the creek with a high bank. This area seems to be a geological irregularity of some kind. This may be one of those instances where it lies in unconformity or something like that. I know for sure the dark gray is Eagle Ford Group, Arcadia Park Formation I believe. The light layer above it up to the next gray layer is either Austin Chalk or Eagle Ford. It could be a layer of Austin Chalk, which becomes more dominant to the east. The Austin Chalk overlays the Eagle Ford. Then above the tan a thin layer of gray where it is Pleistocene. The tan layer thins out to the right and disappears altogether a few feet to the right of the pic. There is a big chunk of light gray shale that had fallen from the bank. Concretions are scattered along inside the bank.

Some quite large, very cool and pretty. There are frequent avalanches and here you see evidence of that on the left. There is a concretion in the creek probably from the avalanche. I think I’d be just as happy sitting curiously breaking open the concretions and studying them. They’re just fascinating! Of course then I’d want to take them all home. The creek bed is a slippery shale.

I think this is so cool looking! The cavities are filled with a druzy type calcite with some aragonite too. I’m not use to seeing small little ones like that. The ones I find near Dallas are huge and not druzy. The size of these overall though are huge.

 

Here is s close up of part of it. I didn’t attempt to take any of it. I couldn’t carry it, but it sure is pretty. Also, this is s high avalanche risk area. It concerns me more than the NSR in terms ov avalanche risk.

In this area there are lots of minerals oozing out in places. It colors in the shale. I have been told there is fish fossil material in this creek. I haven’t found the exposure yet though.
This piece on the bottom right looked fishy to me. There are other parts that looked like it had scales and also the pattern of fish scales was scattered across the piece at the top center. I’m not sure what it is. It is in fine delicate shale though.

There was this white gelatinous substance that looked to be oozing out of the rocks in places. Very weird looking. I don’t recall seeing such a thing before. The bank is streaked with minerals that have been in solution and flowed down. Some looks like sulfur yellow. Some orange and white. There are also fine calcite and possibly gypsum crystals in the layers. Some like fine needles. They may be some other mineral too.

Anyone know what the white stuff is?

It was oozing out of a long vein across the creek. There was another area where the rock and water were stained orange from what looked like iron leaching out.

This septarian is over 5 feet long.

I moved on down the creek. There was a large gravel bar just down the creek filled with septarian nodules both whole and fragments. This one isn’t too pretty, but I think it has potential. Maybe a weak acid wash would brighten it up. It looked predominantly aragonite. You don’t see many like that this big.

I kept moving. On my left was a sand bar where the Pleistocene layer was at the surface. I spotted an odd looking thing that looked a bit like an exposed root. I went to check it out. Woohoo! A bone or a fragment of one.

I put down my pack and pulled out my chisel to remove the dirt around it. Bones can be fragile. I could just pull it out, but I risk breaking and losing some of it. So I always dig around bones or fossils to free them up before pulling them out. It kind of looks like the distal end of a humerus, but I’m not sure from what. The epicondyles are broken off the other side and it’s pretty worn.

 

Ill post more later. I’m not half done yet.

[ReptileTooth]

Great report!

Looking forward to see more!

[fossi59]

Very interesting report. Thank you.

Franz

[KimTexan]

Thank you. I have more to write, but I’ll have to post it tonight after work.

[goatinformationist]

What an extenuating pleasure!

[KimTexan]

 I continued downstream. There were numerous gravel bars. Most were quite large. The whole landscape had changed dramatically since I was here last time. Before the gravel bars were low and nearly flat. Now they were piled up. Some were 4-5 feet tall. The only thing I could think of that would cause that in this area was the high bank that was avalanche prone. I’ve been there and seen large solid chunks 3-4 feet across fallen from the bank. It was evident some large sections had fallen from the bank higher up.  

 

I came across a Cameleolopha bellaplicata oyster in the creek. This is the one Cretaceous fossil you do find in the creek. I found several of these.

 

I came to another gravel bar piled high.

There was a tangle of small tree limbs and roots in it. There were some man made stuff polluting the creek. The usual old bricks, glazed pottery, some broken glass which aren’t too bad, but there was a baby stroller, PVC pipes and other building stuff along with plastic bags. I hate seeing that. I really takes away from the serenity and beauty of nature and leaves a sour taste mentally. I don’t walk away so peaceful, which is one reason I fossil hunt, for the serenity, calm and solitude I experience while out hiking. So the trash kind of ruins it for me. I’ve seen a lot worse, but still I don’t like it. It may not look like much at first, but if you’ve ever attempted to clean up a place you soon realize there is so much more than you imagined.

 

I saw something hanging in the branches in a gravel bar. It was a bone fragment. No clue what. Definitely a longer leg bone of a larger animal like horse or cow, but which of the 4 legs I can’t tell. It could be modern or Pleistocene.

 

 

I moved on down the creek. I found a fragment of Inoceramus clam shell. Those are common, but especially in the Austin Chalk. I hadn’t seen any in this creek before. These Inoceramus clam shells are composed of calcium carbonate in the form of calcite. You can see the calcite structures in the cross section running left to right from this angle, which would be top to bottom. It makes me wonder how the growing of layers to thicken the shell works. Most shell layers stratify horizontally, not vertically or both. You can see lines going both ways. It’s one of those questions I haven’t taken the time to pursue finding the answer for.

 

I thought I was going to be able to finish with this post this evening, but it is dragging on. Sorry about that. I am going to bed and will attempt to finish the post tomorrow. I do have a nice find just before I was leaving the creek. That's up tomorrow.

 

 

[KimTexan]

Calcite is abundant in the creek. As I moved down the creek the calcite began to change and the crystals became larger.  Some of these chunks are coming out of the septarian nodules, but surely not all of them. Some look a bit like the slickenside variety.

 

I came to an area of the creek where the alluvial composition began to change some. The Eagle Ford was thinning out here. There were other rock showing up. Some limestone was present with a few thalassinoide burrow here and there. 

 

 

There was also a type of stone I’ve seen further NW that is a compressed conglomerate of shells. I can’t remember the name they call the stone though. The shells are so faint in these it’s hard to see them. 

 

The calcite was still abundant, but it had change some. You could see larger crystalline form. It didn’t look like slickenside so much anymore. I guess it could have filled a larger crack or fault.

 

There were rocks with curious shapes that are sure to be fossils, but what, I’m not sure. Eroded shells or maybe something like Cruziana ichnofacies? Which I know nothing about. Does Cruziana exist in the Cretaceous? There are also the holes with the little rocks inside. Kind of cool. I didn't take this home.

 

 

I found this too. I had no clue what it was. Although in several creeks in North Texas I have found these plate size thin flat rocks composed of hag appears to be a fine grit sandstone or gritty limestone. They had a peculiar pattern of 2 holes, always the same distance. I concluded they had to be the very eroded remains of a large clam. I was told no. Months later I found the same in another creek. Only this time there were remnants of shell on the surface and the hallmark Inoceramus calcite shell. This is similar in the way it looks almost layered, but the stone is a different composition. However those two groves remind me a lot of the inside of a bivalve near the hinge. So I believe it is a bivalve of some kind. It would have been large, at least twice this size and bigger. I have found Inoceramus shell remains in excess of 4 feet that I could measure. I’m sure they were bigger, but they were so eroded I couldn’t tell where the boundaries were beyond the 4 feet.

 

I found this curious rock. I think it looks like the fish scale pattern or an imprint of a fish. The underlying stone is red. Curious. I have no clue what it is.

 

I'll post more in a bit.

 

[KimTexan]

At this point in the creek there was a deep pool. If I wanted to get to the next gravel bar I would have to go up on the bank walk the distance and drop back down into the creek. I was running out of time. So I decided to turn back. On my way I picked up the fishy red shale item and the larger brown septarian crystal I had found. The shale I carried in my hands. It would get destroyed in my pack. My pack was pretty heavy and full now.

I had set a time for myself to stop and head back to my car. It went off about 5 minutes before I got back to my entry point. I had planned to go up creek to explore a bit. I had never been up that way and I really wanted to go. I set a timer for 30 minutes more.

 

I had left the turtle rock in the creek with a brick. My dad and brother both collect bricks. Evidently it is a very serious hobby. My brother travels long distance to go to brick swap meets. There is a club with a membership fee. They’re quite serious about their hobby and bricks can sell for ridiculous prices.

So I pick up some of the whole bricks I find in creeks and elsewhere and give them to my brother or dad.

When I got back to my entry point I put my pack up on the bank with a few other items I’d found. I I didn’t want to carry it up the creek and back.

I headed up the creek. It widened and was more open and not as shady. The geological layers seemed more consistent. The gravel bars were lower. There were fewer pools and less pollution for whatever reason. Maybe the low gravel bars didn’t trap as much.

 

I saw a few spots like this. It doesn’t exactly look like iron leaching into the water. Maybe it’s a type of algal bloom or something. It concerned me, but if it is just mineral I guess it’s OK.

 

 

 

 

I came to an area where the sandbar took up 2/3 of the creek. I saw something in the sand. A bone! A pretty decent thoracic vertebrae, broken, but not bad. There were hoof prints all around it. Looked more like hog tracks. I did see deer tracks in the area too.

 

I thought my shadow and the vertebra’s looked cool. You can see the light passing through the vertebral foramen, where the spinal cord would pass through.

 

For all of those of you stuck in that polar vortex of below zero temps.  Have a look upstream here.  It is more open and less shady than other parts of the creek.  There were fewer gravel bars and more sand.  The bottom layer is still the gray Eagle Ford with concretions, but it is dryer on the left side. The Pleistocene in this pick is the common appearance I think of when I think of Pleistocene in the area. Not the dark gray like my bison was in.

There seems to be springs or runoff on the other bank keeping it moist. The water is nice and clear. There is next to no silt or muck in the creek. The water was flowing nicely too so there was that beautiful sound of water rippling over rocks and such. I love that sound. I record it now and then to take back home and listen to when I need to de-stress and relax. 

 

 

Another view of the creek. I like the quality of light and the pattern it makes, reflecting off of the ripples of water. It makes a beautiful sight and sound. I saw minnows, but nothing else in the water. No crawdads or fish or water skimmers. 

 

There were still concretions in the bank, but they were getting lower down and smaller. Some looked different too. Rather than crystals marking the separations there were calcite looking minerals. This is one we’re it had minerals rather than crystals.

 

A closer shot. I’m fascinated by most anything natural. I want to understand it. Crystals and minerals are a common object of my fascination. Sorry you’ll just have to put up with a lot of it on this post. It just looks cool. I wish I could have packed it home, but it was too big and heavy. Looks like it would look cool next to a yucca plant in a southwest landscape.

 

I will post more in a few. My find of the day is up next.

[KimTexan]

I came across another turtle rock. Only this one was bowl shaped. I didn’t have my pack now, but I was willing to carry it.

 

This was a much larger concretion. Where you see the white are remnants of original mollusk shell material and the white nacre transitioning to aragonite. The shells of nacre bearing mollusk shells are comprised of aragonite crystalline plates, which appear white with mother of pearl. The mother of pearl isn’t a color, but rather a manipulation of light by the crystalline plates which produces the appearance of the colors of a rainbow. Think of how a prism looks in the light and you’ll get the idea. There is no rainbow or color in the prism. Hopefully I’m not boring you with minutiae of what’s behind mother of pearl.

 

I had run out of time a long time ago. I was in denial that my jeans would be too dirty. I was enjoying myself thoroughly and didn't want to leave. I could do this until the fading light of dusk forced me from the creek. But I had an event to get to.

I got back to my entry point. It was near where I found the other mandible piece. I decided to look around for more bones here. I had figured out that ground level here was the actual lay the bones were found in.

As I walked scanning the ground for bone something caught my eye under a fallen branch. I reached down to pull it out, but it was caught on something. My hands were full of rocks and the thoracic vert I had found. I put one of the rocks down by the bone so I didn’t lose sight of where it was. There is also another plastic bag stuck in the twigs.

 

 

My pack was only a few feet away now so I took my things there and put them down and came back to where I’d left the rock by the bone. I lifted the branch and pulled this out. Pardon the dirty hands. It was a nearly perfect lumbar vertebrae. It was a beauty! The nicest I’ve ever found. I’m not sure if it is modern or Pleistocene. It was laying at the same level as the bone layer my bison was in around the corner and down stream 35-40 feet away. It sure looks the same age as my bison. But modern and cow cannot be ruled out. 

 

I walked back to my pack. I had more stuff than would fit in it. I rearranged the contents and added some of the other stuff. I decided to carry the vert in my hands along with the fishy piece of shale and the last turtle rock. The pack was so heavy now I had a hard time lifting it onto my back. I headed back to my car. I opened the trunk and took my waders off. Bad news, my jeans were filthy. There was no way that I could  go to the event like this. I would have to drive home, change and then go to the event. I don't know how I keep doing that, but I keep getting more dirt and mud down my waders.

 

I got in my car and drove home. I made it to the event about 15 min late. All was OK. I had a nice time visiting with some friends I hadn't seen in a while and got to encourage one friend.

Thanks for reading my post.

 

[Al Dente]

6 hours ago, KimTexan said:

I saw a few spots like this. It doesn’t exactly look like iron leaching into the water. Maybe it’s a type of algal bloom or something. It concerned me, but if it is just mineral I guess it’s OK.

I see this quite a bit. My understanding is this happens where groundwater rich in dissolved iron is seeping into the stream and bacteria in the presence of oxygen convert the iron to a different oxidation state, causing the reddish color. Sometimes the mass of bacteria looks like slime coating everything.

[KimTexan]

13 hours ago, Al Dente said:

I see this quite a bit. My understanding is this happens where groundwater rich in dissolved iron is seeping into the stream and bacteria in the presence of oxygen convert the iron to a different oxidation state, causing the reddish color. Sometimes the mass of bacteria looks like slime coating everything.

I seem to recall something along that line, but my question is are the microorganisms safe? If they are algal or bacterial I don’t know how to tell if they are a harmful variety. Harmful algal blooms are on the rise, but I don’t know about their presence in fresh water. I know they can produce toxins that can kill fish and other animals and can be harmful to humans. I don’t know how you’d know or if there is something to do to prevent the spread. I saw at least 4 of these.

[Al Dente]

2 hours ago, KimTexan said:

but my question is are the microorganisms safe?

If they are iron bacteria which I suspect they are, then it’s relatively safe. You don’t want iron bacteria in your well because it causes odors and stains but it won’t hurt you. A lot of people who have metal casing in their wells have it. It’s difficult to get rid of.

[OwlEyes]

I always love to read your report.  Thank you for sharing.