Black Sahara - Erfoud - Morocco

[Tidgy's Dad]

Blocks underfoot just packed with cephalopods. 

And some loose pieces you can pick up without hammering.

But not this foot long beauty though :

Here's one I took home, looks like a nice bryozoan too, which is quite rare : 

 

[Tidgy's Dad]

Some of the rocks are covered in a yellowish powdery stuff that scrubs off quite easily. 

I'm not sure what these are. 

Sections of orthocerids? 

But some of them seem to have several circles within circles and a very large 'siphuncle'. (Bottom left). 

 

[Tidgy's Dad]

The weathering on some of these specimens is pretty weird. It also means that many of these layers are unsuitable for collecting for commercial purposes, so I'm told. 

Hence why they are all still here so close to the road.

Perhaps some of them are crinoid columnals? 

Some pieces have weird internal molds in them, probably also goniatites. 

I like this next one :

Some bigger pieces photographed on wifey's little table as i've run out of room on my fossil sofa.

 

 

 

 

 

[Tidgy's Dad]

Continuing on we soon came to a little hut, which had "Fossiles" written all over it, but was closed and shuttered. 

Another couple of hundred metres on was another one, but this one was open. 

Notice the place is made from pisé, wattle and daub, just mud and straw. it dissolves in the November rains, hence the uneven walls. Eventually they need to be repaired or they just disintegrate. 

Inside were rows and rows of shelves, not well lit, but the kind friendly and knowledgeable owner, Yuness, was more than happy for you to take pieces outside to examine them. Everything he had in here was genuine and local. He's quite far from the road and gets few tourists here, makes his money from selling to the commercial shops in the town. Very nice man. 

wifey and Anouar failed to take pictures of the inside for some reason, probably too busy being amazed, but they dis take pictures of some interesting, but not spectacular pieces outside. 

A wonderful septarian sort of thing. There's lots of small ones about, i have some cut and polished little ones at home. 

And piles of stuff near the door, left to the mercy of the elements or thieves because they're not worth bringing inside, bits of half polished 'orthocerid marble, the pseudo-stromatolites (see later), Devonian corals and bits of the crinoid bed. Notice that sometimes the orthocerids do weather out.

 

 

 

[Tidgy's Dad]

Near his hut this is propped up :

This is a beautiful example. 

These are found all over the Sahara / Sub-Sahara of Morocco and are usually sold as Pre-Cambrian stromatolites. 

I have one myself from near Agadir far to the West of Erfoud.

And posted about it here on the Fabulous Fossil Forum. :

I was stung.

$25 seems an awful lot nowadays. 

These little things outcrop in the desert in strata above rocks dating from the Silurian to the Eocene. 

I said to Yuness, "Stromatolites?" 

Now, he's a seller, but he still shook his head and said that they were some sort of desert accretion like the desert roses and were not fossils. This is what I believe too. 

Still pretty amazing. 

Oh, for scale. :

The hill in the background is the Jebel Boutchafrane (spelled many different ways) and as you approach it the rocks get progressively older, so the flats just before it are late Silurian. 

Then the hill itself is formed from angled rock dating from the Emsian, on the left as you look at it, through the Eifelian, Givetian, Frasnian and Famennian of the Devonian to the Lower Carboniferous on the far right. 

Behind this hill lies a little plain and then another hill, the famous Hamar Laghdad with its Kez kez (couscous in Berber) mud mounds which produce some of those spectacular black on grey trilobites that you see everywhere. 

 

 

 

 

[rebu]

On 3/21/2019 at 12:42 AM, Tidgy's Dad said:

Near his hut this is propped up :

   

 

 

I see some cool stuff coming up this piece is beautiful. Thanks for sharing all these great photos 

[Tidgy's Dad]

3 minutes ago, rebu said:

I see some cool stuff coming up this piece is beautiful. Thanks for sharing all these great photos 

Thank you. 

Yup, you are right, some amazing finds to follow soon. 

Even in that last photo of that old man I don't recognize  next to the 'stromatolite' you can see fossils in the ground and even half polished and dumped nearby. 

There are just too many to carry , even if you have a truck! 

[Peat Burns]

On 3/21/2019 at 12:42 AM, Tidgy's Dad said:

 

Sometimes one pair of glasses just isn't enough! 

[Monica]

You must have been in heaven walking among all of those cephalopods - I know I would have been! 

 

And that huge rugose coral colony outside of the fossil shop is stunning!!! 

[Wrangellian]

Thanks for posting that guide to the 'orthocerids'. That's the kind of info we need more of on this forum. It's strange that something so widely available should be so hard to find info about, but I've noticed that with Moroccan and Madagascan fossils and other things also.

You mean to tell us those stromatolites are not stromatolites? Dang. I don't remember what I paid for mine but now it was probably too much, like you say.

And that pile of fossils outside the shop is just sitting there for the taking, but you had no means to take them? I would have done what I could to get that coral and the piece with the orthocones weathered out. You don't see those easily available and when you do, they're too pricey.

 

[Bobby Rico]

Adam I love your picture and the rosette patterned looking rock is just beautiful. It a really nice photo of you standing next to it. I have one of them nice rock things.

The guy’s shop sign scratched onto his lintel is really cool. I may have missed it but did you purchase anything ? Great post.  

[Manticocerasman]

yay, goniatites and orthocones

 

did you get some 3d preserved specimens?

 

 

[Tidgy's Dad]

7 hours ago, Peat Burns said:

Sometimes one pair of glasses just isn't enough! 

I use three pairs! 

One for ordinary use, one for close up detail and one for long distance. 

And there is always my loupe in my waistcoat pocket as well. 

[Tidgy's Dad]

6 hours ago, Wrangellian said:

Thanks for posting that guide to the 'orthocerids'. That's the kind of info we need more of on this forum. It's strange that something so widely available should be so hard to find info about, but I've noticed that with Moroccan and Madagascan fossils and other things also.

You mean to tell us those stromatolites are not stromatolites? Dang. I don't remember what I paid for mine but now it was probably too much, like you say.

And that pile of fossils outside the shop is just sitting there for the taking, but you had no means to take them? I would have done what I could to get that coral and the piece with the orthocones weathered out. You don't see those easily available and when you do, they're too pricey.

 

It's very hard to get accurate information on a lot of the Moroccan fossils. Nightmare in fact. It will happen.

Youness did have a genuine Moroccan stromatolite to show us. They are found in several locations. This one comes from near Ouarzazate. We visited Ouarzazate on day three but the stromatolite locality is a few kilometres south of the town on the left of the N9 road as you get near to the town of Agdz. We didn't have time on this trip. 

Here is the real stromatolite, about 700 million years old : 

And as for the fossils left outside the shop, and there were huge quantities, it just felt a bit too much like stealing. 

And, as shall be seen, it wasn't necessary. 

[Tidgy's Dad]

A photo of the real stromatolite reef from the Universities Space Research Association.

[Tidgy's Dad]

Erfoud is also rightly famous for its crinoid bed. Scyphocrintes elegans.

Again these are just lying about outside the shop.

The crinoid beds are located above the black Silurian "Orthocerid Marble" and have been dated to the late Pridoli to early Lochkovian, topmost Silurian to lowermost Devonian and is in several layers dating from about 423 to 410 million years old. Like the orthocerids, they are usually sold as Devonian. 

The Silurian strata is exposed as one approaches the hills but the crinoid beds are at the bottom of each limestone layer and those exposed at the surface have been stripped long ago. Now the locals dig vertical shafts down into the Silurian strata and when they find evidence of the crinoid beds tunnel horizontally beneath them then boshing them to remove the crinoids a bit at a time and then, sometimes, gluing the pieces back together to form the huge impressive plates like this one Yuness had outside his shop.

 

[Tidgy's Dad]

Thanking the friendly, knowledgeable and rather kind Yuness for his help and promising to return and purchase something later as i didn't want to do it now in case i found one of the items I purchased, ( @Bobby Rico, I'll post the purchases when I get to the return journey. )   we said our fond farewells and while wifey and Abdullah returned to the car with our cephalopod pieces and went to investigate the shop on the road oppositie the car, Anouar and I pressed on towards the hills.

Bye bye for now, shop of Yuness! 

We decided that although most people wouldn't be silly enough to walk along the rough track to the hills, they generally travel in pick up trucks or four by four vehicles, that it would be better to search off the beaten track, so to speak, so we headed off road a few hundred metres to the right, sort of south. and then turned left, heading east towards the hills and into progressively older Devonian strata. 

15 hours ago, Monica said:

You must have been in heaven walking among all of those cephalopods - I know I would have been! 

And that huge rugose coral colony outside of the fossil shop is stunning!!! 

It was wonderful. I had a real sense of the time, a sea positively swarming with little cephalopods; goniatites, clymenids, orthocerids all in shoals like fish.

And it wasn't long before Anouar came across this beautiful coral :

@TqB

Hi, Tarquin. 

Is this Arachnophyllum, Phillipsastrea, one of the odd Acervularia? 

Haven't done my research yet, so I'm just guessing. 

Another specimen will be posted below in a few minutes, someone's at the door! 

 

[Tidgy's Dad]

After a few more minutes of futile searching in the same area, Anouar decided to head back and get some more cephalopods so there aren't any more location pics for my journey from here on in. 

However, i did find a very similar coral almost straight away :

[TqB]

2 hours ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

 

 

 

@TqB

Hi, Tarquin. 

Is this Arachnophyllum, Phillipsastrea, one of the odd Acervularia? 

Haven't done my research yet, so I'm just guessing. 

Another specimen will be posted below in a few minutes, someone's at the door! 

 

Hi Adam! 

Lovely specimen - it usually gets called Phillipsastraea but I don't know how valid that is. I don't have any reference material for Morocco Devonian. (It's certainly not one of the Carboniferous ones that get sold as Devonian!)

 

This is a wonderful report!

 

[Ludwigia]

Enjoying every minute of this. Who was at the door?

[Tidgy's Dad]

5 hours ago, TqB said:

Hi Adam! 

Lovely specimen - it usually gets called Phillipsastraea but I don't know how valid that is. I don't have any reference material for Morocco Devonian. (It's certainly not one of the Carboniferous ones that get sold as Devonian!)

 

This is a wonderful report!

 

Thanks, Tarquin. I'm pretty sure it's going to be Devonian, though I did find a suspected Lower Carboniferous fossil much closer to the hills. I'll do some reading, but Phillipsastrea is a possibility. 

This coral was not far away Possibly Crenulipora difformis, but that's not necessarily my final answer! 

 

It's nice and i can probably prep it a bit quite easily, the matrix seems pretty soft with just one or two hard bits.

 

[Tidgy's Dad]

15 hours ago, Manticocerasman said:

yay, goniatites and orthocones

 

did you get some 3d preserved specimens?

 

 

I did. A few. 

Photos to come, I'll give you an alert. 

[Tidgy's Dad]

2 hours ago, Ludwigia said:

Enjoying every minute of this. Who was at the door?

Thank you, Roger. 

I enjoyed every minute too, of course, and am very much happy doing these field reports. 

It's so good after being housebound for so long and I think some of what I have discovered is useful as well. 

Like many of your own reports, I'm sure you'll agree, it's hopefully informative and helpful to others as well as a bit of showing off. 

"Look what I found!" says Adam.  

It's really nice contributing to this community on TFF. 

Oh, it was one of my neighbours, a little girl, who'd come to feed Tidgy some dandelions. 

[Tidgy's Dad]

And some little rugose branching corals. 

I have no idea at all as to the genus of this one yet. 

 

[Tidgy's Dad]

Then there were some rather lovely rugose 'horn' corals.