Pretty shells

[FossilDAWG]

Don

[Jackson g]

Finished up this nice holocephalan tooth plate as well. Not going to lie, it was a nightmare cleaning this because these tooth plates are so dang fragile. I was afraid I would nick it, or that a sliver would pop off during scribe work. Glad that was not the case. I rarely ever get the chance to prepare a vertebrate fossil, so what should have taken me probably a hour, ended up taking me 3. 

 

Start: A huge Burlington slab of crinoidal limestone. Tooth plate partially exposed.

 

Finished: Trimmed down substantially, and tooth plate further exposed. Any idea what I should label this @connorp? They all look so similar to my nooby eye!

[connorp]

1 hour ago, Jackson g said:

Any idea what I should label this @connorp? They all look so similar to my nooby eye!

Heh, well they often are hard to discern for me as well. Could you post a couple more angles?

[Jackson g]

15 hours ago, connorp said:

Heh, well they often are hard to discern for me as well. Could you post a couple more angles?

Sure heres a few other angles I had saved on my phone. I can take more later on when I get home.

[connorp]

Hm. I am not sure on this one. @Archie

[Misha]

Beautiful tooth plate!

[deutscheben]

Nice crusher tooth! 

[Jackson g]

It's been a really good past 2 weeks for me out collecting Burlington material. I always have more fun and get the satisfaction I want when I'm out in the field fossil hunting, but that doesn't mean I should neglect my prep table of pretties! I did go out again today, but I'm now starting a goal of every time I go out to fossil hunt, I will grab something off the prep table to work on that same day. 

So I decided to grab this piece to work on, a brachiopod of course! 

 

After some scribbles, I realized this steinkern had its shell intact like some other special brachiopods I've found in the area. I decided to flip it, and prep ventrally. This paid off. As prep went on, I also started to dissect shell very carefully from the brachiopod.

 

This is as far as I got to cleaning it up today. May leave it as is, not sure. Here it is after I ran it under some soapy water and let dry. My pretty is super sparkly, and no damage to the brachidium. I showed my father, he thought this was a normal geode. 

 

We shall see what gets cleaned next time. I can never get enough 

[Jackson g]

Woke up and decided I would prep something today. I went with a large slab of calcitic, crinoidal Burlington limestone to work on. This slab I dragged home appeared to have a giant brachiopod waiting inside for me. This type of rock can be kind of sticky, but its child's play compared to working the cherty stuff. After 3 hours or so, all the surrounding rock was worked away, and I pulled out this giant spirifer from its tomb. Amazingly, not only is the big daddy near max size, but it has both valves preserved! A portion of the bottom left valve was exposed from the rock, and has eroded away due to the elements/ time. While unfortunate, if this chunk wasn't exposed I probably wouldn't have noticed it. I still have a bit of scribe work to do, but alas I'm done prepping for today.

 

Chunk exposed from rock, weathered valve

 

Still have a hour or so of scribe work to clean up around the hinge line as stated. This brachiopod is massive though!

[Tidgy's Dad]

WOW! 

[Misha]

Woah! That's huge

Do you know the id for it?

[Jackson g]

3 hours ago, Misha said:

Woah! That's huge

Do you know the id for it?

Spiriferella plena is a guess. It looks similar, and is from the lower Burlington. I haven't gone through to try and ID it yet, so I welcome any guesses. Finishing prep on it today after all, so I'll have a better photo of it uploaded as well later on.

[FossilNerd]

On 9/15/2020 at 2:23 PM, Tidgy's Dad said:

WOW! 

[Jackson g]

Cleaned up a cool Productid brachiopod steinkern this time. I decided to remove the shell off the brach, even though these suckers don't contain the sweet golden spirals. I thinks it's still a cool example to have next to the others, and I decided to keep the shell this time instead of picking it into a thousand pieces.

[Jackson g]

Next work in progress. Anybody wanna take it from here and finish it for me? Getting this chunk of chert to my car and home was a nightmare alone, now trying to extract this without damage sounds like fun. Slow prep, or a lucky wack could solve the issue.

 

I think I'll take my time, there are some dirty spirals! First, I have to find the time to actually finish it.

[FossilNerd]

43 minutes ago, Jackson g said:

Anybody wanna take it from here and finish it for me?

Sure! I'll take it, and finish it, and store it, and display it for you! I'm sure you will get it back sometime! 

 

Serioisly though... some cool recent finds.  

[Jackson g]

22 hours ago, FossilNerd said:

Sure! I'll take it, and finish it, and store it, and display it for you! I'm sure you will get it back sometime! 

 

Serioisly though... some cool recent finds.  

Well I'm glad you are enjoying them too! I have less than 4 months of collecting my favorite formation until I move out of Missouri, so I'll keep sharing for a little while longer.

[FossilNerd]

6 hours ago, Jackson g said:

Well I'm glad you are enjoying them too! I have less than 4 months of collecting my favorite formation until I move out of Missouri, so I'll keep sharing for a little while longer.

Oh no! Say it isn't so! 

 

I do thouroughly enjoy your pretty shells, and their internal parts. Those golden spirals are drool worthy, and the other finds from you favorite formation are great as well. I will miss you sharing!

[Jackson g]

19 hours ago, FossilNerd said:

Oh no! Say it isn't so! 

 

I do thouroughly enjoy your pretty shells, and their internal parts. Those golden spirals are drool worthy, and the other finds from you favorite formation are great as well. I will miss you sharing!

Who knows, maybe I can strike up a deal with a private property owner in Colorado to hunt land there. Not sure how welcoming folks are there compared to MO when it comes to hospitality, and overall just letting strangers on their land. And I do 100% agree about the brachiopod brachidiums, or terebratulid small support loops, there aren't many formations I've be able to find in person, or online that give amazing results of the brach innards like this particular slice of Burlington does. I understand they do sectioning and slicing to see insides, but these are like I just cracked open a living spiral bearer. With some added druzy of course!

[Jackson g]

Well the subject was on my mind and it's also nice outside, so good time for a photograph! I know I've shared these here prior, but most of my collection will be getting packed up soon for my move. So heres my favorite two finds of 2020. It would be hard to top these. These two Composita brachs come from the (lower white chert) Burlington Formation, and both have their complete brachidiums (besides the big boy missing the right spires #15- #17) intact and covered in fine quartz crystal. Both were found at the same location in Henry County, Missouri. The larger is a lovely pink rose color, while the smaller flashes a crisp bright white. The larger was left in rock, while the smaller was worked out of the rock. Hopefully I can get them ID'd from an expert in the future, it would be cool to call them the same species.

 

[FossilNerd]

30 minutes ago, Jackson g said:

Well the subject was on my mind and it's also nice outside, so good time for a photograph! I know I've shared these here prior, but most of my collection will be getting packed up soon for my move. So heres my favorite two finds of 2020. It would be hard to top these. These two Composita brachs come from the (lower white chert) Burlington Formation, and both have their complete brachidiums (besides the big boy missing the right 15-17 spirals) intact and covered in fine quartz crystal. Both were found at the same location in Henry County, Missouri. The larger is a lovely pink rose color, while the smaller flashes a crisp bright white. The larger was left in rock, while the smaller was worked out of the rock. Hopefully I can get them ID'd from an expert in the future, it would be cool to call them the same species.

 

Now that's the stuff I will miss! Like you, I have never seen such wonderfully preserved brach innards as you find in you little slice of the Burlington. Beautiful!

 

Hopefully you will find another great exposure in Colorado that produces something equally as wonderful, or better!  

 

[Wrangellian]

4 hours ago, Jackson g said:

Well the subject was on my mind and it's also nice outside, so good time for a photograph! I know I've shared these here prior, but most of my collection will be getting packed up soon for my move. So heres my favorite two finds of 2020. It would be hard to top these. These two Composita brachs come from the (lower white chert) Burlington Formation, and both have their complete brachidiums (besides the big boy missing the right spires #15- #17) intact and covered in fine quartz crystal. Both were found at the same location in Henry County, Missouri. The larger is a lovely pink rose color, while the smaller flashes a crisp bright white. The larger was left in rock, while the smaller was worked out of the rock. Hopefully I can get them ID'd from an expert in the future, it would be cool to call them the same species.

 

That one is particularly good. Amazing that you were able to expose it without breaking the structure! For me it would have broken sure as 773H.

[Jackson g]

Have some Pentremites sp. blastoids that have been sitting too long in the works now. I was tired after my new job today, so I only put in a bit over an hour into prep.

 

 

This one will be nice, but it has a lot of little sticky bits of calcite on it. After more scribe work I'll try blasting them off with abrasive.

 

This harder cherty one is actually coming out easier and alot cleaner than the other, softer one. I have a pre prep photo of it on one of my Burlington fossil hunt trips.

 

 Theres a cool little crystal blastoid steinkern I blasted through right below this big boy, but no loss there because I have a ton of them. These big, complete cherty ones are the real prize. Hopefully I can finish these up soon.

[FossilNerd]

35 minutes ago, Jackson g said:

Have some Pentremites sp. blastoids that have been sitting too long in the works now. I was tired after my new job today, so I only put in a bit over an hour into prep.

Yummy! 

[Jackson g]

Indecisive me is putting the blastoids on the back burner. I have two Fragiscutum glebalis trilos in need of cleaning that I think takes priority. I'm not very experienced cleaning bugs, but it seems to be going well. This first one is only a partial. It's missing the pygidium and a bit of a cheek, but its worth keeping and putting in the time in my opinion. It's kind of slow going so far.