Hungry Hollow Member

[Kane]

Spent 8 hours yesterday mucking about in the Hungry Hollow Member, resorting to that section of the Widder Formation as there are no viable upper Widder outcrops at the moment. Nothing fabulous in terms of finds, but the HH Member is temperamental... High turbidity makes for a lot of fossils that are not hardy to come out as a puree. Corals dominate this stratum, at times making up more of the composition than matrix. It also means not much in the way of reliable bedding planes as most of this stuff comes out in chunks delineated by the corals. It can also be quite muddy/wet, and hard to pick out what's there. When it dries, it is not much better.

 

I didn't take much in the way of field pics. I did, however, see an abundance of salamanders, which speaks to some measure of ecological health in the area given that they are among the more ecologically sensitive critters. 

 

I struck my own spot by digging out a lot of soil and roots. 

 

The only field pics. Corals being by far the most abundant, some of them can come out quite large. These I set aside in piles for other collectors.

[Kane]

The Eldredgeops rana in this layer can come out quite large, albeit in fragments. There is a thin layer where they can come out full, as the same can be said throughout the Member, but the odds are not great. 

[Kane]

Little odds and ends. I bucketed what appears to be a curious bryozoan at the bottom of this picture. Given the muddiness of the layer, I dimly hoped it might be a placoderm. The upper left is either a coral or likely just a pyrite nodule -- not something I encounter often in the HH.  

[Kane]

Gastropods. The smaller ones usually come out whole, but bigger ones have more fragile shells. The base of the pic shows a rather large and senior Spinplatyceras.

[Kane]

My real goal was to find two trilobites: Pseudodechenella arkonensis and Crassiproetus canadensis. Finding them complete with full shell intact is far more rare than finding a full and pristine Greenops in the upper Widder. I have another piece somewhere that *might* be complete, but I'll need to spend some time delicately washing the dirt off to find it. Some partials pictured here. 

 

The upper right piece is a very sizeable glabella, indicating the full specimen would have been around 7-9 cm long. 

 

In the end, the HH Member is not the most ideal for finding trilobites, but one can be rewarded with the very rare full one with a lot of persistence. Instead of my usual ratio of finding at least one complete bug per trip, I might have to content myself in finding one per ten trips.

[FossilDAWG]

There other interesting things in the Hungry Hollow, such as blastoids and rarely a crinoid calyx.

 

Don

[Malcolmt]

A day in the field is better than a day hanging around at home. Glad you got out

[Kane]

3 hours ago, FossilDAWG said:

There other interesting things in the Hungry Hollow, such as blastoids and rarely a crinoid calyx.

 

Don

I'd say pretty rare for a calyx, for sure. You can follow the long stems and have them terminate...at a coral.  Blastoids are much harder to see when the rock is fresh, and since I don't collect those, I have a list of folks who I'd be giving/trading those to if I was to find them. 

2 hours ago, Malcolmt said:

A day in the field is better than a day hanging around at home. Glad you got out

Definitely when the day is gorgeous out. A rainier than usual spring has meant fewer trips, but more productive time in the lab. I know the HH is not your cup of tea, but you're always welcome to join me next time. 

[Darktooth]

Geez, no pics of the Salamanders?

[FossilDAWG]

1 hour ago, Darktooth said:

Geez, no pics of the Salamanders?

But they were delicious! 

 

Don

[Darktooth]

44 minutes ago, FossilDAWG said:

But they were delicious! 

 

Don

[Monica]

I love the snails 

 

It's great that you got out - I still haven't been able to check out Etobicoke Creek due to being quite busy and being concerned about high water levels (it's been such a wet spring!!! ) - hopefully I'll be able to get out there a lot in the summertime... 

[Kane]

15 hours ago, Darktooth said:

Geez, no pics of the Salamanders?

Sorry, Dave. It was my one regret, but they were also squirming away rather too quickly after I disturbed them for me to take off the dirty gloves and whip out the camera.  

2 hours ago, Monica said:

I love the snails 

 

It's great that you got out - I still haven't been able to check out Etobicoke Creek due to being quite busy and being concerned about high water levels (it's been such a wet spring!!! ) - hopefully I'll be able to get out there a lot in the summertime... 

It has been an unusually soggy spring. Probably best anyway to wait out any river trips until June or later to let the waters subside. All of Southwestern Ontario seems stuck in an odd trench battleground between the cold/warm fronts, with shots of moisture coming from the US midwest. 

[Al Tahan]

Nice trip Kane!!! Great finds  

[JUAN EMMANUEL]

On 2019-05-23 at 7:34 AM, Kane said:

Sorry, Dave. It was my one regret, but they were also squirming away rather too quickly after I disturbed them for me to take off the dirty gloves and whip out the camera.  

It has been an unusually soggy spring. Probably best anyway to wait out any river trips until June or later to let the waters subside. All of Southwestern Ontario seems stuck in an odd trench battleground between the cold/warm fronts, with shots of moisture coming from the US midwest. 

Very nice finds! I hope you eventually find a nice trilo you hope for.

Who remembers the summer of 2017 when the Humber River’s mouth flooded the waterfront trail? Or how Toronto Island properties/parks were flooded nearly knee high or so? Aren’t the islands in downtown T.O. on the verge of being flooded again? :((

 

[Monica]

5 hours ago, JUAN EMMANUEL said:

Very nice finds! I hope you eventually find a nice trilo you hope for.

Who remembers the summer of 2017 when the Humber River’s mouth flooded the waterfront trail? Or how Toronto Island properties/parks were flooded nearly knee high or so? Aren’t the islands in downtown T.O. on the verge of being flooded again? :((

 

 

I do remember the flooding on the Toronto islands in 2017, and with all of the rain we've gotten this spring, I'm not surprised that it's likely going to happen again.  A day trip to Centre Island is likely not in the cards for us again this summer...

[Kane]

6 hours ago, JUAN EMMANUEL said:

Very nice finds! I hope you eventually find a nice trilo you hope for.

 

Thanks.  I've since cleaned these up in the lab a bit, and they take very well to sodium bicarbonate abrasion. The Spinplatyceras in particular is among the biggest I've seen from that site -- if only it wasn't missing some shell. Once I'm done prepping the PD bugs, I might finish off the HH finds.