New Mazon Creek Collection

[bigred97]

[bigred97]

[bigred97]

[bigred97]

[bigred97]

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[bigred97]

[Wrangellian]

 Odd... My first impression from the overall form was a crushed snail, but those look like bones. I don't know what vertebrates can be found in the Mazon so I'll leave that to someone else.

[RCFossils]

This is very interesting. 
I think it is a portion of a fish.

 

[bigred97]

Thanks, @Wrangellian! Thanks, @RCFossils! I did think those looked like little vertebrates and that was why I was thinking fish or amphibian. I could certainly see it being part of a fish. I'm curious about what some of the other longer structures might be. One of them looks symmetrical or 2 similar pieces side-by-side. You can kind of see that in picture #326. The 2 sides are narrow in the middle and get pretty broad at one of the ends. I'll have to spend some time looking at other fish fossils. Chris

[Runner64]

Photo 322 has remarkable similarities to modern fish vertebra. If they are vertebrae, I wonder if photo 326 could be pieces of the rib cage? Not sure what 324 would be besides decaying organic matter.

[bigred97]

On my last trip to Pit 11 I found some little concretions that had already split. They were covered in mud but I've learned to take these anyway and wash them up at home. I recently cleaned up the left side of this concretion, and immediately washed up all the rest, hoping that I had also found the other side. Success! I think that is very lucky, indeed - two halves of a concretion can easily end up quite far from each other, or one half can be thinner and break into many smaller fragments. So I was very excited to find the other side in my bucket.

 

I believe this is a specimen of Kankakeea grundyi, which Jack Wittry in A Comprehensive Guide to the Fossil Flora of Mazon Creek says may be a bud used for vegetative reproduction. This bud would be shed and then grow into a new fern. I love the texture to this one, hopefully the pictures will show some of that because it was difficult to get a good photo.

 

[bigred97]

[deutscheben]

Oh, that’s a really interesting one! 

[stats]

Very nice!  Something different is always good!

 

Cheers,

Rich

 

[Buck Fradley]

Have made two trips to Mazonia Braidwood since I discovered it is a thing, and I'm only an hour away. We found lots of opened concretion round halves, some with blob traces,  and probably 50 full concretions that are currently soaking and ready to start freeze\thawing soon. Most of the concretions were 1-1.5" rounds with a few 2-3" oblongs. I did find this large one poking out of the side of a slope. Can't wait to see what's in it. 

Edited August 20, 2023 by Buck Fradley

[Mark Kmiecik]

You should start your own thread instead of hijacking this one. You'll get more views since folks tend to ignore the older threads. One of the administrators may move this somewhere, so if it disappears, you'll know what happened.

 

This type of concretion, prominently layered, is a low-percentage Mazon Creek nodule. Very, very, very few of the ones with this kind of layering are fossilferrous. Don't get your hopes up on this one, but I wish you luck. Sometimes we are pleasantly surprised by MC nodules. It's "like a box of chocolates" . . . . 

 

Good luck with what you've found. Hoping for some nice specimens photos from you.