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Hello gang,

 

As promised this is where I will share specimens from my personal collection, my grandfather's collection, and the collection that was donated to the university I work for. The latter is interesting as it is literally boxes of rock and fossils, with no information and my university does not have a geology or paleontology department. I'll be updating it every so often.

 

Enjoy!

 

NOTE: Some of the  donated items have old school "labels" on them. If you see initials or such that you recognize, please PM me, as I am doing my best to properly catalog them properly as part of my job!

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North Western Pennsylvania

 

I grew up very close to Lake Erie and within a long bicycle ride of 18 Mile Creek. I hear the 18 Mile is closed to collectors these days, but back in the mid 80s It was where I spent most of my summers. True story, I am likely the only person from that part of the country that has never found a trilobite there.

 

I found the large sponge/coral in the dark grey substrate on my grandfather's farm in 1983. It has a small horn coral and some flint in the concretion. Never have been able to identify it!

 

The polished horn corals are from the shores of Lake Erie. They were so common at that beach, there was no sand, only fossils! The third are randoms from the creek near my childhood home.

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Edited by LabRatKing
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Appologies for the bad pictures, my DSLR is hooked up to microscope at work today doing a time lapse experiment! Plus, I think I'm tripping all the spam flags, so I have to wait to post more pics! Havent even gotten to the "good stuff" yet!

Edited by LabRatKing
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Here's some more Pennsylvania. This one is from the St. Clair shale collected on a trip with my grandad when I was ten. I hear tell many of those sites are closed to the public these days too.

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IMG-3878.jpgPart 2: Eastern Nebraska

 

We do actually have some fossils here on this side of the state, though I'm kind of burnt out on Bryozoa and crinoids and branchiopods. Lots of Pennsylvanian period stuff in hard to work limestone. The locals here SWEAR there is "shark teeth" in there, but I'm fairly certain they are actually crinoid parts. I played around with various concentrations of acids in addition to traditional poke and scrape and chisel techniques to prepare most of these. Some are finished with PVA or acrylic. I suspect that the area must have been reef or shoreline as everything is always busted up crinoid-wise. These are all from Cass and Sarpy County along the Platte River. There are some road cuts that are open to surface collecting. We have the infamous Weeping Water Limestone Quarry just south of here, but I have yet to see anything worth the effort, and the quarry is not open to rockhounds anymore.IMG-3888.jpg

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Edited by LabRatKing
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This one is a mystery. My home was built in 1950 and "local" limestone was very popular for retaining walls. I have Identified three very different types, likely from three different places. One is very dense, pyrite filled, and low on fossils. It breaks into blocks with ease. The other two are relatively soft. They grayish type is heavy with PA period fossils and lots of calcite encrustations. The third is yellow-white in color and contains sparse bivalves.The locals all swear it is Weeping Water and/or Kiewitt limestone, but...there shouldn't be ammonites in it. I suspect this rock was brought in from South Dakota or Iowa.(?) Sadly, I will likely never know the original source.

 

This is the first one I found. It was 90% encased. I have been working on the preparation for over two years. Still have a long way to go. But not bad for having it literally fall on my foot while restacking my retaining wall. At 150mm across, I am still a bit giddy about it.

 The ammonites are nearly indistigusable from the substrate! The scond one, found just two months back in a different section of the retaining wall looks to be 200-300mm across if it is complete. The rock it is in however is about a meter long, half a meter wide and a good 900mm thick. To heavy for me to lift, so I am slowly carving it down to a manageable size.

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I love the Pennsylvanian flora. Great collection. :popcorn:

 

 

Mark.

 

Fossil hunting is easy -- they don't run away when you shoot at them!

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This is one of my prized possessions, found in Washington state in a grocery store parking lot. You know those landscaped areas they fill with river rock? Well, this was laying right out in the open in plain sight. Couldn't find the other half of the concretion sadly. I started to prepare it, but not trusting my skills, I only got this far. It is a little wet here, as I had just rinsed the dust off!

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5 minutes ago, Mark Kmiecik said:

I love the Pennsylvanian flora. Great collection. :popcorn:

I literally have shoeboxes full. They really are pretty well preserved bits here in the southern plains, compared to the super-soft shale versions I grew up with.

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Here is a bit more of what I have around the house. Later this week I'll share some from the collections at the university!

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These are from my Navy days. Sadly due to time and a ship with most of the hull missing, my notes and memory are gone about where I found them. They could be from the Southwest US or any number of places in central and south America. The urchin at the bottom is one of my favorite specimens.

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Here are various fossil bone pieces. I got them from the estate sale of a geologist in Lincoln, NE, but his son did not know where they were from for sure.

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These are a piece of phosphate coated Sirenian rib fossil from Florida. This one has a lable on it and was also from the estate sale.

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This last one is a small bit of razor clam from Ponca Indian reservation, Missouri River banks. I was doing water sampling for the Corps of Engineers and the river was very low. The Tribal representative saw me taking pictures of the huge outcrop at the edge of the river. When I explained to him why, he helped me find this small piece and allowed me to keep it. I am very honored as collecting is not permitted on the reservation at all, but this man understood my reverence of fossils. We had lunch at his house and he showed me his vast collection of amazing stuff from various reservations he had visited. Might not be the best specimen, but the memory attached to it is priceless.

 

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10 minutes ago, Ludwigia said:

What's the one in the middle? The surface structure doesn't look like your normal Echinoid.

That is a very very good question. I have never been able to identify it. Ill take it to work and get some good shots of it, ventral and dorsal and post it in the Unknown forum. Hopefully someone better at taxonomy than I knows. Going to see if I can find any mention of the locality too, though Im pretty certain those notes are gone. Its sealed with PVA, so it may be from the estate sale, or from trading at a show. I rarely seal fossils unless they are fragile and use an acrylic polymer.

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Very cool collection! Thanks for sharing! :thumbsu:

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.  -Neil deGrasse Tyson

 

Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't. -Bill Nye (The Science Guy)

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