The next "objet d´art" from St. Bartholomä. Or: Rudist hunting (4) in St. Bartholomä

[FranzBernhard]

Hello,

this time, I will start with the end result :

I am quite satisfied with the result ! The pillars are nicely preserved and the rudist is filled with sparry, white to orange calcite and contains some voids coated with tiny calcite crystals. The greenish batches consist also of calcite and are also well polished, but are finer grained and contain additionally some small quartz grains. These fillings may be related to the second filling event during redeposition of the rudists in this formation. For more info about that, see here:

Some Rudists from St. Bartholomä

The right section contains also a blob of fossiliferous limestone. More about the locally heavily bored shell - see below .

 

Before I got this nice result, there was a decision - to cut or not to cut :

It is a conical specimen with some ribs preserved and a large, interesting, vertical groove. A large blob of limestone is sitting at the top end of the rudist, but one pillar was also already visible there. Mostly due to the ugly limestone blob, I decided to cut the specimen near the end of the visible shell. The top part (AN4240) does not contain much shell, the section about 6 mm lower (AN4239) does. The vertical groove is a simple inflection of the shell. No clue, what caused it, no remains of any other shell are visible. But it may have been some kind of an obstacle there.

 

The specimen was found in a steep, wooded area east of Kalchberg, at the lower end of an old vertical ditch, possibly a prospect for water. Some pieces of fossiliferous limestone were lying around, somewhat exposed by heavy rains. I dug with bare hands in the soil, and nearly immediately recovered the specimen above from the "rat hole" to the right of the pocket knife (first row):

(At the upper left corner of the upper left pic, a rudist is sticking between tree roots. This rudist was already featured here:

Rudist hunting (3) in St. Bartholomä)

 

Yesterday, I visited this spot again and pulled out several more pieces of limestone and sandstone from this "rat hole" (about 200 pieces), again only with bare hands (second row). No large Vaccinites was found this time, put a few smaller specimens (third row): upper left: small Vaccinites specimen; upper right: small pseudocolony of Hippurites colliciatus; lower left: Hippurites nabresinensis; lower right: fragment of Vaccinites vesiculosus. Ok, not much to see on this sucking pics, so I will stop now .

Thanks for looking, maybe you have at least enjoyed the polished specimen .

Happy hunting!
Franz Bernhard

[Phevo]

They turned out great      

[Bobby Rico]

Very nice indeed.   

[Ludwigia]

Nice finds and great sections! I hope you cleaned your finger nails thoroughly afterwards.

[Al Tahan]

Man you really get at it for those Rudists!! Nice work

[FranzBernhard]

9 hours ago, Phevo said:

They turned out great 

 

9 hours ago, Bobby Rico said:

Very nice indeed.

 

6 hours ago, Ludwigia said:

Nice finds and great sections!

 

1 hour ago, Al Tahan said:

Nice work

Thanks for all your appreciation!

 

6 hours ago, Ludwigia said:

I hope you cleaned your finger nails thoroughly afterwards.

Oh well... Thanks for the reminder  !

 

1 hour ago, Al Tahan said:

Man you really get at it for those Rudists!!

Just out of distress . At the moment, I can not travel very far, and this formation is just within reach (30 minutes). Yes, there is also the Miocene and Eifelian near me, but the rudists still attract me most at the moment. Big question: How many rudists does one really need ? Big advantage of this formation: You will find only 1 specimen every 20 minutes . But the total rudist count is nevertheless already somewhere between 400-500...

 

These Vaccinites alpinus appear to be the most aesthetic to me, most variegated. But that´s a matter of taste :

https://www.franzbernhard.lima-city.de/VaccinitesAlpinus.html

 

Franz Bernhard

[Monica]

Great work, Franz!  So that's what a whole, intact rudist looks like?  Interesting!!!  And it's cool that you sectioned it so you can see the internal structure as well as the whole specimen (when you stack them back together) - great find! 

[Wrangellian]

Hi Franz... I would have never thought a forest like this would be a likely spot to find fossils, but when they're just turning up on the ground, between roots, etc, then I can understand..

I know how difficult it is to decide whether to cut something open: I got some Precambrian stromatolite pieces from the Rocky Mountains last month and I thought about slicing a couple with the rock saw, but I hate to do it, even though they're just stromatolites - they look nice enough as natural specimens! I probably will end up doing a couple cuts as soon as I can get at my saw.

By the way, I got a look at your website... very good guidebook!

[FranzBernhard]

20 hours ago, Monica said:

Great work, Franz!

Thanks!

 

20 hours ago, Monica said:

So that's what a whole, intact rudist looks like?  Interesting!!!

See pm!

 

18 hours ago, Wrangellian said:

very good guidebook!

Thanks!

 

Franz Bernhard