Hello From Sugar Land, Tx

[MikeD]

I found this sight while searching for some fossil information. Spotted a couple of familiar names I have encountered while Google-ing for other fossil info, so this must be the place. Read a lot of posts, thought it was interesting and decided to join. Been collecting 40+ years since I was a kid in Kentucky. Lots of fossils there. Transplanted to Texas many years ago. Got back into the hobby more seriously within the last couple of years. I am an HGMS member in Houston. I've been collecting all around Texas about once a month this year. Have a huge pile of stuff to go through now including petrified wood, ammonites, shark teeth, other teeth, urchins and various other sea creatures, and a couple of pieces of bone. Not a pro, just an amatuer. My real life has nothing to do with this stuff. I also like minerals that sometimes come along as a bonus with fossils. Enough for now.

[Guest bmorefossil]

welcome to the forum looks like you will have alot of great fossils to show us

[artofextinction]

Welcome! Please show us lots of pictures...

[jax]

Glad to see more Texas folks, I cant wait to see more Texas fossils!!!

[Auspex]

Welcome to the Forum! I'll bet that you still have some of those childhood Kentucky fossils, or at least some very fond memories of their discovery. We'd all like to hear of your exploits and see your favorite fossils.

[Uncle Siphuncle]

Mike

Greetings from San Antonio. My, you sure do have to cover some miles to hit Cretaceous bedrock, eh?

[JohnJ]

Welcome from the Austin area. Dan's right, you've probably been west on I-10 or north on I-45 for some of your "stuff"! Hope to see a little.

[Gatorman]

Welcome to the forum!

[falcondriver]

Welcome to the forum!

Welcome to the Forum. Used to live in Sugarland years ago.

FD

[MikeD]

Welcome to the Forum! I'll bet that you still have some of those childhood Kentucky fossils, or at least some very fond memories of their discovery. We'd all like to hear of your exploits and see your favorite fossils.

I do still have them. Not sure where some of them are at the moment as most of them are packed up in boxes. I still go back there every year or two to visit family and hunt at least once while there. Most of my stuff from there is Ordovician from the Central Bluegrass. Last hunted a huge Ft. Thomas road cut in Northern Kentucky near I-275 and the Ohio river. Lots of crinoid and trilobite pieces.

[MikeD]

Mike

Greetings from San Antonio. My, you sure do have to cover some miles to hit Cretaceous bedrock, eh?

I have to cover some miles to hit anything from Pleistocene on down (and I have this year). There are some Pleistocene fossils in the Brazos nearby, but I haven't been in there yet. On the list for sometime this year when the water level cooperates. Still have to cover a few miles to get to a good spot though (and get a canoe or small boat with a motor)

By the way, I have read your "Meanderings". You are my Texas collecting hero.

[Uncle Siphuncle]

Mike

I've found some stuff on the Trinity as well near Liberty, and some of your smaller rivers like the Angelina and San Jacinto, especially the latter, are rumored to have more points with less collecting pressure than the major rivers. Kinda far for me, but perhaps worth exploring for you. As for the Brazos, Trinity, etc. I've found Pleistocene material and points from North TX to the coast, and in Cretaceous strata echinoids and ammonites to boot.

As for being some sort of fossil hero, good luck convincing my wife!

[MikeD]

Welcome from the Austin area. Dan's right, you've probably been west on I-10 or north on I-45 for some of your "stuff"! Hope to see a little.

He is right. Within the past year I have been to Jasper, College Station (and Stone City), Austin, Fredericksburg (found nothing there, but did find some goodies between there and Austin), San Antonio (no luck, was at Sea World - didn't know where to go while there, but hopefully Dan can correct that for the future), Marlin, Brownwood (and a few stops in between on Easter weekend), Lake Texoma, Post Oak Creek in Sherman, the North Sulphur River on Memorial weekend, and the escarpment near Fluvanna 2 weeks ago (between Snyder and Lubbock - I was in the area, so took advantage of the opportunity). Also, briefly hit a road cut outside of Nashville, TN and picked up a few arrowheads in KY (and a rock full of fossils which I forgot at my parents house) somewhere in the middle of all of that. I'm tired and need to sort it all out now.

To everyone else, thanks and I will get some photos up as soon as I can.

[Cody]

Welcome from Mansfield,Texas.Cough cough(Fossil Capital of texas)

[Uncle Siphuncle]

Mike

I consider San Antonio a tough collecting venue compared to other parts of the state like the DFW area and points east and west of there. SA has been worked over pretty hard for artifacts, and the most prominent exposures of bedrock around town (Edwards, Austin, and Buda formations) are largely devoid of collectible fossils. The Edwards does have some rudists, but they aren't of much interest to me personally and are in extremely hard limestone. The Edwards is what is exposed for miles along Loop 1604 north of town. The Austin does have some scattered ammonites in places, some quite large, but again the limestone is very hard and slow to weather. Echinoids sometimes can be found in the Austin too, including a whopping huge Cardiaster I found this year that may constitute a new species. I've visited some quarries in this formation and done OK. The better formations in town are the softer lithologies such as the Del Rio, Pecan Gap, etc, but these tend to come and go quickly as construction sites, or are overgrown or overwashed rather quickly when graded lots are left alone. Road cuts in these formations often quickly have retaining walls over them to prevent slumping. The Del Rio is mostly Ilymatogyra and Gryphea oysters, but sometimes presents ammonites, echinoids, bivalves, and gastropods, especially if you can find rare exposures of the contact with the thin underlying Georgetown limestone. You have to look at lots of Pecan Gap to find its well preserved but compressed ammonites and echinoids. Natural exposures of it are scarce and often capped with broken down caliche. Vert material is rare but present here, most of it being isolated shark and fish material in the Eagle Ford limestone, also poorly exposed. Success in this formation for me has come from flipping limestone slabs in dry creeks. I've taken a few Ptchodus, Squalicorax, and Cretoxyrhina teeth this way. I find lots of fossils, but an average excursion for me is 400 miles round trip. If collecting was better here I'd save lots of gas money. This all may sound negative, but a half hour north of town are good exposures of the Glen Rose formation, famous for its echinoids. If San Antonio is praised for its fossils, perhaps this is the area people are talking about.

[worthy 55]

Welcome!!!

[Mike Murphy]

Mike:

Welcome to the forum. Did you have much luck at the old Fluvanna-Eppler roadcut on the escarpment near Fluvanna when you were there 2 weeks ago? I spent a lot of time there collecting fossils when I lived in West Texas and worked in the oilfield throughout the Permian Basin. I made a side trip to the roadcut in November 2007 when I attended a retirement party for a friend of mine in Odessa. I was amazed how much the area north of Fluvanna had changed with all of the wind turbines that are now operating and all of the additional ones being installed. I spent a few hours in the roadcut on my way back to Oklahoma and collected a number of Goniopygus texanus, several Loriola texana and some Salenia mexicana from the Edwards caprock. The numbers and varieties of echinoids in the readily accessible areas were much fewer than they were back in the 1980's and early 1990's when I lived there, undoubtedly due to collecting pressures and slow weathering. I did not spend much time in the underlying Comanche Peak, but I did find several Coenholectypus planatus and a very large Heteraster mexicanus in a somewhat recessed marl bed in the formation. It was still a fun trip and worth the 2 to 3 hours that I spent there.

One of the most interesting zones that I encountered in the roadcut and along the caprock in years past was a deeply recessed 3' thick zone of pale yellow marl that was transitional from the Comanche Peak to the Edwards immediately below the massive crystalline Edwards limestone. The marl zone is also present in the far northern portion of the Edwards limestone quarry on the east side of the highway. Years ago, I found a number of less common echinoids in that transitional marl zone zone that I have not found in either the Edwards caprock or the underlying nodular Comanche Peak, including Helodiadema rotula, Tetragramma texanum, Phymosoma mexicanum and Globator cf G. parryi. There were also numerous small Coenholectypus planatus and Heteraster texanus in the transitional marl zone.

Nowadays, since I live in southern Oklahoma, I spend my somewhat limited collecting time in the Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian and lower Pennsylvanian in southern Oklahoma and in the upper Pennsylvanian and lower Cretaceous in North Central Texas (around Lake Texoma and Fort Worth). Maybe I will run across you one of these days when you are collecting up in the northern part of Texas.

Regards,

Mike

[MikeD]

Mike

I consider San Antonio a tough collecting venue compared to other parts of the state like the DFW area and points east and west of there. SA has been worked over pretty hard for artifacts, and the most prominent exposures of bedrock around town (Edwards, Austin, and Buda formations) are largely devoid of collectible fossils. The Edwards does have some rudists, but they aren't of much interest to me personally and are in extremely hard limestone. The Edwards is what is exposed for miles along Loop 1604 north of town. The Austin does have some scattered ammonites in places, some quite large, but again the limestone is very hard and slow to weather. Echinoids sometimes can be found in the Austin too, including a whopping huge Cardiaster I found this year that may constitute a new species. I've visited some quarries in this formation and done OK. The better formations in town are the softer lithologies such as the Del Rio, Pecan Gap, etc, but these tend to come and go quickly as construction sites, or are overgrown or overwashed rather quickly when graded lots are left alone. Road cuts in these formations often quickly have retaining walls over them to prevent slumping. The Del Rio is mostly Ilymatogyra and Gryphea oysters, but sometimes presents ammonites, echinoids, bivalves, and gastropods, especially if you can find rare exposures of the contact with the thin underlying Georgetown limestone. You have to look at lots of Pecan Gap to find its well preserved but compressed ammonites and echinoids. Natural exposures of it are scarce and often capped with broken down caliche. Vert material is rare but present here, most of it being isolated shark and fish material in the Eagle Ford limestone, also poorly exposed. Success in this formation for me has come from flipping limestone slabs in dry creeks. I've taken a few Ptchodus, Squalicorax, and Cretoxyrhina teeth this way. I find lots of fossils, but an average excursion for me is 400 miles round trip. If collecting was better here I'd save lots of gas money. This all may sound negative, but a half hour north of town are good exposures of the Glen Rose formation, famous for its echinoids. If San Antonio is praised for its fossils, perhaps this is the area people are talking about.

The road cuts I was able to look at (quickly) were limestone with no visible fossils. I did see some fossils in a rock at Sea World (can't remember what they were), but they were encased pretty good and were not eroding out anytime soon. I have pulled a few worn oysters out of the San Marcos river in San Marcos and Blanco river in Wimberly.

Still working on learning the formation names and how to recognize them. The technical id's will take a while longer. I know the generic names of most things, a few of the genera, but the whole genus/species thing will only come with time and research.

200 to 300 miles round trip is about the shortest trip I have made so far, to College Station for petrified wood and Whiskey Bridge for Stone City Eocene fossils or to High Island (which I have been to once). Of course, once you get to High Island, getting out there is another problem. Most of the remaining road and some beachfront was washed away last year by storms.

So many fossils, so little time.............

[MikeD]

Mike:

Welcome to the forum. Did you have much luck at the old Fluvanna-Eppler roadcut on the escarpment near Fluvanna when you were there 2 weeks ago? I spent a lot of time there collecting fossils when I lived in West Texas and worked in the oilfield throughout the Permian Basin. I made a side trip to the roadcut in November 2007 when I attended a retirement party for a friend of mine in Odessa. I was amazed how much the area north of Fluvanna had changed with all of the wind turbines that are now operating and all of the additional ones being installed. I spent a few hours in the roadcut on my way back to Oklahoma and collected a number of Goniopygus texanus, several Loriola texana and some Salenia mexicana from the Edwards caprock. The numbers and varieties of echinoids in the readily accessible areas were much fewer than they were back in the 1980's and early 1990's when I lived there, undoubtedly due to collecting pressures and slow weathering. I did not spend much time in the underlying Comanche Peak, but I did find several Coenholectypus planatus and a very large Heteraster mexicanus in a somewhat recessed marl bed in the formation. It was still a fun trip and worth the 2 to 3 hours that I spent there.

One of the most interesting zones that I encountered in the roadcut and along the caprock in years past was a deeply recessed 3' thick zone of pale yellow marl that was transitional from the Comanche Peak to the Edwards immediately below the massive crystalline Edwards limestone. The marl zone is also present in the far northern portion of the Edwards limestone quarry on the east side of the highway. Years ago, I found a number of less common echinoids in that transitional marl zone zone that I have not found in either the Edwards caprock or the underlying nodular Comanche Peak, including Helodiadema rotula, Tetragramma texanum, Phymosoma mexicanum and Globator cf G. parryi. There were also numerous small Coenholectypus planatus and Heteraster texanus in the transitional marl zone.

Nowadays, since I live in southern Oklahoma, I spend my somewhat limited collecting time in the Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian and lower Pennsylvanian in southern Oklahoma and in the upper Pennsylvanian and lower Cretaceous in North Central Texas (around Lake Texoma and Fort Worth). Maybe I will run across you one of these days when you are collecting up in the northern part of Texas.

Regards,

Mike

I did OK considering I had no idea where to start. I only had about an hour to spend there, plus I had two boys with me that got a little bored after a while. It was about 100 degrees with a 30 mile an hour wind. Add in the windmills, oil pumps and the amazing view, it was all a bit surreal.

I don't have a stratigraphy diagram for there (someone is supposed to get me one if they can ever find it). I got some nice gastropods and a bivalve out of a soft layer near the top. Also some loose urchins and bivalves which appear to eroded out of that layer. About half way down the hill there was a thick layer eroding out with lots of oysters. Also found some urchins, gastropods, bivalves and some crystals (probably calcite). Picked up a crumbiling 30 pound chunk of oysters and such for later examination. I took some photos of the locations and kept my finds separated so I could identify the formation layers and fossils later. Still working on learning the layers, genus, species, etc. I will post some pictures when I get the stuff unpacked.

I got my first Pennsylvanian fossils in Brownwood earlier this year. Cool stuff. Spur of the moment trips usually have me in College Station collecting petrified wood or Stone City Eocene shells and stuff by the river. My wood searches now have me concentrating on the elusive palm and even more elusive snakewood (and yard sized pieces). I'll let you know when I get back up to north Texas.

[Uncle Siphuncle]

Mike

At Sea World you were in the Austin chalk which ranges from off white to yellow generally in this area depending on weathering, leaching, etc. Inoceramus clams are a telltale sign of this formation. Again, vast expanses of Austin often have to be scrutinized before locating good ammonites, echinoids, etc although some exceptional finds can be made. Quarry and construction site access definitely help as once one guy collects a creek in this formation it will take quite a flood to expose anything else in this hard stuff.

Low areas around Wimberly are probably upper Glen Rose formation, the highest hills are capped by Edwards limestone, generally not terribly productive even in the better areas farther north. Sandwiched in between these formations are the Bull Creek and Bee Cave Marl members of the Walnut formation. I was unsuccessful in finding good Bee Cave exposures there a few months ago, but if you luck into them keep an eye out for Coenholectypus planatus and Loriolia texana echinoids. Numerous Ceratostreon oysters should tip you off that you are in the right zone, generally 10 feet thick or so. The lithology will be tan to gray mix of marl and/or limestone in fist sized nodules. Good luck next round.

[MikeD]

Mike

At Sea World you were in the Austin chalk which ranges from off white to yellow generally in this area depending on weathering, leaching, etc. Inoceramus clams are a telltale sign of this formation. Again, vast expanses of Austin often have to be scrutinized before locating good ammonites, echinoids, etc although some exceptional finds can be made. Quarry and construction site access definitely help as once one guy collects a creek in this formation it will take quite a flood to expose anything else in this hard stuff.

Low areas around Wimberly are probably upper Glen Rose formation, the highest hills are capped by Edwards limestone, generally not terribly productive even in the better areas farther north. Sandwiched in between these formations are the Bull Creek and Bee Cave Marl members of the Walnut formation. I was unsuccessful in finding good Bee Cave exposures there a few months ago, but if you luck into them keep an eye out for Coenholectypus planatus and Loriolia texana echinoids. Numerous Ceratostreon oysters should tip you off that you are in the right zone, generally 10 feet thick or so. The lithology will be tan to gray mix of marl and/or limestone in fist sized nodules. Good luck next round.

We stayed at a B&B NW of Wimberly. Before we left, I looked along the edge of a dry retention pond. The color was definitely tan. There was a layer of fossils. I will have to find them to see what they were. I do remember a bivalve.

Glen Rose probably explains this (hold on folks... he's going to try to upload his first picture). I should have cleaned it out first, but I was just playing with my camera and I didn't want to attract attention to it. I shot it through a cheap face mask I was using for snorkeling.

[Mike Murphy]

Mike:

I have attached a photograph of the Fluvanna-Eppler roadcut from the North looking up the roadcut towards the south with the stratigraphy of the key formations overlain on the photograph to demonstrate the relationships of the various strata. I hope this helps you understand this fascinating locality as it exposes reef facies, normal marine facies and fluvial facies. I have a detailed formation correlation chart for the Fluvanna-Eppler roadcut section and I will attach it for you as soon as I find it. The capping Edwards Formation has a thickness of 24 to 26' in this exposure while the Comanche Peak is ~65' thick. The Walnut clay is 10' to 12' thick here. The Paluxy Sand (Trinity Group) which has only limited petrified wood as fossils and the Triassic Santa Rosa Formation are not present in this photograph but are exposed to some extent below the Walnut Clay towards the lower northerly extreme slope of the caprock. The Triassic does have some scattered petrified wood and scarce vertebrate material. There is an interesting deposit of lake-deposited clay in the Triassic about 0.5 mile northwest of the roadcut in the stream valley where fresh water pelecypod and gastropod fossils are commonly found. Many of the clams have both valves attached.

Regards,

Mike

[MikeD]

Mike:

I have attached a photograph of the Fluvanna-Eppler roadcut from the North looking up the roadcut towards the south with the stratigraphy of the key formations overlain on the photograph to demonstrate the relationships of the various strata. I hope this helps you understand this fascinating locality as it exposes reef facies, normal marine facies and fluvial facies. I have a detailed formation correlation chart for the Fluvanna-Eppler roadcut section and I will attach it for you as soon as I find it. The capping Edwards Formation has a thickness of 24 to 26' in this exposure while the Comanche Peak is ~65' thick. The Walnut clay is 10' to 12' thick here. The Paluxy Sand (Trinity Group) which has only limited petrified wood as fossils and the Triassic Santa Rosa Formation are not present in this photograph but are exposed to some extent below the Walnut Clay towards the lower northerly extreme slope of the caprock. The Triassic does have some scattered petrified wood and scarce vertebrate material. There is an interesting deposit of lake-deposited clay in the Triassic about 0.5 mile northwest of the roadcut in the stream valley where fresh water pelecypod and gastropod fossils are commonly found. Many of the clams have both valves attached.

Regards,

Mike

Thanks. Nice picture. That is exactly the area we searched. Not knowing the sweet spots, we started right in the middle of the Commanche Peak zone. It didn't seem to have very many fossils and most of those that I found appeared to have fallen from somewhere above. I followed the transitional zone up the hill until I could get to it more easily and dug a few nice gastropods out of that . It was softer, yellow and about 3' thick as you said before. We then moved downhill to the Walnut Clay where the piles of stuff are eroding out (where those people are in the picture). Much more productive there, but we had to leave and didn't get to spend enough time there. I would like to have searched further down the hill for some of that petrified wood. If I ever make it back there, at least I have a better idea of where to look.

[Mike Murphy]

Mike:

I have attached the stratigraphic section for the Fluvanna-Eppler roadcut locality as a word document file. I found my original section from the "Cretaceous of Llano Estacado of Texas" by John P. Brand, University of Texas, Report of Investigations 20, 1953, but the file had various dirt and other stains on it so I reproduced the stratigraphic section so that it would be more readable. The report was done verbatim except for updating some of the fossil genus names to the current accepted genus names. The modified generic names are presented in brackets so that you would know what was modified.

It is obvious that a lot of the problems with the low abundance of many of the fossils is collecting pressure. Working away from the more accessible rocks will increase your effort but should improve the quality and numbers of what is found. Cretaceous strata in West Texas are susceptible to overcollecting due to the slow weathering of the rocks due to the arid nature of the region.

If you can't open the file, let me know and I will scan the page and then attach it as a pdf file or as a jpeg.

Regards,

Mike

Eppler_Fluvanna_Roadcut_Stratigraphic_Section.doc

[Auspex]

Kudos, Mike Murphy! That took a lot of effort, and is a prime example of the best this Forum has to offer.

Way to share!