Mostly Inner Replacement Fossils

[jfokeefe]

I just joined here and I found these a few months ago after picking them up from two new garden areas I created with my tractor and piling most of them up I took some small ones inside and cleaned them but didn’t think much other than they didn’t look like they had been worked by the Indians hundreds nor thousands of years ago even though they all had one or two or more sides that looked clean like brand new clean and some looked oily. I was in a hurry and didn’t have my reading glasses on and just put them in a container and set it aside. About a month ago I decided to clean a few from the pile nearer our house and the sun was setting as I looked across them I noticed they all looked like alien pods, kind of like butterfly chrysalis only with alien like language or designs printed all over them as well. Hey, these are brachiopods! I looked up brachiopod fossils online and I was right as well as bivalve fossils but there wasn’t any shells on most except some looked like they had a waxy looking shell on parts or layers and they were made up of different types of minerals and colors so I did more searching and found inner replacement fossilized brachiopods and bivalves and Gastropoda and crinoids etc. The next day I cleaned more, then more, the next more and then I realized the rocks I picked up rock hounding in my food plot field the other day were all fossilized replacement shells and the big pail in my shed I picked up a couple years ago we’re all large, the same. Then I figured the pike I picked up down the hill by my other garden area, tractor buckets full are mostly inner replacement shell fossils. One from my garden is over 3’ long and about 18” wide and 18” high! It looks like granite or some sort of hard material similar to it. I had one hell of a time pushing and pulling that out of its hold, now that I’m thinking of it, I bet that’s where a lot of the layers of cement sediment I found and the cool harder pieces that look like pieces of Greek marble carved out came from as well. They are very clean and sharp angled and look similar to those little carved animals or alphabet out of stone but some look as though they were pressed  out of porcelain they are so perfect that’s why I think they are inner or the shells were also replaced and look like wax and some could be outer replacement fossils?  I look at them and then a minute later they look totally different. I can’t explain it? I don’t know if it’s me or what but one time they look like a dull shell made from limestone and the next they look like they are more like porcelain or that milk glass or waxy shell like layers with those unique alien designs lightly etched on the top you see on those Bryozoa posters. It could be the way the light hits them but it happens everyday, several times a day and every specimen and mineral, weird. Does anybody have any knowledge on northeast WI limestone formations and where does everybody get their information from to positively identify what the name of each species is if a person is mostly self taught? I was mostly collecting artifacts, so I thought, but now I have to go through thousands of fossils someday. What’s nice about these is they haven’t been tossed about from any glaciers. Thank you for your help and time. 

[Ludwigia]

Sorry to disappoint you, but all I'm seeing here are lots of various rocks and minerals. I can discern absolutely no fossils.

[Brandy Cole]

Welcome!

 

This looks like an interesting collection of mostly limestone, sandstone, and chert. I don't see anything I could clearly identify as an artifact.

 

If you're interested in identifying your finds as you go forward, it will help if you pick a very small number of items and number them so that anyone who wants to help can clearly identify which item they're discussing.

 

If you're looking for more information on your area, this may be a good place to start:

https://home.wgnhs.wisc.edu/maps-publications/

[hadrosauridae]

No fossils or artifacts in your photos, just rocks.

[Mark Kmiecik]

Look around on this forum to see how fossils look in general. Go to your local library and read some books about Wisconsin fossils and the areas and formations in which they are found. Most of the loose rock in Wisconsin and northern Illinois is comprised of glacial till, some of which includes fossils that were transported from much further north. Much of what you show in your photos is material transported by glaciers but none of it appears to contain fossils, at least nothing I can clearly recognize, and none of it seems to be artufacts worked by man. There's a topic for Wisconsin fossils on this forum. Look there to see what's in your neck of the woods.

[jfokeefe]

On 8/28/2023 at 6:15 AM, Brandy Cole said:

Welcome!

 

This looks like an interesting collection of mostly limestone, sandstone, and chert. I don't see anything I could clearly identify as an artifact.

 

If you're interested in identifying your finds as you go forward, it will help if you pick a very small number of items and number them so that anyone who wants to help can clearly identify which item they're discussing.

 

If you're looking for more information on your area, this may be a good place to start:

https://home.wgnhs.wisc.edu/maps-publications/

Thanks for your reply and the site, I’ve looked there before. My finds are rocks, minerals but they were formed inside of bivalves and or brachiopods then the shells disolved and left what is called an inner replacement fossil, at least that’s what I’ve read on every site I’ve found. Most of these came out of the top sediments from just above the  limestone ledge rock we live on. My phone doesn’t do them justice. If you held them and could look at them close up you would see the patterns left from the shells where the teeth, hinges and every part and curve or angle was hundreds of millions of years ago. Trust me, I’m not your average rock picker. Ive lived here for 61+ years and I pick up every rock I find no matter the size on my properties and I always plant some acreage and walk after it rains. I have tons of rocks and artifacts and fossils in a 12’ x 12’ insulated finished shed I built just to store them in because I had pails and bags all over in my garage and shed and outside and I still have piles of rocks outside that would fill that shed ten times to the ceiling and piles of soil and rocks to sift through that would fill it that many at least. Trust me, I never heard of an inner replacement fossil but when I saw these “rocks” or “minerals” of different types that looked as though someone had melted them then put them into brachiopod and bivalve species casts or forms, let them cool then mixed them into white and grey cement and limestone then poured them over the limestone bedrock then added a little sand and tossed some more into that as it poured out, that’s what I have here. I broke some sediment loose along with these different inner and some are probably outer replacement fossil minerals. Then below that is the limestone and dolostone bedrock replacement fossils then solid rock. In the sand sediment above the cement like sediment there are also what I believe are loose replacement fossils. If you look up inner and outer brachiopod and bivalve replacement fossils you will find it. The ones made of concrete I first thought the first farmers must’ve thrown some old concrete out until I realized they were in the shapes of brachiopods and bivalves then they all stood out. I’ve sent these images, now I don’t want you to look for a fossil in the rock but a shape of a fossil in the rock as a whole. That from what I’ve read is still considered a fossil. I didn’t come on here for people to tell me I had a bunch of rocks, I know they are made of rock. I was hoping someone could help me in finding out  what brachiopod or bivalve or other creature  died then their shell filled with minerals and the shell disolved then left a rock and imprint of the design of their shell behind? That’s what like to know if anybody here knows where I can find how to tell what specimen left these inner and or outer replacement fossils behind? Several shots are of the same specimen to give you a better idea of what they look like. These are not fractured or broken. I first thought they were worked by the Indians because they have a couple sides that are clean or fresh and the other edges aren’t as vibrant but I washed cement sediment off many of them and I have some sediment with the patterns of the fossils print on it. I will send other pictures and can number them. I forget to do things as I’m on medication for migraines that causes memory loss. I try to keep my stress down. Thank you for any help and if I forget to thank anyone I don’t mean it. I also suffer with bad adult adhd so my messages might not make since at times and I jump around a lot. Sorry in advance. 

[DPS Ammonite]

10 minutes ago, jfokeefe said:

My finds are rocks, minerals but they were formed inside of bivalves and or brachiopods then the shells disolved and left what is called an inner replacement fossil, at least that’s what I’ve read on every site I’ve found.

What you are describing are called steinkerns or internal molds by degreed invertebrate paleontologists. Search for those terms and compare them with your finds.

[hadrosauridae]

None of the pictures you have presented are steinkerns.  They are naturally broken mineral specimens.

[jfokeefe]

22 hours ago, DPS Ammonite said:

What you are describing are called steinkerns or internal molds by degreed invertebrate paleontologists. Search for those terms and compare them with your finds.

Thank you Ammonite, I found some nice information and photos of Steinkerns and they look similar to what I have. It is nice to have a name or names, the correct ones for what I have found, Inner molds the other. I forgot about some nice ones I found in a lower area I worked up this spring as well down below the rock ledge we live on. Some you’d swear were melted resin or plastic. There’s a sandstone formation down there that meets up with the limestone so more of the stein kerns are sandstone and some huge concrete ones I thought those were rubble and I’m sure I was dumping some to hold back a washout an a trail the past few years that were down in a sandpit. The stein kerns that have more abrupt angles to them that almost seem like they are broken are ones that came from the harder sediment and some next to each other like jigsaw puzzle. That’s why some edges are more vibrant than the others, they were up next to other stein kerns. God’s puzzles. Thanks again Ammonite for helping me out. 

[Kane]

If you are pulling these pieces from the tractor as opposed to collecting them in situ, then this might be suggestive of glacial erratics. One of your last pieces seems to have what appears to be feldspar, which would be too old for any fossils. 

[jfokeefe]

I scraped them off the top of the bedrock, some I picked out of the clay from crevices in the limestone that the glaciers couldn’t have touched. Some were just above the harder sediment in Sandy loam and sand or clay turning into cement in areas then limestone. I’m not going to waste my time arguing on here because my phone does not do them justice. I know what I have. I will take some to a museum nearby. I am not an idiot. I have done work with archaeologists in the field. I got the information I wanted, the name of them because I now have trouble cognitively so thank you to all. We are located in a unique area with the bedrock even exposed on the surface in areas. I just started finding these that were untouched by the glaciers so they have clean edges but I have to figure out if I can clean them with vinegar then coat them with a sealer to make the colors pop or stand out more but I don’t want to ruin them either that’s another reason why I’m going to the museum. Stein kerns for all I know might be really common in our area. I found another one in my pail I forgot about and it has a round friend attached to it, really cool! Another one is all crystals! Thanks again. 

[Kane]

Although it does not seem any of our members here are seeing what you are seeing, taking them to a museum for an in-hand identification seems the best option to acquire the certainty that you seek. That said, the photos seem quite clear, and certainly clear enough to show good detail for our members to see the diagnostic features of the pieces themselves, and the conclusion seems to be the same that these are not fossils.

 

In your visit with a paleontologist, I would, however, brace for the very real possibility that these are not fossils or steinkerns thereof. You have asked our opinion, forged as it is from many collective decades of fossil experience, and it seems that we will have to agree to disagree. 

 

We wish you luck in finding out more from an in-person identification. As there is not much more we will be able to learn here, this topic will be locked.