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Showing results for tags 'Wheeler Shale'.
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Trilobites found in the Wheeler Shale, Utah. I think Elrathia? College ruled paper, each line 7.1 mm
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From Utah in House range/Wheeler shale. Selkirkia willoughbyi worm?
Anna Marie posted a topic in Fossil ID
1-1/2" (3.81 cm) long. Head/tail areas still seem buried in matrix. Caught my eye as it looks nothing like the Margaretia dorus algea there. Thanks for any help!
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From the album: Purchased Trilobites of Isotelus2883
From the famed U-dig Quarry of Utah. It was a nice little specimen for not much. Wheeler shale. -
Hello all, I recently ordered a big piece of Wheeler Shale and have had loads of fun splitting the rock and finding Trilobites. I've got a nice complete specimen of each of the common species (Kingii, Wheeleri, Interstricta) as well as a ton of molts, cephalons, and pygidiums. I am a new prepper and thought this would be a good way to start, though my dream is to eventually learn how to do Moroccan or Russian trilobites. I've been practicing on the molts and parts of the trilos, but the head I am prepping currently looks like it is pyritized. It's got a few pyrite pieces on it, but as I'm washing and brushing it off, the whole thing looks to have a golden sheen. I'm worried the water I've been putting on the specimens to soften the matrix will damage the fossil, though I've been scrubbing and brushing it off before it soaks in too much. Should I stop using the water as soon as possible or is it okay? And how do you more experienced preppers handle the pyrite? I love the look of the gold and don't want to damage it. For now I've been using these tools: Dental pick Thin Steel Wool Wire brush Kneaded Eraser Spray Bottle with Water I'm planning to get an air scribe soon to prep the complete trilos with.
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Hey guys, I found this last month in the Wheeler Shale in Utah, and I'm at a total loss as to what it is. I showed it to a friend who collects there regularly and he wasn't sure what it is either. He suggested it might be a carpoid or something similar. It's ever so slightly raised on the matrix. Does anyone recognize it? Scale in inches:
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It is from the Wheeler Formation in Utah.
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I collected this at Marjum Pass in the House Range. The beds are likely Wheeler Shale but almost certainly middle Cambrian. Trace fossil or scour mark? The ruler is marked in centimeters, so an individual grove is about a centimeter long.
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I was recently sent some Wheeler Shale material from the Antelope Springs area of Utah, Middle Cambrian age. Thanks to my good friend Debra @Paleome It's all rather splendid stuff, not the usual Elrathia kingii or Itagnostus interstrictus, but a selection of wonderful more unusual things. But what about this one? A trace fossil of a burrow? Some sort of sponge or algae? Any help will be greatly appreciated, as always. Thank you. The inside of the object is an orange brown colour, while the outside and surrounding regions are sort of beige. It reminds me of some of the staining around fossils where bacteria have done their work of decomposition and left their waste behind as iron sulphides etc. Snake's head? Lots of little black crystals. Pyrite ? This is the inside of the 'burrow' and the divide between the object and the staining : The 'stained' area : Join between stained area and ordinary shale : Looking down into the tube ;
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- ichnofossils
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I recently purchased a 40lb box of shale from U-Dig Fossils in Utah. Mid-Cambrian, Wheeler Shale Formation, House Range, Millard County, Utah. This morning after work, I split a smallish piece & one side had an odd dent, the other had an indistinct, slightly raised shape that sort of looked like a trilobite, so I started trying to find out if it was. This was the result. Using dental picks, a needle in a small pin vice, a # 428 Dremel wire brush (by hand) & another small, round nylon brush (Dremel) in another pic vice... and lots of patience. I think it's most of an Elrathia Kingii minus the cheeks (of course) measuring 1.5 cm in length. It isn't the cleanest & I have a bit more to do, but I wanted to "show it off" as it were. And see if I got the I.D right. Not the greatest quality pic, but I've also been up for almost 24 hours, so it may just be my imagination (pic quality or that I actually took a pic).
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Ammonites, Trilobites, Fossil Fish: Another Western Adventure
Jeffrey P posted a topic in Fossil Hunting Trips
Barely a month had gone by since my last trip to New Mexico and Colorado, but I already had plans for this trip in the works. Primary focus this time, which was a solo trip, was fossil collecting, visiting well known sites that have been on my radar for quite some time. I flew out to Salt Lake City and drove directly to Kemmerer, WY. My first stop there was Fossil Butte National Monument: Here is a view of the visitors center (free admission) and the surrounding barren, but awesome landscape that surrounds it:
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Hey hi Y'all, Was looking at some of My trilobites from My last trip to the House range and found something that is not a trilobite. Wheeler shale, mid cambrian. Any help to make an ID on this thing is always appreciated. Thanks. It is 1 cm long.
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Hi everyone, firstly I'll apologize for the poor quality pictures. These Fossil are tiny and it's hard to get a good exposure. These things which are in all the shale I brought back are like rounded objects. They will come out leaving the impression behind. One is 1/8th in and another is about half of that. If any one can help, I'd love to know. On the paper they gave us showing what we can find, there are brachiopods but these seem to all and not the right shape. paper has something called pyilocardia or something like that. Thank you
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Found associated with Elrathia kingii and Itagnostus interstricta trilobites. See field trip report here:
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- brachiopod
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Found during a trip out to a hill right adjacent to U-Dig Fossil Quarry. The trip report can be FOUND HERE. This is the largest I've collected. Typical sizes I've found are 3-6mm in length, 1-3mm in width.
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I had a bit of spare time today so I thought I'd prep a trilobite or two from my trip around the Confusion and House Ranges of Utah. (See trip report here) I had found this guy in someone else's throwaway pile probably after it came out chipped and subsequently scraped. I didn't think it was worth leaving out in the elements so I brought it home. Here's a before picture. After 4 hours of swapping between dental picks, wire brushes, toothpicks, and various Dremel attachments here is my final product. It's not perfect at all but I think it deserves to be admired for a time because it has not been on this earth for over 490 million years just to be chucked aside when it finally reached the surface. I even gave it a polish using a piece of newspaper. I don't think it came out too badly. The scrape is still visible on the thoracic segments but there's not much more I can do for that. What do you guys think?
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- one mans trash is another mans treasure
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Hello, I live in Houston,not exactly a hot bed for fossil and rock locations, or I dont know where they're at and google isnt helping much. Not retired yet but wish I could be. Ive always enjoyed fossils but just recently have gotten more into them. I had ordered shale from Wyoming so I could fossil hunt at home, which has been so much fun!! Plus I started noticing stuff in landscape stones in my yard. My husband isnt sure about me now dragging in mossrock etc from the yard and digging in. I joined because I need resouces to help me understand more about what Im looking at, how to properly preserve what I do find, where to go near me, if it exists. Etc. Totally amature at this but learning a lot. Excited to join up with a serious group that seems to have fun!
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Can anyone help identify this soft body? I found it in the Utah - Wheeler Shale formation while searching for Trilobites. I am always keeping my eyes peeled for any soft bodies such as worms, algae, etc. and came upon this after splitting a rock. It is roughly 16 mm long with a body that can be best described as an olive with 2 stalks sticking out the top end. There does not appear to be any missing parts, although this may be a partial body. Evidence of this is the organic/mineral "halo" which can be seen around the body. Also, there appears to be an alimentary canal progressing through the middle. Any comments or ideas are welcome.
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Well, i thought I'd show my primitive prepping skills. This is all rather unnecessary as Tony @ynothas already done this thread here and probably better and the pieces shown were kindly donated to me as well. So treat this as a repeat of what Tony does better. Hey ho. So these are the three pieces that Kind Tony sent me. 1. Notice this Elrathia kingii (1.2 cm long) has a break on the anterior margin (cause of death?) .and an upside down Itagnostus interstrictus (5.5 mm) above it and a piece of another to the right of it. 2. This Elrathia (1.8 cm long) has another ones cephalon stuck to its cephalon and some serious damage on the right side pleura. 3. This one is upside down in the matrix. (2.3 cm long) All my prepping was done balancing the specimens on my knee and using a jeweller's loupe to see and a board pin to do the actual prepping. Some water and saliva were also involved, but that was all. First I carefully cleaned as much of the matrix off the first two specimens as i could using the pin and then dug around the third piece so I could 'pop' it out of the matrix. Then I dug all around the other two specimens with the pin and popped them out of the matrix. Here is the third one popped out and with a bit of prep already completed. Sorry for the dreadful photo, but wifey and her camera phone weren't about so i started prepping and then took this photo with my computer as i was impatient to continue. When it was first popped only a tiny bit of the glabella was showing clear of matrix. Here i have popped the Itagnostus before popping the Elrathia.
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From the album: MY FOSSIL Collection - Dpaul7
Trilobite ITAGNOSTUS Fossil Wheeler Shale, Utah, USA Middle Cambrian 509 to 497 million years ago Itagnostus is a genus of trilobite restricted to the Middle Cambrian. Its remains have been found in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Arthropoda Class: †Trilobita Order: †Agnostida Family: †Peronopsidae Genus: †Itagnostus Species: †interstrictus -
A rangeomorph holdfast trace fossil from the Ediacara formation, Rawnsley quartzite of the Flinders Range, South Australia. This specimen is Medusina mawsoni, so called because it was until recently thought to be a jellyfish, but is now believed to be the attachment point of a fractal rangeomorph as Charniodiscus is the point of anchorage for Charnia sp. This one may have been the holdfast point for some species of Rangea. The diameter of the outer circle is 1.5 cm and the fossil is estimated to be 555 million years old.
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Since my move to Utah two weeks ago I have been dying to return to U-Dig. My wife allowed me to go on one condition, that I would be back home by 3:30 in time for her brothers farewell party as he is going on his Mormon mission next Wednesday. I ended up calling Shayne the quarry owner, explaining my dilemma and asked him if I could start digging at 7:00 am, two hours before the site opened. Surprisingly he approved and I called Bevan. Bevan was going to man the station at U-Dig so Shayne wanted me to give him a heads up. I awoke on Saturday morning at 3:30 am and hit the road at 3:45. I was at the site by 6:45 and digging by 7:00 am just in time to see the sun come up over the hills and the sun rays radiate off of the storm clouds from an early morning storm. Had a phenomenal trip. Dug up fifteen Asaphiscus wheeleri, eight Elrathia kingii, and one Perenopsis. If you ever get the chance to dig here do it. You will not come away disappointed. I met a gentleman named Nick from Syracuse, New York and we talked about all the neat sites in western New York, primarily Penn Dixie. Bevan volunteered me to show three guys who had never dug the Windom shale on how to find good trilobites. We all walked away with some great finds. Breathtaking view at sunrise. Notice the dispersing rain clouds. An omen for a perfect day. I certainly miss Calvert Cliffs in Maryland along with some other eastern coast marine fossil locations but the view here in Utah is absolutely sublime. The nothingness of the desert has a certain beauty to it. Witnessed two antelope on my way out and one of them was matching the speed of my car at 40-45 MPH these amazing animals can top out at 55 MPH and they need to be that fast because Mountain Lions also referred to as Cougars or Puma top out at 50 MPH. I was certainly on the lookout for scorpion, rattlesnake, and Cougars but didn't see any. Rattlesnake seem to be the most common and dangerous. An assortment of Asaphiscus and Elrathia. Most are molts but some are complete or near complete. The bottom left is complete (2 inch) and bottom right is near complete. Both are Asaphiscus wheeleri and large for their size. This is the find of the day and more uncommon than Elrathia kingii. This is a prone two inch Asaphiscus wheeleri. Bevan noted there is some oxidation but that could be prepped off. Not sure what to do with it. Might need to send this one to a professional *cough* @Malcolmt *cough* though I do owe some of these to my other Canadian friend *cough* @Kane *cough Disarticulated Elrathia kingii. I normally don't see them like this and there are some orange flakes where the top side broke off. I believe this one is a complete specimen and not a molt. Interesting preservation for this specimen. Found this large Elrathia kingii out in the open next to a bunch of rock with hammer marks. Someone must have been splitting rock and this specimen popped out. Not the best Asaphiscus but should make for some good preparation practice. Large Asaphicus wheeleri molt. For most of the day I was targeting these as opposed to the more common Elrathia kingii and found a really good location where a bunch of Asaphiscus where colocated. 1.5 inch Elrathia kingii. Should prep out nicely from a gentle dremmel brush. Another near two inch A. wheeleri. This one appears to be a molt. The disarticulated E. kingii. A collection of E. kingii. Most are molts. One large slab contained about fifteen of these but I didn't want to haul it back to the car. It was a great day. E. kingii. Should be complete. Needs some prep work. Close up of the big one. Large Asaphiscus molt and there appears to be another inverted over to the left. The yellow color on this Asaphiscus is interesting and I believe Bevan said this was oxidation. I'll need to do some more research as to why this happens. This would have been a phenomenal specimen but the glabella is missing. I'll give it to a friend. Disarticulated Asaphiscus molt. Elrathia that should prep nicely. This one is interesting. It appears to be a complete Asaphiscus but is inverted revealing the ventral side. If anyone is up for a prep challenge let me know and I'll send this to you.The color is a dark brown and should make for a very nice specimen. Love the brown color on this Asaphiscus. They usually don't come in this color and the brown is a result of oxidation. Another E. kingii in need of some prep love. Sometimes you'll find what I call ghosts where the specimen is preserved under a thin layer of shale. These generally prep out well albeit this one is a partial molt. Saving it for some prep practice. Some more molts. Partial Asaphiscus that will make for some good prep practice.
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Collected on a field trip to U-Dig Utah and prepared at the U-Dig site station. After a light mechanical brush exposed the shale, mineral oil was applied with another brush for a polished finish.
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Yesterday morning my cousin Matt picked me up at my in-laws in Alpine, UT at 6:30 am and we travelled down to U-Dig south of Delta to dig for Cambrian trilobites and other marine life. It was a three hour drive and we came into the quarry at the perfect time. Robin (Rob), the helper on site brought out some very neat finds including an ammonite hash, ammonite, and an Asaphiscus wheeleri with a green tint to it. Rob guided us to a spot that had been ripped up the previous day by their onsite bulldozer. There were large slabs of shale everywhere for the splitting and we where the only ones out there besides another early riser who's name also happened to be Matt. I'll call him M2 (Matt the second). To my utter shame and disappointment I did not take any pictures of us or the quarry we where digging in because I was having so much fun splitting shale open and going through large slabs of shale as fast as I could. My arms and hands are very sore today but it was worth every second. Towards the end of the day Rob came over and let us split some shale in their 15 foot layer which is famous for containing large Asaphiscus wheeleri. These trilobites are much harder to find than the ever so common Elrathia kingi and the layer is usually off limits to the public. Within about an hour at the 15 foot layer I pulled out 3 complete A. wheeleri along with 3 large A. wheeleri molts and some E. kingi's. There were molts everywhere. It was a really good day and despite getting very sunburned I walked away with a large bucket of about 25-30 complete trilobite molts and complete trilobite remains. Unfortunately because I flew out to Utah I was only able to bring home about 5 nice ones from the trip. The rest are in the bucket and shall just have to wait for when I'll return to reclaim them. I might move out to Utah soon so hopefully they won't be in my parent-in-law's garage for to much longer. Rob showing off a large and nearly complete A. wheeleri. I swapped M2 a ryolite nodule from a nearby location for some shark teeth. He was more than happy to do the swap and Rob used the onsite rock saw to slice the nodule in half revealing the inner crystals. The bucket full of trilobites (Asaphiscus and Elrathia) in my in-laws garage. The other half of the nodule. Large E. kingi that needs some more polishing. I'm not certain that this is an Elrathia nor is it an Asaphiscus. The pygidium on an Elrathia is much wider. There's a slight chance that this could be an Alokistocare because a Bolaspidella's axial lobe would be much thicker. I would be happy if this was a Alokistocare because they are very rare. Regardless of the species this appears to be a molt. To bad it's not the real deal but I still like it and Rob did a good job at prepping it out of the shale. Rob puts mineral oil on the tops of the trilobites to give them a dark black coating. @Fossildude19 please call in the trilobite experts to assist in the identification of this one. It could be a compressed Elrathia but I'm not certain. This is a large Asaphiscus I found a few years ago and it has a greenish hue. About 6 diggers went through U-Dig that day and I found the largest Elrathia kingi. Doesn't that merit some kind of free dinner or gift card? ;-) Large Elrathia kingi. Another decent sized Elrathia. Rob showing off his green Asaphiscus from his own personal dig from last week. M2 showing off some topaz on a piece of ryolite. Rob gave me a little baggy to place my large Elrathia in and it had this cool info sheet in it. I'm very impressed at the way U-Dig has gone above and beyond to get everyone in the family involved in the thrill of paleontology and geology. Rob showing off a compressed ammonite he found a few weeks ago. I absolutely love the color on this rare (for Utah) fossil. The entrance to U-Dig. Really wish I would have taken a before and after photo of the quarry because we tore up so much shale that day. Here's a nice multi-plate of two Elrathias. One is a real specimen the other the molt. Perhaps the real specimen was buried shortly after it shed it's exoskeleton. I ordered some Riker cases a few weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised to see them at my door step upon arriving home from Utah today. Here's some of my nicer finds from U-Dig in a smaller Riker case.
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Hello everyone, I was looking at my collection of Wheeler Shale Elrathia trilobites and noticed one that looked different from the rest. It's cheeks look more elongated and pointy. Could this be a different species? Thanks, Jay
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I'm going through a bunch of trilobite fossils I collected at U-Dig Fossils in Utah about 10 years ago to get practice removing matrix. I started with this one because it's only a partial and would be no great loss if I messed up. I'm pretty sure it's an Elrathia kingii but what I don't understand is the protrusion that runs almost the full length of the axial lobe on the left side. It looks like it may have penetrated the animal in life. But it could have been part of the axial lobe that was displaced after death? There also looks to be a similar fragment along the right side of the axial lobe. I haven't seen anything like these in the photos of E. kingii I've come across, does anyone know what this is? The 3 photos show the feature under slightly different lighting.
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