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Showing results for tags 'eemian'.
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Hey everyone! Hope everyone's doing alright during this stressful situation! I haven't been too active on TFF (or with fossils in general) the past few months (mostly due to school work), but with the whole virus situation I suddenly have some more free time. The Netherlands aren't currently under strict quarantine, but schools are closed, and we're firmly recommended to stay at home and forbidden to go out in groups of more than 3. But, luckily fossil hunting is still possible, so after a long winter hiatus I finally went back to the Zandmotor (last time was when I found that mammoth tooth in October!), not once, but twice (Tuesday 17th from 11 to 6, and Sunday 22nd from 2 to 4 about). Nothing very eventful happened during either of the trips, so I'm not gonna make a whole trip report, but just show you some nice location pictures and some of the most interesting or rarer finds. What I will however mention is that the beach has changed a lot since the last time I was there, especially when considering where certain dunes, elevated parts or shell banks were located. In fact, the change between Tuesday and Sunday was impressive too. Crazy what wind and erosion are capable of!
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Hey guys, Here's a small osteoderm I found recently on the Zandmotor in the Netherlands. I think it's possibly an osteoderm of a sturgeon or some other type of fish, but I'm really unsure. It kinda reminds me of a tiny alligator osteoderm... Anyone have an idea what it could be? It's probably from marine sediments of the Eem Formation, from the Eemian stage of the late Pleistocene (130'000 to 115'000 years old), but could easily be from the last Ice Age (around 40'000 years old), or older than the Eemian (anywhere in the Neogene is feasible actually, the Zandmotor has quite a bit of reworked fossils). Thanks in advance! Max
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Hey everyone! On Wednesday, as I finally had some time, I decided to take Sara out to my favorite hunting spot: the Zandmotor (Netherlands). I definitely did not regret that decision! If you've never heard of the Zandmotor before, it's an artificial beach extension just south of The Hague, and the sand that was used was dredged from the North Sea and is full of Ice Age megafaunal mammal bones and tons of Eemian shells. If you want to see some more of my finds and hunts there, just look up "Zandmotor" in the TFF search bar and you should find a bunch of stuff When we got there it was raining, which annoyed me a little bit because the forecast said it wouldn't... The rain also makes the sand stick to the fossils which can become annoying when looking for small fossils or trying to recognize the thing you just picked up. But, having just spent an hour in the bus to get here, I didn't want to turn back immediately. Luckily the rain stopped within half an hour, and I wasn't even on the Zandmotor yet (I have to walk about an hour from the bus stop to the Zandmotor itself) and after that the weather alternated between cloudy and sunny which was nice. While I usually always take a pass by the shell banks, today I decided to only walk along the shoreline to increase the chances of finding good mammal stuff. In fact, there had been a strong eastern wind on Tuesday which helped uncover a lot of the bones and make them wash ashore. This did not go unnoticed, there were a lot indeed! Here is my first big find of the day, a great complete horse astralagus!
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Hi everyone, Not last Wednesday, but the one before that one, I went to the Zandmotor again for a hunt, and it went well! As soon as I went down on the beach (I was still in the Kijkduin area, not yet on the Zandmotor), so only some 5 minutes or so into the hunt, I found this little ugly thing in the sand: It's a small (slightly incomplete) mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) lamella! It's from the late Pleistocene, some 40'000 years ago. It's nowhere as nice as the previous one I found, but this one's cool too. Still happy to have found it because lately I've really been on a dry spell when it comes to the mammal stuff, so hopefully this is a sign that I'm gonna find some more again. After that, I continued hunting for some 4 hours or so, until the rain chased me away. The weather, although sunny at first, was really not great because there was a lot of wind. This made it a bit colder, but more annoyingly there was sand going everywhere. At some point I was checking out a little sand cliff for some shells, but had to turn my back immediately because the sand was going in my eyes. Also, the 'wich' part of my sandwich became essentially irrelevant... I did make some cool fossil shells finds though:
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Hi everyone, I'm really late on this one, but better late than never! On the 6th of April I went to the Banjaard beach again, and although our hunt was short it was super interesting! I started off by searching the coastline, where I found lots of bivalves such as Tridonta borealis, Mya truncata, Mytilus edulis, Arctica islandica, etc. After a while I went higher up the beach and started looking for the gastropod shell banks we had a lot of luck at last time. Unfortunately I didn't manage to find them... which tells me that the banks come and go, and that that previous hunt was just really lucky. However we got lucky again this time, by finding another type of shell bank! This giant 'cloud' you see here yielded a crazy amount of smaller rare fossils!
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Hi all, This weekend, after the long, boring and annoying winter months (it's always mildly cold, but very windy and rainy in the Netherlands in winter... horrible fossil hunting conditions) spring finally let out the tip of its nose, with a nice sun, blue sky and decent temperature. About time! We all know what this means... time to do some fossil-hunting! So on Sunday morning I woke up, prepared my fossil hunting equipment (mainly bags and boxes; no tools needed for this beach), made myself a lunch, and set out at 13:00 to the bus. The bus ride to Kijkduin takes me about an hour, so I arrived at the beach at 14:06. But, as usual, because it's by bus I'm not dropped off at the ideal spot, so I have to walk about an hour on the beach, due south-west, to actually get to the Zandmotor. But that wasn't much of a problem... this part of the beach already has a few fossils to yield, although not as many, so you can start the fossil hunting right away. Didn't find anything significant though in that first stretch. You're literally walking on lots of Eemian fossil shells, but these species are all very common. Spisula solida, Cerastoderma edule, C. glaucum, and Macoma balthica are just not worth picking up, unless it's a specimen that stands out to me (unusual size, pathologies, weird colors, etc). Here's a map to better illustrate the places I will mention. Note that it's approximate. Also, the sand cliffs and the shell banks often move around, we are after all on a beach with lots of wind and water movement, so these positions aren't defined. But this is what was the case this weekend. And the pink Zandmotor "limit" isn't accurate either, it's more my view as in "this is good fossil-hunting territory". By the way, that red S is where the bus drops me off. Oh, and that big puddle in the middle of the beach is actually a very popular kite-surf spot, especially for amateurs because there are no waves. This time I started off the hunt at the "sand cliffs" as I like to call them, (2m tall at the highest point, so not real cliffs), then went on to an area more to the south of the Zandmotor (at the bottom of the dark blue line on the map). It was my first time properly hunting that little area, and it turns out it's actually a good spot, I found lots of good bivalve fossils there! After an hour or two I sat down to eat my lunch (yes, a very late lunch, but time flies by when you're fossil hunting! I'm actually still surprised I remembered to eat my lunch at all, I usually get so caught up in the hunt that I often just completely forget to eat my lunch at all ), then went onto the richest part of the Zandmotor when it comes to shells, the..... (drumroll please)............. shell banks! I know, very unexpected! The real Eemian shell banks are usually lying on the north-center of the Zandmotor, between the cliffs and the shoreline. That is when I made my two favorite finds of the day: a gorgeous Propebela turricula, and a bit later, Gari fervensis! After a total of about 5 hours hunting, I decided it was time to get back home, so I called it a day. But man was it a good day! I found an incredible diversity of fossil shells, especially bivalves. Onto some pictures, starting with some location pics.
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Hi everyone, My last hunt of 2018 was incredible. And quite surprising too! For Xmas, we went to Middelburg in Zeeland to visit my mother's family, which is always a huge load of fun for me because I get to hang out with all my cousins, that I don't see very often. Anyways, one of the days, they all wanted to do a big walk on one of the beaches. At first they wanted to go to Dishoek, but I managed to convince them to go to the Banjaard instead. Once arrived, we split into 2 groups: one was my mother, my eldest cousin (18), my 2nd-youngest cousin (6), and I. All the rest went to the other group. The other group just walked, but our little group did something much more interesting... You guessed it: fossil hunting! As soon as we got onto the beach, we almost immediately found our first fish vertebra, but after that we seemed to have hit a small dry spell for nothing really worthy was being found. A few common fossil bivalves here and there, but nothing more. For my two cousins, it was their first time fossil hunting, and we had to give them a few examples to show them what to look for. I told them to focus on the fish vertebrae, because these were the easiest to recognize. The smaller one also did a lot of shell-hunting on her own, always picking up the most colorful ones and saying this one was Mama shell, this one Papa shell, this one Sister, etc until she made one giant family of orange shells Then after about an hour or two of hunting with rather little success, we finally hit these little shell banks on the beach. And there, BINGO! Gastropod after gastropod, we couldn't stop finding an incredible amount of them. On the Dutch shores, fossil (and modern too) gastropods are generally much less common than fossil bivalves. So the amount we found here was very surprising!
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
An incomplete specimen of the trough clam. This subspecies is, as its name indicates, only known from the Dutch Pleistocene. The parent species Mactra stultorum is still alive. Status: extinct Fossil occurrence: uncommon© 2019 Max DEREME
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
A nice specimen of an undescribed Nassarius species. This Nassarius species isn't described yet, but recognized as separate from other species. It looks a lot like the modern Nassarius goreensis from the southeastern Atlantic Ocean (Angola), but still has some differences, hence why I (and many paleontologists) put the 'aff.'. When the new species is given a name I will update this one. For now you should label it as either Nassarius sp or N. aff. goreensis. Status: extinct (new species) Fossil occurrence: uncommon WoRMS synonym (for Nassarius goreensis): Tritia goreensis (Maltzan, 1884)© 2019 Max DEREME
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
A fantastic specimen of an undescribed Nassarius species. This Nassarius species isn't described yet, but recognized as separate from other species. It looks a lot like the modern Nassarius goreensis from the southeastern Atlantic Ocean (Angola), but still has some differences, hence why I (and many paleontologists) put the 'aff.'. When the new species is given a name I will update this one. For now you should label it as either Nassarius sp or N. aff. goreensis. Status: extinct (new species) Fossil occurrence: uncommon WoRMS synonym (for Nassarius goreensis): Tritia goreensis (Maltzan, 1884)© 2019 Max DEREME
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
An incomplete piddock shell. Status: still locally alive Fossil occurrence: uncommon (fragments are rather common)© 2019 Max DEREME
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
A big hinge fragment of the ocean quahog. Status: locally extinct Fossil occurrence: fragments are common, complete specimens are rare© 2019 Max DEREME
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
A specimen of the shell, this one being slightly above average size. Status: locally extinct Fossil occurrence: common© 2019 Max DEREME
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
An impressive specimen of this trophon species. Status: locally extinct Fossil occurrence: rather common© 2019 Max DEREME
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
A nice specimen of the trophon. Status: locally extinct Fossil occurrence: rather common© 2019 Max DEREME
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
A cool specimen of this smaller trophon species. Status: locally extinct Fossil occurence: rather common© 2019 Max DEREME
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
A very nice sting winkle specimen. Status: locally extinct Fossil occurrence: common© 2019 Max DEREME
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
A nice specimen of this dog whelk species, with the base slightly damaged. Status: locally extinct Fossil occurrence: common WoRMS synonym: Tritia incrassata (Strom, 1768)© 2019 Max DEREME
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
A nice specimen of this small dog whelk species. Status: locally extinct Fossil occurrence: rather common WoRMS synonym: Tritia pygmaea (Lamarck, 1822)© 2019 Max DEREME
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
A nice complete specimen of the rough cockle. Status: still locally alive Fossil occurrence: uncommon© 2019 Max DEREME
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
A nice complete tellin shell. Note the characteristic lines that don't run parallel to the shell and go accross the shell; typical for this species. Status: still locally alive Fossil occurrence: uncommon (fragments are rather common) WoRMS synonym: Fabulina fabula (Gmelin, 1791)© 2019 Max DEREME
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
A very damaged scallop. Status: locally extinct Fossil occurrence: uncommon© 2019 Max DEREME
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
A nice typical example of this species. Status: still locally alive Fossil occurence: uncommon (many specimens turn out to be modern)© 2019 Max DEREME
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
A specimen with a nice pattern. Status: still locally alive Fossil occurrence: abundant© 2019 Max DEREME
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From the album: The Mollusca of the Banjaard
A typical example of this species. No matter how often I see them, it's still one of my favorites Status: still locally alive Fossil occurrence: abundant© 2019 Max DEREME
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