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At the end of August we went on a quick two day trip to see if the creeks we hunt for Pleistocene megafauna in near Tambar Springs were still full of water. Unfortunately, most of the creeks were still full but we did have one nice section of dry creek bed to walk while we were up there. A lot of the things we find are either shards or particularly robust bones (e.g. kangaroo calcanea), and occasionally jaws or teeth. This is because the material tends to weather out of its original layer and gets redeposited into newer gravelly layers, a process which tumbles and grinds up the fossils. Here are a couple of examples. Bone fragment in situ: Macropod tooth fragment from the same bank: A photo of the gravelly bank the last two specimens were found in. The rocks seem to be a mixture of Tertiary basalt and Jurassic sandstone (also petrified wood). Some of these alluvial gravel layers may still be very old, however the Pleistocene fossils they contain weren't originally deposited in them. Very rarely, we found sections of what I assume is the original fossil containing deposit. It is a soft, sandy clay which has occasional small pebbles and bands of calcrete. It is here we found our best find this trip, a partial wombat (Vombatus sp.) skull! In situ photos: After removing from the bank: A pretty intense storm rolled in that afternoon. Fortunately we missed the bulk of it while we were in the field! More to come...
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Recently I went to a property in NSW with hundreds of limestone caves after a member of our fossil club invited us on a trip there. I had never even considered going caving before, caves terrify me, but for fossils? Why not. The particular cave we went down was relatively easy, 11m straight down but there was a convenient tree limb above it. Not a fan of abseiling, but again, will do it for fossils. There are better caves in the area for fossils but didn't get around to going down them as we only had half a day, so maybe next time. Once at the bottom of the hole which was the opening, we went down into the actual cave. It was an amazing place; a lot of fantastic limestone formations in a small cavern with a number of other passages and holes we could go down. One of the places we found Pleistocene fossils was under the floor of the main cavern. A wide but shallow cavern was underneath that had bones cemented to the roof. Most had eroded out however. Another passage led down a couple of metres to a different fossil deposit which is where we collected from. A tight squeeze was needed to get through to the face of the deposit so its not a place for the claustrophobic. Heres a photo of that particular face, and some bones that had eroded out of it as well as modern animals that fall in much the same way as their Pleistocene predecessors. A layer of flowstone had formed over the face. The bones here were quite busted and fragmentary as many people had been in here before us and stood on them. I only collected teeth and jaws as they are much more interesting than fragmentary bones IMO. here are some of our finds: Macropus spp. . Vombatus sp. Lizard, perhaps a Tiliqua sp.? We also found a few other things which I will post after they're identified. Also, here is a paper with some more info on the area. And note that these were collected with permission. Thanks,
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