Adventures with microverts... chapter two

[jpc]

This is in reply to FossilHunter21's post from yesterday about his adventures in microfossils.  I didn't want to hijack his post, so here is mine.

 

Here is what I worked on today (snow day, high temp of zero F) between Zoom meetings and snow shovelings.  These are from an Eocene site I call "Turtle Tornado" in the Washakie Fm of southwestern Wyoming, Bridgerian in age.  Lots of turtle shell pieces.  I just found this site last summer and it has proven to be rich in small mammal teeth as well.  I am looking forward to going back.  These are from one small gunny sack's worth of matrix screen washed as shown in FossilHunter21's post.  Nine complete mammal teeth in one bag is pretty darn good for the Eocene of Wyoming.   At least in my experience.   

 

I mounted them on little bamboo toothpicks with carbowax (bamboo is more archival than wood, I hope... this has yet to be tested).  I write the specimen number on the toothpick and on the foam core they are stuck into.  I also take photos of them all in case any fall off of their mounts.  Also, the pix are cool to look at.  There is more to it than this... I will be presenting a poster at the WIPS Symposium I posted about in a separate post. 

 

Number 18 in this box is pushing the limits of findable and photographable.  It is small enough to pass through my window screen, but I got lucky; it was still in matrix and I prepped it today.  I take my photos through my binocular microscope and, as the following photo shows, #18 is a bit small... tough to get it in focus.  I could have tried again, but other projects await me.  This is the upper third molar of a very small carnivorous mammal.  If you look hard (esp in 3d) you can make out a large central cusp and a smaller one near the base of the photo. All the fossil pictures to follow are stereo photos.  If you can cross your eyes to see them, they will pop out at you and you will smile, I hope.  We are looking down on the chewing surface of these teeth.

 

Let's look at a few much better photos of cool teeth.

 

This is an upper molar.  I have lot to learn still about these things, so my IDs are pretty rudimentary.  Let's call it a Mammal, possibly a primate.  This is the largest tooth of the bunch at about 6 mm by 4mm. (#13 in the box).  (The tooth above is about 1/2 mm by 2mm)

This is one of my favorites form this batch... a very small jaw with one fourth premolar, likely a small primate.  The round circle in the background is the cross section of the toothpick it is mounted on.  (#09)

 

and a few rodent molars (#07, 08 and 11)

 

 

Here is a little lower molar (#14) followed by a lower (?) premolar (#16). 

 

 

and last but nor least, a snake vertebra... (#15)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 23, 2023 by jpc

[Tidgy's Dad]

Fascinating. 

And I love your display idea. 

[MarcoSr]

6 hours ago, jpc said:

This is in reply to FossilHunter21's post from yesterday about his adventures in microfossils.  I didn't want to hijack his post, so here is mine.

 

Here is what I worked on today (snow day, high temp of zero F) between Zoom meetings and snow shovelings.  These are from an Eocene site I call "Turtle Tornado" in the Washakie Fm of southwestern Wyoming, Bridgerian in age.  Lots of turtle shell pieces.  I just found this site last summer and it has proven to be rich in small mammal teeth as well.  I am looking forward to going back.  These are from one small gunny sack's worth of matrix screen washed as shown in FossilHunter21's post.  Nine complete mammal teeth in one bag is pretty darn good for the Eocene of Wyoming.   At least in my experience.   

 

I mounted them on little bamboo toothpicks with carbowax (bamboo is more archival than wood, I hope... this has yet to be tested).  I write the specimen number on the toothpick and on the foam core they are stuck into.  I also take photos of them all in case any fall off of their mounts.  Also, the pix are cool to look at.  There is more to it than this... I will be presenting a poster at the WIPS Symposium I posted about in a separate post. 

 

Number 18 in this box is pushing the limits of findable and photographable.  It is small enough to pass through my window screen, but I got lucky; it was still in matrix and I prepped it today.  I take my photos through my binocular microscope and, as the following photo shows, #18 is a bit small... tough to get it in focus.  I could have tried again, but other projects await me.  This is the upper third molar of a very small carnivorous mammal.  If you look hard (esp in 3d) you can make out a large central cusp and a smaller one near the base of the photo. All the fossil pictures to follow are stereo photos.  If you can cross your eyes to see them, they will pop out at you and you will smile, I hope.  We are looking down on the chewing surface of these teeth.

 

Let's look at a few much better photos of cool teeth.

 

This is an upper molar.  I have lot to learn still about these things, so my IDs are pretty rudimentary.  Let's call it a Mammal, possibly a primate.  This is the largest tooth of the bunch at about 6 mm by 4mm. (#13 in the box).  (The tooth above is about 1/2 mm by 2mm)

This is one of my favorites form this batch... a very small jaw with one fourth premolar, likely a small primate.  The round circle in the background is the cross section of the toothpick it is mounted on.  (#09)

 

and a few rodent molars (#07, 08 and 11)

 

 

Here is a little lower molar (#14) followed by a lower (?) premolar (#16). 

 

 

and last but nor least, a snake vertebra... (#15)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jean-Pierre

 

Very nice.  Interesting way to display the fossils.  I really like the primate specimens.  If you want/need someone to look at them, you might contact Dr. Ken Rose.  The molars by themselves are usually not very diagnostic to a genus/species.  However, the premolars really help with a solid ID.  He wrote the paper on my Eocene omomyid partial jaw from Virginia and a number of other early primate papers.

 

Marco Sr.

[Doctor Mud]

What a great way to Mount tiny specimens! So much easier to handle and photograph. Love the stereo photos! I wonder if you could take photos from a few more angles and make 3D models of these tiny treasures using photogrammetry? 
Only catch is photogrammetry doesn’t like shiny surfaces. But they can be coated with a non reflective coating. 

Edited February 23, 2023 by Doctor Mud

[Troodon]

JP very interesting and creative approach in how to mount these tiny fossils.   Reminded me of a Cretaceous/Paleocene site in Montana that we called the Turtle site because of the large number of turtle material that it produced but also lots of Mammal material.  Pretty cool stuff especially the primate material.   Is this site a channel deposit.

[jpc]

4 hours ago, MarcoSr said:

 

Jean-Pierre

 

Very nice.  Interesting way to display the fossils.  I really like the primate specimens.  If you want/need someone to look at them, you might contact Dr. Ken Rose.  The molars by themselves are usually not very diagnostic to a genus/species.  However, the premolars really help with a solid ID.  He wrote the paper on my Eocene omomyid partial jaw from Virginia and a number of other early primate papers.

 

Marco Sr.

Thanks for the thought.  I know Ken quite well.  I have a few other folks in mind.  Ken works primarily in Wasatchian rocks, with Wasatchian mammals, older than these by a few million years.  Ben Burger, who works at one of the Utah Universities also works in the same beds where these came from.  I hope to show him some of these, esp those that I can goo photos of.  I may even bring some to the WIPS Symposium in Denver next month.  

Edited February 23, 2023 by jpc

[jpc]

3 hours ago, Doctor Mud said:

What a great way to Mount tiny specimens! So much easier to handle and photograph. Love the stereo photos! I wonder if you could take photos from a few more angles and make 3D models of these tiny treasures using photogrammetry? 
Only catch is photogrammetry doesn’t like shiny surfaces. But they can be coated with a non reflective coating. 

That would be pretty simple but time consuming.  I think the pix need to be in better focus for photogrammetry so you would need to do them all with stacked focusing.  One of my volunteers does a lot of photogrammetry.  I oughta ask her to try a small tooth sometime.  I have for a long time wanted to do this, including making expanded 3d prints, but.... time, time, time.  I need to clone myself to do all my projects.  

Edited February 23, 2023 by jpc

[jpc]

3 hours ago, Troodon said:

JP very interesting and creative approach in how to mount these tiny fossils.   Reminded me of a Cretaceous/Paleocene site in Montana that we called the Turtle site because of the large number of turtle material that it produced but also lots of Mammal material.  Pretty cool stuff especially the primate material.   Is this site a channel deposit.

It is intriguing how many Cret to Eocene sites in this part of the world are full of turtle debris.  When I got Florida and see the waters full of turtles, I also see the Eocene of Wyoming. 

 

I don't think it is a channel deposit like you see in the Hell Creek slash Lance.  I am not sure what is going on there depositionally.  I need a real geologist/sedimentologist to look at all my fossil sites, and I do have a buddy in TX who is retired from the oil biz and may be willing to do so.  Someday...  

[MarcoSr]

1 hour ago, jpc said:

  I need a real geologist/sedimentologist to look at all my fossil sites  

 

Jean-Pierre

 

You might contact Dr. Clint Boyd.  He is a PHD geologist, with his research focused on Eocene and Oligocene vertebrate faunas, who is not too far away in North Dakota.  He came to our Nebraska M&M Ranch to determine the stratigraphy of the ranch for the mammal paper on the micro anthill mammal specimens that I collected there and donated.

 

Marco Sr.

[Doctor Mud]

4 hours ago, jpc said:

That would be pretty simple but time consuming.  I think the pix need to be in better focus for photogrammetry so you would need to do them all with stacked focusing.  One of my volunteers does a lot of photogrammetry.  I oughta ask her to try a small tooth sometime.  I have for a long time wanted to do this, including making expanded 3d prints, but.... time, time, time.  I need to clone myself to do all my projects.  

I hear you! So much can be done these days with technology but it takes time. you would need better focused images for the software to be able to reliably locate features. Having to do image stacking would add a bit of time to the work flow. I see they make scanners now for tiny objects. Expensive, but I also came across a site with instructions on how to build one yourself. 

[Doctor Mud]

 

Just for fun I took what looked like the clearest image and tried in the photogrammtery software I use.

I sharpened and improved contrast beforehand. Surprisingly I've managed to make a basic 3D model from 2 images before but not for this one. Not enough angles.

The blue squares are features it identified, the red dots matched features bewteen the 2 images: about 300 of them.

 

Shows what a wonderful job our brains are doing to make a 3D image in seconds out of these images! 

 

Promising though - most features were matched in the middle of the image where I presume the focus is best.

This looks like a sparse point cloud, but the software I use will then make a depthmap for each pixel if there is enough information from the matched featrures.

 

 

 

[jpc]

Fun experiment.  Yeah these pix are ready for photogrammetry... 

What program do you use?

 

edit:  I see you answered this in a separate post.  

 

 

 

 

Edited February 24, 2023 by jpc

[Doctor Mud]

20 hours ago, jpc said:

Fun experiment.  Yeah these pix are ready for photogrammetry... 

What program do you use?

 

edit:  I see you answered this in a separate post.  

 

 

 

 

No problem. 
 

But Meshroom seems to work well. I tried some teeth today without a 3D scanning spray. Definitely gonna need it. It hates shiny reflective surfaces. It’s expensive too, so I’m looking into alternatives. But I like that it sublimates. 

[jpc]

For those interested, the biggest tooth above (#13) has been IDed as a Hyopsodus despiciens  by Ben B in Utah who works with these things a lot.  It is a condylarth, so a precursor to perissodactyls and artiodactyls.  This is a fairly large species of Hyopsodus.  I have much smaller examples form loder rocks.  

Edited February 25, 2023 by jpc

[Maniraptora]

That's a clever display idea. Just how small are these specimens? They sure make the toothpicks look big!

[jpc]

4 hours ago, Maniraptora said:

That's a clever display idea. Just how small are these specimens? They sure make the toothpicks look big!

The first one (the lousy photo( is about a half a mm by 2 mm.