To the Ohio Valley and down South Part 3

[Jeffrey P]

On 11/16/2023 at 11:29 AM, Newbie_1971 said:

Looks/sounds like you had an amazing trip! Congratulations on your finds, and hope you get to feeling better. It was great meeting you. If you are interested,  and find your way back here in that general area, let me know and maybe we can hook up and do some searching around.

Thanks. I am feeling much better, back to normal. Spending a lot of time sorting through this trip's finds, IDing everything, and storing it all in an organized fashion. As I stated above, I plan to return to the Ohio Valley in May, but not sure if I will be southeastern Indiana as part of it, but I will let you know if I do. As I also said above, after three tris to St. Leon andnot seeing anyone there, it was a pleasure to finally see a number of collectors at this important and impressively rich site. 

[Jeffrey P]

I'd like to add a few more pics. First this big (2 3/4 inch) Trigonia from Blue Springs. When we arrived there, surface collecting proved frustratingly unproductive, almost all broken shells, not even the very tiny button corals we found last year. Similarly, digging in the soft clay, produced more complete shells, but these usually crumpled upon exposure. Finally, I went exploring a little further and found someone else's excavation site with a few chunks of hard matrix with shell imprints on it, lying about. I decided to split these, see if there was anything worthwhile inside, and that is when I found the Trigonia. Herb and I then began excavating more large chunks of matrix in that same spot and that's where most of our best finds were made. 

[Jeffrey P]

When I met up with JimB88 we first stopped at this roadcut. Fossils were not as abundant there as the second roadcut where all of my crinoid finds were from. However, Jim found a couple brachiopods and gifted me this one which was only partially exposed. I prepped it out. It appears to be a spiriferid, but beyond that I don't know yet what genus or species.  It is a little over two inches wide. 

[Jeffrey P]

The day I spent with Wayne (Fossilnerd) I found these brachiopods. The last one (a spiriferid) on a rock covered with fenestellae bryozoans, Wayne gifted me. Still working on trying to ID these. My ID sources for Mississippian brachiopods are far from prolific. I hope that will improve as my collection of Mississippian brachiopods continues to grow. 

[Wrangellian]

8 hours ago, Jeffrey P said:

Thanks. It is fortunate that the Ohio Valley where my family lives has so many exposures of sediments that are unavailable where I live in New York and that I'm able to take advantage of this. 

Yes, although NY seems to have a lot of good stuff too, which is unavailable to me as well.  (You want Cretaceous? I got Cretaceous!)