Winner of the November 2023 Invertebrate/Plant Fossil of the Month

[digit]

The winner of the November 2023 IPFOTM goes to...

 

Paleocrinus planobasilis crinoid calyx - Ordovician, Benbolt Frm - Scott County, Virginia

Congratulations to @FossilDAWG !!!

[Fin Lover]

Congratulations!

[grandpa]

A real beauty, congratulations.

[Echinoid Express]

Congratulations!

[JohnJ]

Congrats, Don!

[Ludwigia]

Congrats!

[FossilDAWG]

Thanks all!

The story on this one was I was on day 2 of an Ottawa Ontario to Georgia drive, and i detoured about an hour out if my way to get to a site I collected a few times before.  It's worth taking a chance to visit despite adding to an already very long drive, as it has given up cystoids, a couple of species of crinoids (always calyx only), several species of trilobites, and a diversity of bryozoans and brachiopods.  I was rushed for time as I could only stop for an hour as I wanted to avoid driving in the dark as much as possible.  The site is a roadcut with the rock face a bedding plane on a steep angle.  It's hard to get up to the top due to the steepness and lack of footing on the loose shale.  I saw this fossil way up the slope, but every time I got close I slid back down.  After four or five tries I managed to get close enough to reach up and pry out a chunk of rock with the fossil, and then I caught it as it rolled past.  If I'd have missed it I might never have found it again amongst all the talus at the bottom.

 

Don

[RuMert]

Congrats! Nice specimen and a good story

[digit]

You worked for this one and were richly rewarded.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[SawTooth]

Congratulations!

[Coco]

Beautiful story for this beautiful fossil.

 

Coco

[Mike from North Queensland]

Congratulations nice specimen

[Andúril Flame of the West]

Fantastic find and a great story to go along with it! Love seeing such a remarkable fossil from the home state. Out of curiosity, is the formation in which you found this piece part of the larger sequence of Ordovician limestones that crops out in the Appalachian region of Virginia? I've had a chance to collect some Ordovician fossils from exposures in the Shenandoah Valley and have heard of similarly aged formations farther south. 

[trilobites_are_awesome]

Nice find!

[FossilDAWG]

15 hours ago, Andúril Flame of the West said:

Fantastic find and a great story to go along with it! Love seeing such a remarkable fossil from the home state. Out of curiosity, is the formation in which you found this piece part of the larger sequence of Ordovician limestones that crops out in the Appalachian region of Virginia? I've had a chance to collect some Ordovician fossils from exposures in the Shenandoah Valley and have heard of similarly aged formations farther south. 

Thanks.

Yes this is part of the Ordovician succession that is exposed along the length of the Appalachians all the way from northern Virginia to the extreme southwest.  Indeed, the Ordovician continues into Tennessee (where it is also quite fossiliferous in places) and on into northwestern Georgia and northern Alabama.  Regrettably it is not nearly as fossil rich in Georgia.  In northern Virginia equivalent aged rocks are very rich in silicified (though disarticulated) trilobites, such as near Strasburg.  I have also collected complete trilobites near Blacksburg.  Virginia has an incredible geological history, with the potential to collect Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian Mississippian, and Pennsylvanian fossils in the Appalachian region, as well as Paleocene to Pleistocene on the coastal plain.  There is even a bit of Triassic, such as the quarry near Danville, but I don't think that is accessible to non-museum collectors.

 

Don

[old bones]

Congratulations @FossilDAWG!

[sixgill pete]

Fantastic find, congrats.

[Tidgy's Dad]

What a great fossil!

[rocket]

👍

great find!