More central Appalachian Paleozoic travels in 2024

[NickG]

As I continue to explore (see my prior thread 

 

Earlier today I visited the Upper Freeport Formation south of East Liverpool. These are sandstones associated with the Upper Freeport coal, so we are at the end of the formation. I have been up here repeatedly over the past year but never explored rocks this old in the area.

It was snowing for about two hours this morning but I still spotted some cool fossils. Unfortunately while I saw the Upper Freeport coal, I didn’t have the opportunity to collect in it. Here are two separate medium sized impressions of lycopsid trunks.

 

 

 

I then moved further into younger sediments, revisiting where Pteroplax was collected (Romer, 1963). This is a well known site in the literature, reported in most of the Ohio Pennsylvanian age invert reports of the latter half of the 20th century. I’ve been here before, though we mistakenly descended to the base of the cut along the rail line which was frustrating. The circumstances of how Pteroplax was collected are interesting. Look the paper up. That unit it was produced from is no longer evident and completely overgrown and slumped but it’s fine because I was here for the Ames limestone. Everything I collected here was typical of what I have seen of the Ames limestone in eastern Ohio so I have omitted pictures. 
 

Afterward I moved on to another section that exposes a larger portion of the Glenshaw Formation (the Ames is the terminal Glenshaw transgression, the Upper Freeport coal is below the Glenshaw’s lowest unit). Here are some Pine Creek (Upper Brush Creek) brachiopods. One is a productid and the other is a part and counter part of a spiriferid (?Neospirifer).

 

 

In the Cambridge limestone, we found this badly preserved snail. Perhaps with some preparation, it can be identified further. It is fairly beat up. At this locality, the Cambridge is very coarse grained and hard. The snail is not exhibiting the typical preservation qualities of other invertebrate fossils found here.

 

 

In a younger unit, I found this partial Deltodus tooth as well as a possible actinopterygian scale (I have my doubts but friends are certain). Both are hanging out with broken bellerophontid snail pieces.

 

 

 

Tomorrow I will be in the Mercer (Pottsville Group) which is older than anything you’ve seen in these two threads. If I find anything worth sharing, I’ll share! In the future I will be updating this thread for the entire month (and maybe the year) instead of starting new threads.

Edited January 5 by NickG

[connorp]

Nice. The scale does look like a palaeoniscoid scale.

[deutscheben]

Thanks for sharing! I concur with Connor, that matches the palaeoniscoid scales in my collection pretty spot on. 

[Andúril Flame of the West]

Thanks for bringing us along with you! A nice variety of finds with some intriguing Paleozoic material. 

[jdp]

Definitely actinopt. Probably identifiable to genus, even.

[NickG]

2 hours ago, jdp said:

Definitely actinopt. Probably identifiable to genus, even.

A colleague has the new actinopt volume, I'll put them on it. This is not the FIRST scale like this we've collected here. I went back and looked at the others and they all match this. They  pulled a lower Permian possible parasphenoid on another site outside of WV (I initially misidentified it as a crushed/distorted xenacanth spine as did far more knowledgeable people after me), so I guess they're going to get stuck in the actinopt hole for awhile.

 

Let me know by email when you will have some free time to talk more WV verts! I'm having to adjunct on top of my normal workload but I'd like to work on that this semester. I will be doing some fieldwork in the lower-mid Devonian unit this coming weekend to try to get the strat better worked out and working to be certain that one particular one didn't come from the lower Marcellus instead of the upper Needmore. 

[NickG]

On 1/5/2024 at 4:10 AM, NickG said:

Tomorrow I will be in the Mercer (Pottsville Group) which is older than anything you’ve seen in these two threads. If I find anything worth sharing, I’ll share! In the future I will be updating this thread for the entire month (and maybe the year) instead of starting new threads.

 

We weren't able to access the intended unit, but I did get to see some very poorly preserved plants. I don't have much to report in terms of pictures worth sharing (not the usual 'can't share'), it was a pretty unsuccessful day in terms of collecting. Still a productive day for sed/strat work. It is always to great to be out with people who are more knowledgeable than yourself. We can learn so much by having an open mind and being willing to accept our own working hypotheses/interpretations may be wrong.

 

With that said, here are some photos of what I did find and see yesterday... (be patient, I wrote this part on the computer and am coming back to finish the post from my phone while I upload photos).

 

Portersville marine zone. These are in the limestone layer.  Here is a snail, likely Strobeus, but @cngodles can check me on that.

 

 

A Petalodus tooth, not found by me. This is an incredibly common fossil shark tooth in the Appalachian Basin.

 

 

A brachiopod, I let someone take this so this is the best photo I have of it. Any ID that could be made would be great.

 

 

Ichnofossils in the shale above the Portersville limestone. Any help with identifying these would be welcome.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 6 by NickG
added those pictures!