North Attleboro Fossil Hunting Trip

[veenasaur]

Taking advantage of the good weather and less traffic on the I-95 because of Super Bowl Sunday, I and my husband decided to head south to North Attleboro, MA to explore the Pennsylvanian age plant fossils from possibly the Rhode Island/Wamsutta Formation. We drove to a park near the site and hiked about a mile through the pine forest and reached the outcrop which has expanded into a shale pit. The specimens here are preserved in great condition and are abundant.

 

The pine forest we walked through.

The shale pit full of plant fossils.

Here's some finds from my trip. I have tried my best to identify my finds. Let me know if I made any mistakes.

Neuropteris Scheuchzeri

A seed fern specimen that was too big to carry back home. 

A mish mash of fern fossils and a baby seed fern which I also had to leave behind.

Possibly the top of Annularia sp. peeking out in the middle

Calamites

More calamites and Neuropteris sp.  on the bottom side of the fossil on the right.

 

A lot of fossils overlapping.

Cyperites sp.??

Pecopteris sp. (This is a chunk that broke off the large fossil towards the end of the post)

A closer look at the same fossil with a different angle showing possibly Annularia sp.

Cyperites on the lower side

Is this some type of micro fossil??

 

 

Neuropteris Heterophylla ??

Calamites

More seed ferns??

This is a big specimen I brought home with a bunch of fossils on the front and back and it weighed about 10 pounds. Closeups of them are as follows.

The clearest fossil on this side is a Pecopteris sp. I assume.

 

I used water to clean some mud off this specimens and noticed a few more fossils peeking out of the rock.

Hope you enjoyed my post. Feel free to ask any questions.

Happy Fossil hunting!!

 

[Fossildude19]

Great report and nice finds! Glad you had some success.

Thanks for posting this.

[Pagurus]

Well done! Thanks for posting this.

[Jeffrey P]

Interesting finds! Congrats. I still find it incredible that Carboniferous plants can be found in eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but the geology is just right. Thanks for sharing. 

[FossilNerd]

I’m a sucker for plant fossils! Thanks for posting them for our viewing pleasure! 

[Yoda]

@veenasaur

Some fantastic plant finds 

[Coco]

Hi,

 

I’m always happy to see fossils I don’t know.

 

On the other hand, do you know that there is a whole range of sizes of screws and bolts? Here its presence is not of great use. If you have nothing to measure, look in my signature, print the document and put your fossil on it to make your photos

 

Coco

[veenasaur]

6 hours ago, Coco said:

Hi,

 

I’m always happy to see fossils I don’t know.

 

On the other hand, do you know that there is a whole range of sizes of screws and bolts? Here its presence is not of great use. If you have nothing to measure, look in my signature, print the document and put your fossil on it to make your photos

 

Coco

Hey Coco,

 

I will print out the document and make sure to use it in my next posts. To be honest I did get a bit lazy to go find a quarter and I found the screw nearby and went with it.

Thanks

Vee

[Coco]

Very well the idea of printing the sheet and using it, because coins are not better than screws, we can not learn by heart the size of all the coins in the world...

 

Coco