Periodic Paleo Posting - The Pie Cabinet

[bockryan]

7 hours ago, Ludwigia said:

Have you considered the possibility that this might be a large Tentaculites? Just a thought and I'm not at all certain, since they are usually much smaller and the spaces between the spirals are mostly wider.

 

I haven't actually! I think it's a bit too big, I see now the scale is somewhat obscured but it's about 10-12 centimeters long. I will check the guide I used to see if tentaculites are reported from the site. Interesting idea

[bockryan]

Another first phylum for the thread: the bryozoans (the wonderfully named "moss animals"). This one comes from the Mississippian Bluefield Formation, exposed near the town of Glen Lyn, Virginia. The famous corkscrew Archimedes appears here, but I don't think this specimen is a fragment of one of those - I have it listed as Fenestellidae, the family that includes Archimedes and lots of other "lacy" forms. 

 

 

My label for this one is therefore:

Fenestellidae

Glen Lyn, VA

Bluefield Formation

Carboniferous (Middle Mississippian)

 

Quite a nice spot to collect fossils in the spring, lots of climbing and searching for pockets of fossils that have eroded out of the hillside.

 

 

[bockryan]

Next up is another cephalopod, this time Metacoceras sp. from the Pennsylvanian Bush Creek Limestone exposed in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. These can be found along with gastropods, bivalves, brachiopods, and other marine fossils - the Bush Creek is very fossiliferous. The "Fossils of Park Township" website has a useful catalogue feature that includes some really nice images of a variety of specimens (thank you @cngodles!). There are a lot of species within Metacoceras so I have left it as sp. for now, not sure if I have enough here to be diagnostic to a species. 

 

 

 

 

My label for this one is:

Metacoceras sp.

Johnstown, PA    

Glenshaw Formation, Bush Creek Marine Zone    

Carboniferous (Late Pennsylvanian)

[bockryan]

This will be the first purchased fossil within this thread - and it's actually the newest one, arriving only yesterday. It is a tooth plate from a Ceratodus lungfish, found near Taouz, Morocco in the Late Cretaceous Kem Kem Group. It is also, I believe, the smallest fossil in the display cabinet. I LOVE lungfish, I think they are the absolute coolest and I'm glad we still have a few of them doing their thing in the modern day. This must have been a pretty big lungfish, swimming around with Spinosaurus and friends back in the Cretaceous. 

 

 

 

 

The label for this one is:

Ceratodus sp.

Taouz, Morocco

Kem Kem Group

Late Cretaceous

 

Some paleoart of these guys that I enjoyed, as well as some of my modern lungfish shots from the National Aquarium in Baltimore, MD and the PRI in NY:

 

 

 

 

That last one by Jason Abdale goes along with a really excellent blog post on the genus that also includes an old figure that shows how these tooth plates would have been arranged in the mouth:

 

 

My photos:

 

 

[Yoda]

@bockryan

Really nice display.

Especially the plant material 

 

I used to have a 2 ft South American Lungfish.

Really cool fish to keep. 

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

@bockryan Nice cephalopod! I'm sorry to say that the ID poster I made is a little outdated now; it lacks Striacoceras typum and is a little too confident in some areas; in addition, all the Orthoceratoids have Aptychopsis when Michelinoceras is the only cephalopod that may have had one, and they are reconstructed as opercula (Mironkeno 2021 seems to have the best argument as yet concerning its placement, even if it is slightly phylogenetically incorrect). I think you likely have either Spyroceras or Striacoceras, because of the septal spacing, but Michelinoceras is possible. I do not think you have Bactrites because in my experience they are often crushed and because they have wider septal spacing. Tentaculites do not have the scale of septa that I see, and the weathering of the chambers reveals septa that can only be found in cephalopods. The size is a good indicator, too.

[bockryan]

8 hours ago, Yoda said:

@bockryan

Really nice display.

Especially the plant material 

 

I used to have a 2 ft South American Lungfish.

Really cool fish to keep. 

 

Thanks Yoda  Have really enjoyed your collection thread as well. I strongly considered getting a lungfish and probably will someday, but I have two geckos and thought that the amount of time/care with adding a fish would probably overstretch me. So for now, I just check out the ones at the aquarium! The Baltimore one has a crazy exhibit that mimics an Australian stream/river with lots of interesting species.

 

4 hours ago, Bringing Fossils to Life said:

@bockryan Nice cephalopod! I'm sorry to say that the ID poster I made is a little outdated now; it lacks Striacoceras typum and is a little too confident in some areas; in addition, all the Orthoceratoids have Aptychopsis when Michelinoceras is the only cephalopod that may have had one, and they are reconstructed as opercula (Mironkeno 2021 seems to have the best argument as yet concerning its placement, even if it is slightly phylogenetically incorrect). I think you likely have either Spyroceras or Striacoceras, because of the septal spacing, but Michelinoceras is possible. I do not think you have Bactrites because in my experience they are often crushed and because they have wider septal spacing. Tentaculites do not have the scale of septa that I see, and the weathering of the chambers reveals septa that can only be found in cephalopods. The size is a good indicator, too.

 

Thank you! This is helpful, I will keep looking. There are a few Seven Stars fossils coming up so those should be of interest!

 

On to the next fossil - we will take our first trip to the Paleocene with Ostrea alepidota from the Aquia Formation, exposed at the former Purse State Park, now the Nanjemoy WMA in Maryland. Mostly known for the truly ridiculous amount of shark teeth that can be found there, Purse does have a few mollusks although the diversity is pretty low. 

 

 

 

My label for this one is:

Ostrea alepidota

Nanjemoy Wildlife Management Area (Purse/Douglas Point), MD

Aquia Formation

Paleocene

 

And some site pictures from the beach:

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 25 by bockryan

[bockryan]

Last one for today - the first (but certainly not the last) appearance of trilobites in the thread. We'll begin with the biggest one, even if it's just the cephalon. This is Dipleura dekayi from the Middle Devonian Mahantango Formation, exposed in a quarry in Seven Stars, Pennsylvania. This one took a bit of a beating, losing the tip of his "nose" and one of his eyes, but I still am a big fan of all the surface detail, the color, and just the overall look of these guys. Wish there was more art out there imagining what they would have looked like in life.

 

The Fossil Forum collections has a lovely image gallery of what the full creature looked like. Hopefully future trips will produce a complete specimen!

 

 

 

 

My label is:

Dipleura dekayi

Seven Stars, PA

Mahantango Formation

Middle Devonian

Edited September 25 by bockryan

[bockryan]

OK maybe one more for today! It's more fun writing about fossils than working, after all. Next up is another purchased fossil. This is from another of my favorite extinct animals: the giant "elephant birds" from Madagascar. While the actual bones of these animals are probably quite rare and expensive, fragments of their eggs are much more common and attainable. We only just missed out, sadly, on seeing these magnificent animals - they are estimated to have died out only about a thousand years ago. At least we still have the Kiwi, which is apparently the closest living relative to the elephant birds.

 

 

 

 

 

My (not very detailed, unfortunately) label for this one is:

Aepyornis sp. (Eggshell Fragment)    

Unknown location, Madagascar    

Unknown Formation    

Pleistocene
 

A size comparison of various bird eggs (with the Elephant Bird on the far left) and some paleoart of these cool animals:

 

 

 

 

Edited September 25 by bockryan

[bockryan]

Likely to be only one for today, as I'm going to start the long drive to Chicago for the ESCONI field trip that will hopefully produce some lovely new plant fossils for the cabinet. It is another purchase, and probably one of the more common fossils to own in the world - the iconic ammonite Perisphinctes from Late Jurassic rocks in Tulear Province, Madagascar. Many of these get polished, but I *much* prefer them as-is (for basically everything except for things like stromatolites where the polishing reveals the actual structure). I don't get a lot of ammonites around me, so if there are any experts out there who could hazard a guess at the species for this one, I would appreciate it. For now, it remains as Perisphinctes sp. on my spreadsheet.  

 

 

The label for this one is:

Perisphinctes sp.

Tulear Province, Madagascar

Unknown Formation

Late Jurassic

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

On 9/25/2024 at 1:33 PM, bockryan said:

Wish there was more art out there imagining what they would have looked like in life.

I haven't been able to find much either; the closest I could find was a Silurian Trimerus dephalinocephalus from Wikipedia that captures the overall look.

 

Other than that, I have reconstructed Dipleura dekayi a couple of times, the latest being the best. It can be found on the homepage of my website, here.

 

For a 3D reconstruction, check out Paleobiome's Dipleura dekayi for his reconstruction of a Mahantango alluvial plain like Seven Stars. In his finished simulation, it will have setae, too, as seen on his website.

 

Edited September 28 by Bringing Fossils to Life

[bockryan]

I had a pretty successful trip with ESCONI to the Danville Shale Pile and have added one of my finds to the cabinet. These fossils come from a giant pile of Carbondale Formation overburden that partially "baked" due to chemical combustion, which basically created a large pile of bricks with plant fossils in them. Andrew Young has created a wonderful gallery of images from this site and I'll quote his description below, as I think it captures pretty much everything. His gallery is here: https://www.andrewyoungart.com/herrin-fossil-flora.html

 

Quote

Herrin Fossil Flora and Fauna

In the spring of 2021, the Earth Science Club of Illinois (ESCONI) was granted special collecting access to an early 20th century shaft mine spoil near Danville, Illinois. The coal mine opened there in 1904 and operated for forty plus years under four different companies. The goal was to extract Herrin Coal # 6: a seam averaging 6 feet in thickness, at a depth underground of over 200 feet. Above the coal layers in Illinois are roof shales that can host concretions containing fossils of the plants and animals that were buried by flooding sediments and rising sea level approximately 300 million years ago.

This Herrin Coal seam and its corresponding cyclothem strata are roughly 1.5 million years younger than the Illinois Colchester #2 Coal and the Francis Creek roof shale now famous for its Mazon Creek fossil assemblage. Both coals are Middle Pennsylvanian in age and part of the Carbondale Formation (307 and 308.5 MYA, respectively).
Picture

Illinois Carboniferous fossils are often best-preserved in hardened, iron carbonate concretions, but they also occur as soft carbon impressions in roof shales absent the siderite-forming process. Because of the fragility of the shale and the speed at which it decays when exposed to the elements, we generally see fewer of the compression fossils at collecting sites. However, there is a phenomenon in shaft mine overburden that occasionally preserves these delicate forms. It is a kind of “cooking” of the shale by spontaneous combustion deep inside the pile. When iron sulfide is exposed to water and air, it oxidizes and the intense heat can ignite the surrounding coals and other flammable ingredients. The result is a slow, often decades-long, bisque firing of the gray shale from friable to a more durable state. Its brick-like color has earned it the name, “Red Dog Shale” and it is presently used as landfill in a variety of construction settings.

ESCONI’s first trip into the old coal mine spoils was with a small group and mainly exploratory. What we discovered were exquisitely preserved shale fossils and a smattering of concretions containing mainly plant forms. The Herrin Coal roof shale flora has never been extensively researched, so we’ve begun a survey out of our field trips which we hope will provide a foundation for a more formal institutional study and catalog. This gallery showcases some of the better examples the club has found since our start at the Danville site. Jack Wittry, whose work on Mazon Creek flora has been published by ESCONI, has been instrumental in identifying many of the species we’re finding in the course of our survey. Below is a fossil index and links to pages that offer another step in organizing the amazingly beautiful and diverse specimens we’re finding.

 

Anyway, this is Danaeites emersonii - very helpfully ID'd by @stats and @flipper559.

 

 

My label for this one is:

Danaeites emersonii

Catlin, IL

Carbondale Formation

Carboniferous (Middle Pennsylvanian)

 

Some site pictures and other finds from the day:

 

 

 

 

 

[bockryan]

Next fossil is our first opportunity to venture into the Ordovician and it's from perhaps the most famous Ordovician locality in North America - the enormous and comically fossiliferous roadcut at St. Leon, Indiana. The locality produces lots of little trilobites, horn corals, brachiopods, and other reef dwellers from the Ordovician seas. The main feature of this plate is Strophomena sp. brachiopods, but I also see a number of different bryozoans, at least one other species of brachiopod, and some fragments of the giant trilobite Isotelus sp., including a good chunk of a hypostoma, which would have been part of their mouth. The orange I believe is iron mineral staining but could also be some sort of lichen, I have to look more closely. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My label for this one is:

Hash Plate (Brachiopoda, Bryozoa, Trilobita)

St. Leon, IN

Richmond Group

Late Ordovician

 

My visit to this locality was also during the recent eclipse - we fossil collected in the morning and then headed up to Indianapolis to see totality, which was extremely cool. Also got some goooooood BBQ in Cincinnati, which really impressed me as a city. Few places have access to better fossils if you enjoy the Paleozoic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[connorp]

You've got a couple nice inarticulates on that plate. Philhedra laelia and Petrocrania scabiosa competing for space.

[bockryan]

12 minutes ago, connorp said:

You've got a couple nice inarticulates on that plate. Philhedra laelia and Petrocrania scabiosa competing for space.

 

Thank you! Yes the diversity on such a small plate is pretty cool, probably close to 10 species

[bockryan]

One more brachiopod (at least) for today, returning to the Devonian with Protoleptostrophia sp. from a Mahantango Formation exposure in Deer Lake, Pennsylvania. Here I must recognize the excellent (but I think no longer active) blog "Views of the Mahantango," which I have consulted many times for IDs across a number of formations. This one is fairly large and has a pretty vibrant color to it, along with some nice surface details. 

 

His page on this genus is here: https://viewsofthemahantango.blogspot.com/2010/06/protoleptostrophia.html

 

 

 

 

 

My label for this one is:

Protoleptostrophia sp.

Deer Lake, PA

Mahantango Formation

Middle Devonian

Edited October 1 by bockryan

[bockryan]

Another one for today: returning to the Llewellyn Formation, but from a different locality, we have Alethopteris sp. from a road cut near Tremont, Pennsylvania. I was lucky enough to get to this site right after a pretty huge boulder full of fossils had fallen. I will probably not return for a fair while as the actual roadcut is tapped out, but the rocks are productive when they become accessible. Ideas on a species ID for this one would be much appreciated! Also included a few photos of other plant fragments that are included, preserved in a lovely silver.

 

 

 

 

My label for this one is currently:

Alethopteris sp.

Tremont, PA

Llewellyn Formation

Carboniferous (Late Pennsylvanian)

[bockryan]

A good one - a tooth from the giant lobe-finned fish Hyneria lindae from the Late Devonian Catskill Formation, exposed at the famous Red Hill Fossil Site near Hyner, Pennsylvania.

 

Fossil Guy has a short trip report that talks about these guys a little bit: https://www.fossilguy.com/trips/redhill_june2006/redhill_june2006.htm  

 

And then my trip report from when I found this is here: 

 

 

 

 

My label for this one is:

Hyneria lindae

Red Hill Fossil Site, PA

Catskill Formation

Late Devonian

 

Fortunately there is a lot of paleoart of these guys, including appearances in multiple big-budget shows like Walking with Monsters.

 

Edited October 2 by bockryan

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

Notice the tiny Ageleodus shark tooth right next to the large Hyneria .

[bockryan]

On 10/2/2024 at 7:44 PM, Bringing Fossils to Life said:

Notice the tiny Ageleodus shark tooth right next to the large Hyneria .

 

Thank you! I have a bigger one and had been looking for what it was, I knew it was some sort of "shark" but couldn't find the right words to Google to have it come up.

 

I have another one for today. The first appearance of corals in the thread: Astrhelia palmata, another find from the Miocene deposits at Matoaka Beach Cabins in Maryland. Chunks of these are very common on the beaches around the Calvert Cliffs, but I think this one is quite nice, it has some cool branching and good preservation of detail. 

 

 

 

 

My label for this one is:

Astrhelia palmata

Matoaka Beach Cabins, MD

Choptank and St. Mary's Formations

Miocene

[bockryan]

Sticking to the Cenozoic, we have another shark tooth - this time the still living and very familiar Great White Shark (Carcharodon carcharias) from Green Mill Run in Greenville, North Carolina. Note that I have seen Green's Mill Run, Greens Mill Run, Green Mills Run, and probably others, but the water level gauge provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says "Green Mill Run" so that's what I'm going with! A mix of formations feed into the river, with this thread on the forum mentioning the Pliocene Yorktown Formation and Pleistocene James City Formation, as well as a couple Cretaceous formations that this particular fossil is clearly not from. I would think this would be more likely to be Pleistocene, but curious if anyone has a clearer idea. I know there are some avid North Carolina forum users  

 

 

 

 

 

 

My label for this one is:

Carcharodon carcharias

Green Mill Run, Greenville, NC

Yorktown Formation

Pliocene

 

Some pictures as it came out of the creek and me looking dumb sifting:

 

 

Edited October 4 by bockryan

[bockryan]

Back to the Paleozoic, this one was a real trip-maker from a day at the very interesting Needmore Formation outcrop near the little town of Capon Lake, West Virginia. This is an Early Devonian site that is included in the already-mentioned classic "Fossil Collecting in the Mid-Atlantic States" by Jasper Burns. This site produces some interesting trilobites, sponges, cephalopods, and even some fish (!), but maybe the most common find are these goniatites, which I currently have ID'd as Agoniatites vanuxemi. @NickG, is that the ID that made it onto your poster? I couldn't remember. The rock here is incredibly fragile mudstone, so lots of care and glue needed to keep everything together.

 

 

 

 

 

My label is:

Agoniatites oliveri

Capon Lake, WV

Needmore Formation

Early Devonian

[bockryan]

This next one is both a new phylum and a new period: an interesting hash plate from a roadcut near Cumberland, Maryland that exposes rocks from the Middle Silurian Rochester and McKenzie Formations. The plate has a few brachiopods on it, but the interesting parts are much smaller: hundreds of ostracods! Quoting from the Wikipedia article on them:

 

Quote

Ostracods, or ostracodes, are a class of the Crustacea (class Ostracoda), sometimes known as seed shrimp. Some 33,000 species (only 13,000 of which are extant) have been identified, grouped into 7 valid orders. They are small crustaceans, typically around 1 mm (0.04 in) in size, but varying from 0.2 to 30 mm (0.008 to 1 in) in the case of the marine Gigantocypris. The largest known freshwater species is Megalocypris princeps, which reach 8mm in length. In most cases, their bodies are flattened from side to side and protected by a bivalve-like valve or "shell" made of chitin, and often calcium carbonate. The family Entocytheridae and many planktonic forms do not have calcium carbonate. The hinge of the two valves is in the upper (dorsal) region of the body. Ostracods are grouped together based on shell and soft part morphology, and molecular studies have not unequivocally supported the group's monophyly. They have a wide range of diets, and the class includes carnivores, herbivores, scavengers and filter feeders, but most ostracods are deposit feeders.

 

I don't have a particularly fancy lens to get really zoomed in, but they're not too tiny to see which is good enough for now. You can also (I think) see some very small tentaculites in the last image. I mostly visit this site to find big chunks of straight-shelled cephalopods, but these plates are a nice find too and are, so far, the only examples of ostracods in my collection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My label for this one is:

Hash Plate (Ostracoda)

Cumberland, MD

Rochester and McKenzie Formations

Middle Silurian

[bockryan]

I'm on a roll today, so a few more. This one goes way, way back to the Ediacaran. It is Vendotaenia antiqua, which I think is interpreted as a kind of algae. This one I purchased quite a while ago from a small seller in Ukraine that offered quite a few specimens from the Ediacaran.

 

 

 

 

My label for this one is:

Vendotaenia antiqua

Khmelnytskyi Oblast, Ukraine

Studenytsia Formation

Ediacaran

Edited October 4 by bockryan

[Al Dente]

12 hours ago, bockryan said:

Note that I have seen Green's Mill Run, Greens Mill Run, Green Mills Run, and probably others,

The apostrophe is almost always dropped on place names (Harpers Ferry for example). Greens Mill Run is the most common spelling.

 

12 hours ago, bockryan said:

I would think this would be more likely to be Pleistocene, but curious if anyone has a clearer idea.

The great whites are coming from the Yorktown Formation.