Pennsylvanian Collecting (And A Few More Mysteries)

[abikeOdyssey]

**Edit: Oops, just realized I posted this in fossil discussion instead of hunting trips...My mistake!!**

Headed out for a couple hours on Saturday with a friend and his dog to get some exercise, and we spent an hour or two looking for fossils at a Pennsylvanian locality west of Tulsa. This is the first place I've managed to find a few trilobite heads, and this time I managed to get my first intact, uncoiled trilobite - about 1.5 cm long and with intact eyes. Also found lots of the usual, plus some conularids (a first for the site), some new snails, very slender urchin spines, what look to be fish bones and some other possible vertebrate material. I haven't bothered to photograph much of the common stuff this time (several pounds of crinoids, brachiopods, bryozoans, etc.) but here are some of the nicer bits!:

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f396/fit_bike/Fossilskeystonestack2220s.jpg

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f396/fit_bike/Fossilskeystonestack2116s.jpg

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f396/fit_bike/Fossilskeystonestack2011s.jpg

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f396/fit_bike/Fossilskeystonestack196s.jpg

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f396/fit_bike/Fossilskeystonestack1712s.jpg

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f396/fit_bike/Fossilskeystonestack158s.jpg

Crinoid (arms?), thanks to FossilDAWG for the clarification:

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f396/fit_bike/Fossilskeystonestack1419s.jpg

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f396/fit_bike/Fossilskeystonestack122s.jpg

Fish jaw with teeth?? about 2.5cm in length:

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f396/fit_bike/Fossilskeystonestack1113s.jpg

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f396/fit_bike/Fossilskeystonestack75s.jpg

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f396/fit_bike/Fossilskeystonestack64s.jpg

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f396/fit_bike/Fossilskeystonestack56s.jpg

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f396/fit_bike/Fossilskeystonestack44s.jpg

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f396/fit_bike/Fossilskeystonestack35s.jpg

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f396/fit_bike/Fossilskeystonestack13s.jpg

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f396/fit_bike/Fossilskeystone10.jpg

The photos were all taken using a Nikon d300s, Nikkor 60 macro lens on a Kenko 1.4 TC, SB-400 and folding flash diffuser on homemade flash bracket. Many of these photos are stacks from multiple images using Zerene Stacker.

Edited May 17, 2011 by abikeOdyssey

[FossilDAWG]

That is one spectacular trilobite! And the enrolled one isn't half bad either.

Your "fish bones" are crinoids.

The fossil in photo 64s looks like a partly eroded cephalopod.

It seems you have a great site to collect. Diverse, and beautiful preservation.

Don

[piranha]

JACKPOT TRILOBITE.... an absolutely gorgeous Ditomopyge sp. from the Pennsylvanian of Oklahoma.

If you enter it in the FOTM contest and I will vote for it even though I already have a nice plant fossil entry.

Wow Wow Wow !!! That is as good as it gets and the coloration is breathtaking! Superbly Spectacular !!! :bow:

[Fossildude19]

What they said!!!

All your finds are stunning!

Thanks for posting them!

Regards,

[ElGastropod]

Hello,

Very nice finds and pictures. As you wrote information about how you took your picture, I am highjacking your thread for a non-fossil question. You used Zerene stacker to get back some depth of focus (first time I heard about it but nice picture examples on their site) or to increase the sharpness of your pictures ?

Pierre

[abikeOdyssey]

Thanks for the comments everyone - didn't think it was possible to be more excited about the finds than I already was, but you managed to get me pumped!

FossilDawg, I appreciate the ID help! On the possible cephalopod, do you think it's from a coiled shell? I assume you don't mean soft parts, although that would be pretty exciting!

Piranha, I found out about this particular spot from a professor who said he once had a student find a trilobite there on a class visit; I figured if one pair of untrained eyes found one there, I'd probably manage to find at least one or two. I've found about 8 total, including 2 enrolled with most of the heads intact, several tails and pieces of coils, the broken-apart head and of course the complete, unrolled one (which is definitely in my top 2 finds; tough call between that and the tapir jaw in my profile photo!). I can't tell you how excited I am about it as I've always thought trilobites were cool, since LONG before I was into fossils or even realized my passion for biology.

ElGastropod, no problem, glad you asked! I have been doing photography awhile longer than fossil hunting and one of the main things I focused on for awhile was extreme macrophotography, particularly of Salticids (jumping spiders). I can shoot up to roughly 12:1 magnification with one of my setups (quite a large rig, I'll tell you) but at high magnification and even true macro, as I'm sure you've noticed, the DOF is pretty small and increasing it too much (i.e. f/22 on an SLR or DSLR, in my case) really hurts sharpness. So one option is "focus stacking," which basically entails combining the focused regions in several different images into one photo. It doesn't necessarily increase sharpness, although since you can shoot at a slightly shallower DOF and get a little more sharpness in each shot, it can contribute to a sharper image overall. Of course it's tough sometimes, the shots have to be all taken at exactly the same angle with just a slight change in focus; this is easiest using a microscope objective or at least a tripod, but since I usually shot active moving subjects and prefer to adjust focus by moving the camera, I usually handhold the shots. It takes practice but you can achieve pretty good results; I've managed to do some stacks of 30+ images handheld on stiller subjects (normal, non-jumping spiders!). Images can be stacked manually in Photoshop (which is quite laborious and I haven't attempted), or in a few different programs, of which I think Zerene Stacker is one of the most user-friendly. It also is reasonably-priced (at least the student version, which I purchased, was around $65), quite a rare thing for software nowadays!

Here are a couple examples from my flickr; but

WARNING: these are big photos of SPIDERS so if you're creeped out by those, DON'T CLICK THE LINK! You've been warned!

lightbox/

You'll notice in those shots that even parts of the body pointed toward or away from the camera's plane of focus, which would normally go OOF very quickly, are focused (at least within the range of the shots I took and stacked), such as legs and pedipalps (the little leg-like things in front of spiders' faces).

Edited May 17, 2011 by abikeOdyssey

[ElGastropod]

Thanks for the answers ! And really really nice photographies !

Pierre

[Indy]

These fossils appear to have been collected

from the Nelly Bly Formation My link

Often incorrectly referred to as the Hogshooter or the New Harmony Formation

Olen Taylor hunted the Nelly Bly for several years before he passed away

I was fortunate to know him and he gave me a number of the fossil

he had collected there as well as several chunks of the shale

containing enrolled trilobites (Ditomopyge)

Did you know Olen?

Barry

[abikeOdyssey]

Hi Barry;

Thanks for the reply! After some reasearch, that is the formation I came up with; I'm not sure how well-known the locality is but I'm sure I'm not the only one hunting it!

I never knew Olen Taylor but the link you provided was one instrumental in my figuring out what trilobites I'd found there, and was part of the inspiration to go searching around Tulsa in the first place! Do you do much hunting of those strata?

Sam

[Indy]

I never knew Olen Taylor but the link you provided was one instrumental in my figuring

out what trilobites I'd found there, and was part of the inspiration to go searching around Tulsa

in the first place! Do you do much hunting of those strata?

Sam

Hi Sam,

Olen was one of the most fun loving fossil enthusiasts that I have

ever known...Bad part of getting older...we have more such stories

of those who are no longer with us.

I've never hunted the locality and only knew Olen from times we would

hang out together at the MAPS annual fossil show in Macomb, IL. Many

memorable hours back at the motel (jump start show location) looking

at his fossils and sharing stories about each others Pennsylvanian

localities and found fossils. My research locality is in Missouri My link

Scrolling down the page you will see the link to the fossil menu.

Good to hear from you.

PS: If there's railroad tracks near the site where you hunt...

Odds are you are following in Olen's footsteps

[trilobiteruss]

Excellent Ditomopyge, and other finds. Love that bug especially since I collect carboniferous bugs myself. Congratulations on a top find! Thanks for sharing!