What Does Reworked Mean?

[chele]

I have been reading through alot of the old posts and the word "reworked" pops up once and a while. I have searched the internet and I get everything from reworked furniture to engine overhual. What does it mean?

[Nandomas]

Give a look here :

http://web.me.com/do...ls,_Part_1.html

Edited November 12, 2011 by Nandomas

[chele]

thank you Nando . That is an excellent link. The diagrams with the article makes it much easier to understand. I think that identifieng a clean reworked fossil can be difficult. Finding fossils on a river bank and identifing the correct age can be difficult. Makes me wonder how many of my fossils are reworked.

Edited November 12, 2011 by chele

[tracer]

you might also perhaps find the term used here in various places to mean the strata itself that fossils might be found in, and also artifacts that have been modified from their original condition.

[chele]

Back to the river , I can just imagine how much stuff is dug up from ice jams to be buried again by setiment from a flood. So how would you know that it is from the original layer with all that ice and water movement over millions of years? I am getting a headache just thinking about it.

[tracer]

if it's near a river or in a river it's probably reworked. sometimes you can't tell. but the best thing to do is study geology of the area you're searching a little at a time until you over time understand it fairly well. also at the same time study as much as you can about what fossils and rocks are found in what strata, and if you're looking near rivers then figure out what strata are upstream. then when you find something you'll probably know from from looking at it and from what it is and what condition it's in whether it originated nearby or miles away. it's hard for stuff to get moved a bunch and not get beat up or worn. it's all just studying and experience. and thinking a lot about what you're seeing and finding. bear in mind that the channels of old rivers are frequently much smaller than they were in the old days. so the ground can be reworked quite a distance from an actual current channel. and i don't know what all glaciers have done cuz they didn't hang out down here as much as elsewhere.

[MikeDOTB]

When I refer to things as reworked:

Lets use for example, an Auriculatus tooth.

This Auriculatus tooth fell out of the sharks mouth and was buried in mud and fossilized during the Eocene. The Ocean that once covered that area resided and an ancient river cut through the formation, exposed the tooth, rolled it a bit, worn it down, and reburried it. 40 million years later that it was uncovered again during the Pleistocene when ocean levels rose and it was rolled around again and deposited with new pleistocene fossils. And then sat for 3.5 million more years until someone comes along with a shovel and a screen, and finds a perfect great white shark tooth from the Pleistocene, in the same screen as a beat up, worn Auriculatus tooth with no serrations, missing part of a root lobe and just barely has a cusp visible.

Thats when I call the tooth re-worked.

Hope that helps.

Mike