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West Central Texas Pennsylvanian Trip


mikecable

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Is that the spaghetti sauce on the sidewalk? :)

The spaghetti sauce was metamorphosing on the stove. The fossils and matrix were weathering and eroding on the sidewalk.

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My lovely grand daughters getting their hair done.

Grandpa is going to bed soon. I'm tired.

But any weekend that includes fossil hunting, cooking and grand babies is a good weekend.

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Some of Gary's pics.

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Matrix covered in fusinilids.

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Coral in matrix.

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On the hunt.

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Clay pit.

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Show and tell.

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A few more of Gary's pics.

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This rock was covered with bryozoans.

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This echinoid was found earlier by our guide at this site.

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The end of a long, but extremely fun, day.

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Family...fossils...food

It doesn't get any better than that!

Add to that making new friends. Better still.

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Those Caninia-Syringopora plates are fantastic. Were you able to remove any intact?

And thanks for including the collecting site images.

The hunt for info after the hunt for fossils is just as much fun. So help me out here (all are welcome to tell me if I'm right or wrong), and tell me if I'm right.

Trying to nail down the stratigraphy where I collected these specimens, I turned to "Geology of the Cross Plains Quadrangle, Brown, Callahan, Coleman, and Eastland Counties Texas" by Stafford. I found this about the Graham Formation--Gunsight member. "The Gunsight is light-gray to light-olive-gray calcilutite which weathers to pale-yellowish-brown blocks and slabs. It is very thin to medium bedded. ....The member, originally called the Campophyllum bed by Drake (1893), contains abundant horn corals. Bryozoans, crindoid stems, and brachiopods are rare."

You can find the paper here--

http://pubs.usgs.gov...096b/report.pdf

This sounded right to me, so I researched further. But that will come in the next post. I'm not going to lose a lot of typing due to computer crash again.

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Based on this citation, I went to Stratigraphy of the Pennsylvanian Formations of North Central Texas, Plummer and Moore, 1921. I can't cut and paste, so bear with me if there are typos.

"At the type locality ...filled with Campophyllum toruquim..which weather out in on exposed slopes so abundantly that in some place can weather out in cartloads....in Brown County about12 feet of shale separates the two limestones, and both are filled with these corals and also contain Fussilnia and a few other common fossils."

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Based on this I went to Shimer and Shrock Index Fossils of North America, and confirmed the ID on the corals--Caninia torquia--or Campophyllum torquium of authors.

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I live here in Brownwood. Next time yall come this way let me know so I can hook up with yall. Looks like a fun day with some excercise.

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I live here in Brownwood. Next time yall come this way let me know so I can hook up with yall. Looks like a fun day with some excercise.

Will do. PM with your email.

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We sorted about a hundred fossils.

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My five-year-old grand daughter sorting Pennsylvanian fossils from Jax. We started with big, medium, small. Progressed to left, right, center. Went on to this looks more like that one than this one. Ended with this goes into the "carp" bag. She may be better than I am at identifying "carp".

I'm priming some young eyes and muscles that will clamber up the rock wall and retrieve fossils for me.

This beautiful young lady will be a great scientist.

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