Feb. 5 Fossil Hunting

[tracefossilnut]

Brentwood formation Washington county Arkansas. The Brentwood has sequences deposited by tropical storms in

middle shelf environments in which we sometimes find terrestrial plant fossils. The first one was found Feb. 5 and

has leaves and stems I believe to be Myrica. The others were found different dates- same location : calimites,

Neuropteris, and Mucuna (sea bean pods.

[PA Fossil Finder]

Sea beans! I have a collection of modern sea beans, including Mucuna urens, M. fawcetti, Dioclea reflexa, Caesalpinia bonduc, Canavalia rosea, and lots of others. I didn't know that they could be fossilized! Mucuna species live in the jungles of South America.

[tracefossilnut]

I hav'nt been able to find any information on fossil sea beans. My fossil hunting friends who recently made a trip to south Texas told me

what they were. The seeds float and arrive on s. Texas beaches from s. America. The fossils look like m. sloanei. When I found the

first one, I thought it was just an odd concretion and almost discarded it, then I found the second one which had the hinge like thing also

and decided to keep them. If anyone knows anything else thet could be or has any information on fossil sea beans, let me know.

[Auspex]

"Sea Beans" are from Angiosperms (flowering plants), which are predated by Neuropteris by about 175 million years; Carboniferous 'seeds' would be from the seed ferns in the coal measures, like Trigonocarpus and others.

[tracefossilnut]

I guess this means they couldn't float back through time. Maybe I should have posted them under fossil humor as fossilized hamburgers from

the Sponge Bob formation!