vertman Posted June 23, 2013 Share Posted June 23, 2013 Hours 29 - 30 Saturday June 22 2013 I decided to break this experience up into multiple posts as the original was getting pretty large and sort of hard to get around in. I am roughly 1/3 of the way completed with the 100 hour collecting experience so I will shoot for breaking the posts up into 3 different ones with a 4th one at the end as a summarization. I had every intention of going on the Dallas Paleo field trip to Sherman this morning. I had even made preliminary arrangements to ride with some folks. I started having second thoughts last night and decided I just could not be with a lot of other collectors right now. I know I need to get into the company of other collectors I am just not ready right now. In solitude I am finding a friend. In the Austin Chalk I am finding a friend worthy of heavy collecting. I started out working a few more locations in the same general area I have been working lately. I was fortunate enough to find a nice shark tooth a Ptychodus mortoni. It was sticking root-side-up just shining like a beacon in the bright white chalk. I can hear my buddy Brent now saying something like "You know there are at least 6 different species being lumped into mortoni right now and they are all about to be renamed...". Yes. I do know that. For now though this is an example of one of the species currently being lumped into that species. Some images are below: 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vertman Posted June 23, 2013 Author Share Posted June 23, 2013 It was the second location at which I stopped that I found what to me is probably the best fossil of this now 30 hour Austin collecting experience. I was lucky enough to find my first complete ammonite from within the Austin. Below are some images of the ammonite in various stages of discovery and recovery: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vertman Posted June 23, 2013 Author Share Posted June 23, 2013 On kind of a funny note in the second image above that is indeed a second ammonite in the image. I have yet to try to expose and recover that one. I buried it accidentally when digging up the first one and in my excitement I forgot all about its presence. I will go back tomorrow afternoon to see how much of that second individual is present. Here are a few more images: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vertman Posted June 23, 2013 Author Share Posted June 23, 2013 Another field image: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vertman Posted June 23, 2013 Author Share Posted June 23, 2013 Having never found many Austin Chalk ammonites identifying them is not a strong suite for me. However I believe this ammonite to be an example of the genus and species Prionocycloceras gabrielense. If anyone knows better I would appreciate the correction. This example is a really nice 15 inches across. It far surpassed any ammonite find I was expecting from this experience. I wanted to go on a brief side bar for a moment. If you will notice in one of my earlier images of this specimen I dug a wide berth around the fossil and then dug down several inches under the fossil. I have heard this referred to as putting the fossil on a "pedestal". Once it was in this state then I carefully and very slowly began to chip away at the underlying rock using a U.S. army knife and a rock hammer. It took a while to get this out but it is absolutely worth it to me. I would urge others to simply take your time when you find fossils like this and hopefully your results will be good too. I will try to get out there and check on that second ammonite tomorrow. There is also still a lot of location left to hit at that spot. I will try to post the results in the next few days. Until then 70 hours remaining. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sward Posted June 23, 2013 Share Posted June 23, 2013 Richard, Congrats on another great find. Hopefully, the other ammo will be complete and you can recover it as well. And I thought I was the only one that got excited sometimes and leaves something behind. SWardSoutheast Missouri (formerly Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX) USA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Siphuncle Posted June 23, 2013 Share Posted June 23, 2013 esp for your area, that's a killer Kau ammo! Grüße, Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas "To the motivated go the spoils." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MakoMeCrazy Posted June 23, 2013 Share Posted June 23, 2013 Sweet finds. Good luck with your goal of 100 hrs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vertman Posted June 23, 2013 Author Share Posted June 23, 2013 Richard, Congrats on another great find. Hopefully, the other ammo will be complete and you can recover it as well. And I thought I was the only one that got excited sometimes and leaves something behind. Not only that but I was in such a huge hurry to get back to the specimen after retrieving my giant miner's pick that I stepped wrong and fell hard on my left side. Unfortunately that was the side which contained by rock hammer in my belt. The good news is no stitches were required. The bad news it made my side a bloody mess and I had to dig up the ammonite while bleeding through my white tee shirt. Before I was finished digging I had attracted a crowd of 3-4 locals. I am pretty sure that thought I was some madman. Come to think of it they may be right... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Siphuncle Posted June 23, 2013 Share Posted June 23, 2013 Blood, Sweat, and Ammonites Grüße, Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas "To the motivated go the spoils." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sward Posted June 23, 2013 Share Posted June 23, 2013 Well I hope you're alright. The things we won't do for fossils. I'm sure some of the locals saw you digging while you were a bloody mess and thought you might have been burying somebody. SWardSoutheast Missouri (formerly Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX) USA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vertman Posted June 23, 2013 Author Share Posted June 23, 2013 Here is an image of the new ammonite in its new home right alongside some of his distant cousins. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
megateeth Posted June 23, 2013 Share Posted June 23, 2013 Really cool. Love the updates. I am glad you were not in the water. The blood would have attracted a different kind of local. Megateeth Fossils - Megalodon Teeth, Other Shark Teeth and Info about Megalodon shark tooth collecting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NSRhunter Posted June 24, 2013 Share Posted June 24, 2013 Sweet finds!!!!! I also sort of explored an outcropping of Austin CHalk this weekend near my house and I found 2 partial Pachyrizhoidus? vertebrae. Lots of pyrite and inoceramus clams in the creek as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vertman Posted June 24, 2013 Author Share Posted June 24, 2013 Sweet finds!!!!! I also sort of explored an outcropping of Austin CHalk this weekend near my house and I found 2 partial Pachyrizhoidus? vertebrae. Lots of pyrite and inoceramus clams in the creek as well. Awesome! I would love to see them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PFOOLEY Posted June 24, 2013 Share Posted June 24, 2013 Excellent find! Good luck with the second. "I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?" ~Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) New Mexico Museum of Natural History Bulletins Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vertman Posted June 25, 2013 Author Share Posted June 25, 2013 Hours 31 - 32 Sunday June 23 2013 Well I went back out to the ammonite location on Sunday to retrieve the smaller of the 2 ammonites I had discovered the day before. 99% of the time in my experience when you see a piece of a large ammonite mold showing in a limestone matrix it is just a piece or a fragment. This time proved to be no exception. I went back with high expectations and only came away with a small fragment of an ammonite. But after the find the day before it was no big deal. I hit the rest of this locality and then returned to the place where I had found a few fish fossils a few weeks earlier. I decided it was time for me to dig up the remaining "fish hash" that I had left in place earlier. The site was where I had found the 3 Pachyrhizodus caninus fish vertebrae and some other bone material. I finally took my trusty miner's pick down there and removed the overburden. It turns out that the "hash" I described earlier was a part of the tail of the specimen to whom the 3 vertebrae belonged. I recovered many pieces of tail fin which I will piece together later. I also found a very nice vertebrae which I believe is the last one prior to the tail. Some images of it are shown below: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vertman Posted June 25, 2013 Author Share Posted June 25, 2013 I had a little time remaining before dark so I wandered around the site a little more. After walking about 40 yards I saw what I thought was the unmistakable round shape of a vertebrae sticking up out of the chalk. I thought no this can't be. I walked this same area a few weeks ago. Humble pie really tastes good. I dug around a little and came up with a set of 5 small shark vertebrae. It is hard for me to tell what they are from. I believe they are from a lamniform shark. I am guessing that they may be from a Squalicorax. However at this time that is only a guess. I forgot to get any "before" images of these verts. I need to remember to do that. Here are some images of the specimens once I got them home and cleaned up a little bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vertman Posted June 25, 2013 Author Share Posted June 25, 2013 (edited) A funny story did happen when I was digging the shark verts up. I had my army knife in one hand and my rock hammer in the other and was chipping away at the chalk trying to get the specimens free. I heard someone talking nearby and turned to see a couple of guys. I stood up knife in one hand and hammer in the other. For some reason the guys took off rather suddenly. I need to be more careful about how I wield my tools in public I guess. I thought this piece of calcite was interesting. It was all alone in a patch of dirt. I wonder how it got there. I will continue my assault on the Austin Chalk in the coming days. It is my goal to agressively grid-search every site in the study area (Prosper to Hillsboro north/south and the Austin/Atco contact to the Taylor Group west/east). I know it is crazy but it is good to have goals. I expect I will be accompanied by a young friend on coming trips as well. I look forward to that. Until then 68 hours remaining. Edited June 26, 2013 by vertman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Siphuncle Posted June 25, 2013 Share Posted June 25, 2013 (edited) glad to see your efforts paying off, richard. this is a great lesson in sweat equity. the ongoing log shows the uninitiated what a trail blazer invests to reach the desired goal...usually people focus only on the results and assume the same can be had simply by placing an order at the paleo drive through window. i've done similar explorations over time including eagle ford, pecan gap, anacacho, escondido, austin, etc. but its hard for me to focus on one venue for 100 hours with this ADD of mine. Edited June 25, 2013 by danwoehr Grüße, Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas "To the motivated go the spoils." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeD Posted June 26, 2013 Share Posted June 26, 2013 A funny story did happen when I was digging the shark verts up. I had my army knife in one hand and my rock hammer in the other and was chipping away at the chalk trying to get the specimens free. I heard someone talking nearby and turned to see a couple of guys. I stood up knife in one hand and hammer in the other. For some reason the guys took off rather suddenly. I need to be more careful about how I wield my tools in public I guess. That's funny. I'll have to remember that technique. I'll have to remember to take my machete with me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ludwigia Posted June 26, 2013 Share Posted June 26, 2013 Very nice finds! Greetings from the Lake of Constance. Roger http://www.steinkern.de/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vertman Posted June 29, 2013 Author Share Posted June 29, 2013 (edited) Hours 33 - 35 Saturday June 29 2013 This coming week is Independence Week in the U.S. I was off for two days next week anyway so I took 3 vacation days. That gives me 9 days in a row off! We are doing lots of family activities but along with that it will most surely give me some time to get into the Austin Chalk as well. I hope that I will be able to celebrate Independence Week by liberating many quality fossil specimens from the Austin's stingy grasp. OK cheesy...sorry about that. Day 1 did not turn out very well. I hit the last of the locations that I believe are setting inside the "sweet zone" that I found. Once I completed those I moved a couple of miles away and up section many many feet. I am now no longer working in the bottom third of the formation. I believe I am very close to the center now. And the center appears to once again be the lifeless monotonous fossil-free zone that I remember from various collecting in the Austin over the years. I did go back by the location where I had found the partial Gillicus arcuatus fish tail a few weeks ago. I have been dreaming that I forgot to look around that entire location and that a different part of the fish was sticking out nearby. It was only a dream. I found a couple of very small tail fragments that I had missed earlier. That was it for the entire day. I had a hard time even seeing an oyster with only a couple showing up. I have attached some location images along with the image of a big bug that ran across my path. You know it is a slow day when I show rocks and bugs. I will post frequently over the next week as I don't want to let things back up. I found nothing today but tomorrow is a completely new day. Until then 65 hours remaining... Edited June 29, 2013 by vertman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramo Posted June 29, 2013 Share Posted June 29, 2013 Nice "bug" that really is a true bug. Looks like a "Leaf-footed bug". (The easy way to tell a "true bug" from other insects is that they have their wings crossed over their back) Ramo For one species to mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun. -Aldo Leopold Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vertman Posted July 4, 2013 Author Share Posted July 4, 2013 Hour 36 Sunday June 30 2013 I got a chance to be out today with my two oldest daughters. My middle wanted to run a half marathon and my oldest wanted to bike along beside her. So I took them to a local spot with a path and trail system for just such things. I noticed some Austin Chalk in the area so I took the liberty of looking around for an hour. This section is in the upper part of the formation probably only a few dozen feet from the overlying Taylor Group. There was not much to be found. I did see some pyrite "balls" sticking up out of the chalk. I did manage to find a species new to my Austin experiment. There were several examples of the tube worm Serpula present. I grabbed one example to be included in the faunal listing at the end of this project. I did not get photos of this particular outing. There is much more collecting to come this Independence week. More to follow shortly. Until then 64 hours remaining. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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