Playing North Texas Field Trip Host - First Time Long Time

[vertman]

I received an email a few weeks ago from a guy named Virgil Richards. Virgil is with the gem and mineral club up in Tulsa. He indicated he wanted to take a trip around north Texas and hit some Eagle Ford exposures. I am a bit out of practice hosting trips but since I have long owed Virgil a debt I jumped on the opportunity. The debt I owe Virgil is one many of us do. Many of you are aware of all the wonderful amphibians and reptiles guys like Brent Dunn & Mark McKinzie & Dan Woehr & some of the guys from the Tulsa area found at the Dolese quarry near Lawton OK. Many of you are seen Dr. Reisz's papers and all the species new to science that came out of there.

Well if it had not been for Virgil those field trips would not have happened and those species may still have never been found. Virgil was the Tulsa field trip chairman who managed to get those trips set up in the first place. I was lucky enough to get to go along on one of those trips and since that quarry is only about 25 miles from the house I grew up in I had a very special experience there. I ended up giving all the material I found to the Sam Noble Museum at OU but the experience was priceless. A lot of things had to go very right for those new species to have been found and reported. It all started with Virgil setting up those trips.

I was happy to try to pay him back at least a little bit. I will tell you that I think I should try to host field trips for others only in the rainy season as a combination of dry conditions and collecting competition made the trip less successful than I had hoped. I took the guys to several locations within the Eagle Ford Group as well as a couple in the Washita and Woodbine.

Stop 1 is a Lower Cretaceous aged - Washita Group - Pawpaw Formation location that I have been collecting off and on for a few years. I figured I would start the trip off with the oldest of the locations we were to visit. We crawled the site for a little over an hour coming up with just over a dozen nice crabs as well as other assorted fossils. The take is a little light for this site. It is now in very bad need of rain. Still anytime you can pick up a dozen nice little crabs it is a good day. Most of the crabs were examples of Xanthosia pawpawensis or Xanthosia wintoni. However we did pick up a few Cretacoranina punctata.

Stop 2 is an Upper Cretaceous aged - Eagle Ford Group - Upper Britton Formation location that has been my favorite location for more than half a decade. It has produced literally around a thousand complete ammonites and a few hundred crabs so far. Productivity at this site followed suite with the first site as it was much lower than I expected. Still though we did manage to find about 25 complete ammonites. For the Eagle Ford Group that is really good. Almost all of the specimens were examples of Desmoceras scotti. We were collecting in the zone named for this ammonite. Brandon also found a really nice example of a Metoicoceras geslinalium ammonite. We found examples of the clam Inoceramus labiatus and a few pieces and parts of the crab genus Cenomanicarcinus. I felt the same way leaving this site that I had leaving the first one. Productivity was way down but finding this many ammonites in the Eagle Ford is very hard to do. I did not think to take photos as this site and I gave all my finds away. However I have attached an image of typical finds at this location.

Stop 3 was a stop in the Upper Cretaceous aged - Eagle Ford Group - Arcadia Park Formation. However that site is now completely gone. Strike 1!

[vertman]

Stop 4 is a Middle Cretacous aged - Woodbine Formation site. I took a chance stopping at this location since even in good rainy conditions this site is extremely hit and miss. If you are lucky enough to be the first to hit this site after a rain you are very happy. If you are not you don't find a thing. This site surprised me in a very good way. We wandered around and ended up finding about 15 examples of the much sought after ammonite Calycoceras tarrantense. I think that is still the name of these guys and they have not been renamed? This is the ammonite famous for the fact that you can saw them open vertically from the keel area and then polish the insides to reveal beautifully the internal structure. I offer many images of these ammonites in this and the next post.

[vertman]

My understanding is that the Dallas area is the only place in the world where you can find these ammonites. That makes it pretty special any time I can find one of these guys. Can you find both of the specimens in the first image?

Edited July 7, 2013 by vertman

[vertman]

Stop 5 is an Upper Cretaceous aged - Eagle Ford Group - Arcadia Park Formation site. This one was an extremely pleasant surprise on two fronts. The first is that while on the way to the next site I accidentally turned right instead of left. Before I could make a u-turn I spotted this site. It looked too good. We had to stop. We wandered this site for about an hour. Virgil and Brandon collected a number of things including some very large blocks of the septarian nodules so common in certain lenses of the Arcadia Park. Virgil also found a rock full of ammonites and coined a new phrase. He said he had found an "ammoniferous rock". For some reason that one made me laugh out loud. There were several examples of Metoicoceras whitei and Sciponoceras gracile in the block. It was really cool.

A bit later I found a few items of my own. I was lucky enough to get a very small but extremely pretty ammonite. It is silver/black and partially pyritized. I believe it is also an example of M. whitei. There were some examples of gastrpods present as well.

My favorite find in a long while occured at this site. It is the first ever fish that I have found in the Arcadia Park. At this time I am not sure of the genus and species.

[vertman]

Here are a couple of images of the fish fossil. It is about 3 inches in length and is laid out on a slab in a very similar fashion that you see those Wyoming fish laid out. I have been collecting the Dallas/Ft. Worth area since 1989 and this is the only one of these I have ever seen. I will need to research it to see if it might be important. But important or not it is a pretty cool find and one I will cherish. Words Roger Farish spoke to me years ago came back to my head after this find. Roger said "you won't find anything if you don't get out and look for it". I am glad of the chances I have had to get out lately.

[vertman]

Stop 6 is a site in the Upper Cretaceous Aged - Eagle Ford Group - Kamp Ranch & Arcadia Park formations. This is the tiny shark tooth zone that I have referred to as a "shark nursery" in the past. I don't know if that is really what it is but there are an awful lot of tiny shark teeth present. The 3 of us spent a little over an hour crawling around all over this site. Together we were able to pull out well over 100 complete but very tiny shark teeth. This brings the number of teeth I know about at this site up to almost a thousand. We pretty much finished this site off and it now also is in very bad need of rain. There were 3 main species that we found. The most common is Ptychodus anonymous. We also found a few P. whipplei. Squalicorax falcatus? were also pretty common there. Virgil found a pretty nice Cretolamna appendiculata and another type that I believe was a Cretoxyrhina as well.

Stop 7 was going to be a massive construction site in the Upper Cretaceous Aged - Eagle Ford Group - Arcadia Park formation. However it had recently been bulldozed and the crews were still actively working the site. Strike 2.

Stop 8 is another Lower Cretacous aged - Washita Group - Pawpaw formation site. By the time we got there it was well after 7 p.m. After collecting a short while I bid farewell to Virgil and Brandon and headed home. However before I left I saw Brandon had really nice examples of the wonderfully sutured ammonite Engonoceras serpentinum and a decent example of the spiral ammonite Mariella brazoensis.

I think by the end of the day the guys were happy with the quanity but not really thrilled about the size of most of the specimens we found. While it sounds like we found a lot (and we did) most of it is very small.

Hopefully I am recovered from the reclusive habits I have had over the last decade or so. This was actually a pretty fun experience and I found a few really nice fossils in the process.

[siteseer]

Vertman,

Thanks for the backstory and the report. Great stuff (especially considering the need for rain).

When I started collecting fossils, I heard about the wide range of fossils to be found in Texas (as reflected in the Finsley book) but most of what I saw in collections or at shows were ammonites, shark teeth, some mosasaur remains, and especially echinoids. After being on the FF for a few years, I see you guys find a lot of crabs too. For some reason I have been surprised by that.

Jess

I received an email a few weeks ago from a guy named Virgil Richards. Virgil is with the gem and mineral club up in Tulsa. He indicated he wanted to take a trip around north Texas and hit some Eagle Ford exposures. I am a bit out of practice hosting trips but since I have long owed Virgil a debt I jumped on the opportunity. The debt I owe Virgil is one many of us do. Many of you are aware of all the wonderful amphibians and reptiles guys like Brent Dunn & Mark McKinzie & Dan Woehr & some of the guys from the Tulsa area found at the Dolese quarry near Lawton OK. Many of you are seen Dr. Reisz's papers and all the species new to science that came out of there.

Well if it had not been for Virgil those field trips would not have happened and those species may still have never been found. Virgil was the Tulsa field trip chairman who managed to get those trips set up in the first place. I was lucky enough to get to go along on one of those trips and since that quarry is only about 25 miles from the house I grew up in I had a very special experience there. I ended up giving all the material I found to the Sam Noble Museum at OU but the experience was priceless. A lot of things had to go very right for those new species to have been found and reported. It all started with Virgil setting up those trips.

I was happy to try to pay him back at least a little bit. I will tell you that I think I should try to host field trips for others only in the rainy season as a combination of dry conditions and collecting competition made the trip less successful than I had hoped. I took the guys to several locations within the Eagle Ford Group as well as a couple in the Washita and Woodbine.

Stop 1 is a Lower Cretaceous aged - Washita Group - Pawpaw Formation location that I have been collecting off and on for a few years. I figured I would start the trip off with the oldest of the locations we were to visit. We crawled the site for a little over an hour coming up with just over a dozen nice crabs as well as other assorted fossils. The take is a little light for this site. It is now in very bad need of rain. Still anytime you can pick up a dozen nice little crabs it is a good day. Most of the crabs were examples of Xanthosia pawpawensis or Xanthosia wintoni. However we did pick up a few Cretacoranina punctata.

Stop 2 is an Upper Cretaceous aged - Eagle Ford Group - Upper Britton Formation location that has been my favorite location for more than half a decade. It has produced literally around a thousand complete ammonites and a few hundred crabs so far. Productivity at this site followed suite with the first site as it was much lower than I expected. Still though we did manage to find about 25 complete ammonites. For the Eagle Ford Group that is really good. Almost all of the specimens were examples of Desmoceras scotti. We were collecting in the zone named for this ammonite. Brandon also found a really nice example of a Metoicoceras geslinalium ammonite. We found examples of the clam Inoceramus labiatus and a few pieces and parts of the crab genus Cenomanicarcinus. I felt the same way leaving this site that I had leaving the first one. Productivity was way down but finding this many ammonites in the Eagle Ford is very hard to do. I did not think to take photos as this site and I gave all my finds away. However I have attached an image of typical finds at this location.

Stop 3 was a stop in the Upper Cretaceous aged - Eagle Ford Group - Arcadia Park Formation. However that site is now completely gone. Strike 1!

[crinoid1]

Wow! Looks like a great trip! The Calycoceras ammonites are incredible. Here in Alabama, I've only been lucky enough to find sandstone casts of ammonites. When sliced open, they reveal sand! Anyways, looks like a fantastic trip. Thanks for posting!

Gabe

[Uncle Siphuncle]

Dang Richard, you pulled some Cretaceous wizardry today! So many cool finds...Pawpaw crabs, Woodbine ammos, Arcadia Park fish and ammo.....I think you made it well worth your guests' while. Truth be told, I rode so far back on the coat tails of invitation back on that 2005 Permian trip that I never knew Virgil's role in the excursion. I look forward to helping him out sometime if possible....actually helpful folks quickly rise to the A list when I'm hunting sites with room for company as I too like to repay favors.

[vertman]

Vertman,

Thanks for the backstory and the report. Great stuff (especially considering the need for rain).

When I started collecting fossils, I heard about the wide range of fossils to be found in Texas (as reflected in the Finsley book) but most of what I saw in collections or at shows were ammonites, shark teeth, some mosasaur remains, and especially echinoids. After being on the FF for a few years, I see you guys find a lot of crabs too. For some reason I have been surprised by that.

Jess

We do find a lot of crabs. We get Cretaceous varieties from a couple of different zones in the Britton Formation as well as some in the Arcadia Park and Woodbine formations not to mention the Pawpaw formation. We also get quite a number of crabs from certain clays in the Paleocene and from some Eocene locations as well.

[Uncle Siphuncle]

...not to forget the pleistocene crabbies some have found on tx beaches...

[Foshunter]

Great report, looks like you found it all, the fish was a very special find, very nice. Do you know if anyone has found a complete small bony fish in the Tx Cretaceous, my Lake Texoma & Sulphur R. finds are all minus head and tail?-----Tom

Edited July 7, 2013 by Foshunter

[Auspex]

You were really on your game; well done!

[Uncle Siphuncle]

Foshunter, my recent Osmeroides was a big ole hunka cut bait too!

[vertman]

Great report, looks like you found it all, the fish was a very special find, very nice. Do you know if anyone has found a complete small bony fish in the Tx Cretaceous, my Lake Texoma & Sulphur R. finds are all minus head and tail?-----Tom

Other than the specimens I have seen in museums I don't believe I have seen a complete specimen. The closest to complete I have seen may be the gar-like fish that SWARD found on his Grayson Formation hillside in the last year or so.

[Roz]

Great trip report, Richard and am loving the fish especially! Glad you

were able to get out and hunt with others too..

[lissa318]

That does sound and look like a great trip! I would be thrilled!!! Also love the fish. What great finds!

[Fossildude19]

Vertman,

Thanks for the awesome vicarious fieldtrip, - great report and pics.

Awesome fossils, particularly the fish!

Regards,

[Suvi]

Very nice report and awesome finds! Thanks for sharing.

[wfrr]

Simply awesome hunts, I really like seeing these posts vertman. I've not had any luck at all with ammonites in the eagle ford other than finding impressions in the kamp ranch. I'm out there looking though, so I imagine it's just a matter of time before I arrive at the right spot in my area. Sadly there are really a lot of fossil areas being covered up by constuction, really heartbreaking.

[vertman]

Simply awesome hunts, I really like seeing these posts vertman. I've not had any luck at all with ammonites in the eagle ford other than finding impressions in the kamp ranch. I'm out there looking though, so I imagine it's just a matter of time before I arrive at the right spot in my area. Sadly there are really a lot of fossil areas being covered up by constuction, really heartbreaking.

Hopefully the current uptick in the economy especially housing will result in new locations being created. I have noticed several "new" locations created lately. I am eagerly sitting on the sideline waiting for some massive rains to hit a few of them. Other "new" sites are so large and well-known they are being hit just about every Saturday and Sunday by someone. A hint I would give you is don't be overly impressed by the huge exposures. A lot of my very best finds have come from much smaller locations.

[Uncle Siphuncle]

Agreed....I've been exploiting some micro exposures as well.