(horned coral, bivalve fossils, flint, and various rocks)Unseasonable warmth made for a good day of fossil hunting. I'm completely happy because I found well over 20 fossils on December 31st. Kyle found an arrowhead and we found out that the dog can leap off ten foot cliffs. A good start to a new year.
Here's a very distracted video of me and Mudd finding a horned coral fossil. I found four horned corals in one hour. Sidenote: when I yell "Whoa, Dog!"...its because he just jumped off a ten foot cliff. That terrier is a stuntman.
toby jumped into the river once. good thing it wasn't rushing or he'd be gone gone gone.
ReplyDeletefossils are awesome
you should get toby a life jacket. I take mudd out for regular swimming lessons but am still nervous when he's on a boat and the river is running fast.
ReplyDeleteFossils are great and indiana is loaded with em'.
yeah...i'm not sure about the best places to look...most of the area i'm in is developed or farm land. I'm sure there are arrow heads to be found, as this is Indian country....Little Turtle was buried here...
ReplyDeletewell, just go into creek beds and walk around. if the water is clear and you can see rocks, there could be fossils to be found. And a lot of arrowheads. They end up in creeks a lot.
ReplyDeletedid you watch "I'm a cyborg" yet?
I think most or all of those bivalves are not bivalves but brachiopods - looks like you've got some spinocyrtia or maybe cyrtospirifer. Brachiopods superficially resemble bivalves, but aren't even molluscs, they're their own phylum. They're still around but they used to be way more abundant and diverse, especially in devonian and carboniferous times, which is when most of our upper strata were laid down. One body plan difference that might not be immediately obvious is that while in bivalve molluscs, the two halves of the shell represent the left and right sides of the animal, in brachiopods, they are the dorsal and ventral sides, so if each side of the shell is bilaterally symmetrical but the two sides are not mirror images of one another, it's a brachiopod, but if it skews a little, and each half is a mirror image of the other, its a bivalve. Of course, some bivalves, like scallops, come pretty close to each side being bilaterally symmetrical, but the skew is still there if you look.
ReplyDeleteAnd by upper strata, i mean upper strata of real rock, once you get past the glacial till, loess, whatever. also I have one of those gastropods at upper left, i never got around to IDing it
DeleteAnd Re: Tom - you want to look for exposed rock strata, like Jane said, creek beds, also road or railroad cuts, old quarries or strip mines, of course make sure those aren't private property or else get permission, you don't want to get arrested or shot for a dead clam. I know at least around here some old strip mines are state DNR land used for fishing and hunting etc. and are great cuz the stuff they were digging for in the first place is literally made of fossils.
ReplyDeleteHa "you don't want to get arrested or shot for a dead clam" best line EVER!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteAlso, Chris, you are my new proofreader. I am going to ask you to identify the type of fossil I have before I post it.
To boot...you and anna should come out sometime and look for stuff.
My answer to most queries will likely be along the lines of "no idea." Let's go out in the spring. One thing in between us i noticed last time I was in Quad Cities - somewhere along the river, the stuff they were using to shore up the banks was chunks of this white limestone that was crazy full of moderately big shelly stuff. Mostly the usual paleozoic marine stuff - crinoid stems, gastropods, etc, so it's probably from somewhere in the general area, but who knows what else is in there if you look long enough.
DeleteI find a lot of lead slugs, old glass bottles, creepy dolls that are full of dirt and grow if you leave them in the sun, old glaze pottery, bones, antlers...
ReplyDeleteof course the list goes on. See you in the spring. and yes, I've seen this limestone chock full of shells. they use it as "junk" rock at Red Rock Lake. I think I have a blog post with an example of the stuff.