CarolM
Well-Known Member
I have no clue what it is. I was hoping you would know.Golly, it's lovely.
Is that a chiton?
I have no clue what it is. I was hoping you would know.Golly, it's lovely.
Is that a chiton?
A nice find. Poor turtles.TURTLE
Jurassic turtles again, 160 million years old.
These are Annemys and are part of a mass grave of 1.800 specimens!
It seems that the lake they were living in dried up and they all congregated and died in the final pool of water.
The rains came just too late and swep mud into the old lake burying the poor turtles so they were all fossilized en masse.
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Thanks for this, Bambam.
It looks superficially like a chiton.I picked this up on the beach today and it reminded me of the pic in your post. I just need to keep it for about 150 million years and then bobs your uncle I will have my own fossil.[emoji1] [emoji6] View attachment 230713View attachment 230714View attachment 230715
I would be terrified to buy anything for fear of it being a fake! Except some gorgeous geodes.. I'd go home with a smaller one[emoji1]Thanks for this, Bambam.
A guy on Fossil Forum posted hundreds of photos during the couple of weeks of Tucson. Incredible.
I would pass out.
But still lots of fakes on sale as well as dream specimens.
Lol. I think it is a louse as well. The upside is now I find myself looking at rocks etc. Just in case I find a fossil.[emoji6]It looks superficially like a chiton.
Armoured, segmented marine molluscs that anchor to the rocks like limpets. But a limpet is a variety of snail and these are a different group.
But the underside of a chiton is like this, you can see the mouth and muscular foot quite clearly.
Your specimen appears to have eyes and legs so must be an arthropod.
So I now think it's a lovely big fish louse.
Geodes are often artificially coloured.I would be terrified to buy anything for fear of it being a fake! Except some gorgeous geodes.. I'd go home with a smaller one[emoji1]
Damn, learned something new again[emoji28]Geodes are often artificially coloured.
Those tables were madly expensive, I recall, but very nice.Is the Indiana Jones hat part of the uniform?
I’d love one of those coffee tables of what looks like fossilized wood!
Thanks, Ken.NATURAL HISTORY Ancient trail of Columbian mammoths uncovered in south-central Oregon FOOTPRINTS OF MAMMOTHS, DATED TO 43,000 YEARS AGO, ARE SEEN IN A PORTION OF A TRACKWAY THAT WAS UNCOVERED BY RESEARCHERS IN 2017 IN AN ANCIENT DRY LAKE BED IN LAKE COUNTY, OREGON. CREDIT PHOTOS BY GREG SHINE, BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT
A FOSSILIZED TRACKWAY ON PUBLIC LANDS IN LAKE COUNTY, OREGON, MAY REVEAL CLUES ABOUT THE ANCIENT FAMILY DYNAMICS OF COLUMBIAN MAMMOTHS.View attachment 230849
Recently excavated by a team from the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History, the Bureau of Land Management and the University of Louisiana, the trackway includes 117 footprints thought to represent a number of adults as well as juvenile and infant mammoths.
Discovered by Museum of Natural and Cultural History paleontologist Greg Retallack during a 2014 class field trip on fossils at the UO, the Ice Age trackway is the focus of a new study appearing online ahead of print in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.
Retallack returned to the site with the study’s coauthors, including UO science librarian Dean Walton, in 2017. The team zeroed in on a 20-footprint track, dating to roughly 43,000 years ago, that exhibited some intriguing features.
“These prints were especially close together, and those on the right were more deeply impressed than those on the left-as if an adult mammoth had been limping,” said Retallack, also a professor in the UO Department of Earth Sciences and the study’s lead author.
But, as the study reveals, the limping animal wasn’t alone: Two sets of smaller footprints appeared to be approaching and retreating from the limper’s trackway.
“These juveniles may have been interacting with an injured adult female, returning to her repeatedly throughout the journey, possibly out of concern for her slow progress,” Retallack said. “Such behavior has been observed with wounded adults in modern, matriarchal herds of African elephants.”
The tracks were made in a layer of volcanic soil at Fossil Lake, a site first excavated by UO science professor Thomas Condon in 1876 and today administered by the Bureau of Land Management.
“America’s public lands are some of the world’s greatest outdoor laboratories. Localities such as this mammoth tracksite are unique parts of America’s heritage and indicate that there are many special sites still to be discovered,” said study co-author Brent Breithaupt, a paleontologist in the Wyoming State Office of the Bureau of Land Management.
Specimens from the 1876 Fossil Lake excavation-along with the rest of Condon’s extensive assemblage of fossils and geologic specimens-were donated to UO in the early 1900s and form the core of the museum’s Condon Fossil Collection, now under Retallack’s direction and boasting upwards of 50,000 fossil specimens.
Last month a new state law went into effect, making the UO museum Oregon’s default repository for fossils found on state lands. The museum is also a designated repository for artifacts and paleontological specimens collected from BLM-administered lands in Oregon, ensuring they are available to future generations for education and research.
As part of the 2017 study, Neffra Matthews of the BLM’s National Operations Center in Denver, helped survey, map and document the trackway using photogrammetry, which helps scientists perform accurate measurements based on land-based or aerial photographs.
“There is a vast storehouse of natural history found on BLM-managed land, and it’s exciting to work with researchers like Professor Retallack in capturing 3D data on fragile paleontological resources,” she said.
Retallack said that trace fossils such as trackways can provide unique insights into natural history.
“Tracks sometimes tell more about ancient creatures than their bones, particularly when it comes to their behavior,” he said. “It’s amazing to see this kind of interaction preserved in the fossil record.”
Elephants once roamed across much of North America. Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) were common in Canada and Alaska. Columbian mammoths (Mammuthus columbi) occupied the region that became Washington state to South Dakota and south into Mexico. Most mammoths went extinct about 11,500 years ago, but some isolated Arctic island populations of woolly mammoth persisted until 4,000 years ago.
Wow, What a lovely colour. Is it that colour because of the area they were found in?Today's fossils from my brachiopods sent to me by a Fossil Forum chap and just labelled as Rhynchotrema sp There were three of them, pretty nice specimens from the Cummingsville Formation, near Rochester, Minnesota.
They are from the top of the Middle Ordovician and thus 452 million years old.
I noticed immediately that they were two different species. All rhynchonellid (wrinkled) brachiopods, but clearly different in some respects. Mostly you can't tell rhynchonellids apart without checking internal features, not possible with these,but with a good deal of research into what species come from this location and studying the details of each of them. Luckily, there aren't many species recorded here and most of the similar looking ones are much smaller than my speciemens. By studying the number of costae (ribs) on the shell I am fairly certain that my friend was right and this first one is indeed Rhyncotrema; Rhynchotrema ainslei to be precise. Only this species found in rocks of this age around Rochester has so many ribs as this (30). It is only 1.4 cm across at the widest point.
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This made identification of the second specimen easy, at it is clearly the same species, but smaller and thinner , so is a juvenile as they don't develop the central sulcus and fold until they get older. So a juvenile Rynchotrema ainslei. 1 cm across.
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The final one proved much harder to id., and I'm still not sure. Two rynchonellids from here fit the bill, but based on shell shape, rib numbers, size and lack of growth lines I'm going for Rostricellula minnesotensis. Not only a different genus, but from a different family! So that makes me very happy. It has fewer ribs and is far more globose. 1.3 cm wide.
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