As the other thread seems mainly for help with identifying things, I thought I start this one as a gallery for photos of identified fossils. As a geologists who gets to see lots of fossils out in the field I have quite a few photos. Just a sampler for now, more come. These were all posted at Rationalia a while ago but the thread has gotten buried.


Early Cretaceous theropod (bipedal dinosaur) foot print (~130 million years).


Early Cretaceous sauropod (large quadruped dinosaur) footprints. Rear (larger) and front prints of same individual I think.


Single sauropod rear footprint. Note toenail marks at front.


The whole sauropod trackway. Astute creationists may be able spot evidence of accompanying man tracks, proving the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs.[/quote]

Early Ordovician (~475 my) trilobite fragments; mostly tails (the pygidium). Trilobites moulted as they grew, so most fossils are moult segments. Plus they are commonly broken up by currents and scavengers after death, so complete trilobites are relatively rare.


Part of huge Middle Ordovician (~465 my) trilobite. These are the thoracic segments. This was possibly complete, but the head is buried in the rock, and the tail has been eroded off.

Middle Devonian (~390 my) corals.


Close up of the above.


Late Devonian (~375 my) crinoids. Crinoids are echinoderms related to starfish and sea urchins, but grew attached on a stalk, with branching arms. These ones would have lived in water a couple of hundred metres deep.


Late Devonian (~375 my) straight-shelled nautiloids. Distant relatives of the modern nautilus; imagine squid-like tentacles coming out of the broader end of the shell. These are all aligned because the sea floor was dipping steeply away from an ancient reef; point up and heavy end down is the stable orientation.

Late Cambrian (~490 my) trilobite burrows (Rusophycus). You are looking at an ancient sandy seabed from the bottom up, which has been tilted up on end. The burrows would have been paired depressions, which have been filled in by sand to form a cast that appears as paired lobes. You may just be able to see that they are also peppered with vertical burrows.


Similar to above.


Similar to above.


Similar, but these marks are trilobite scratchings which occur along with the bottoms of U-shaped burrows (the short ridges) cutting down from the beds above – remembering that this is all upside down.


Same slab as above. The crack-like features are indeed cracks from the surface drying out between inundations, probably on the upper and rarely inundated part of a tidal flat. The finding of such desiccated layers at numerous levels throughout a deposit should be a serious problem for creationists who want all such strata to be the result of The Great Flood – but no problem at all – just ignore the evidence.

Some MIssissippian (Fayetteville Shale) micro conch Cephalopods from near my home in north Central Arkansas.



A few teeth from the Hell Creek in South Dakota (Firesteel member, Latest Cretaceous)

Top: Dromeosaur shed
Middle: Shed Crocodilian
Bottom: Crocodilian non-shed (note root material attached to enamel)



A nice Hoploscaphites (species unknown) macro conch with a micro conch embedded in opening to living chamber, Pierre Shale, South Dakota (latest Creatceous)



RS

That's not on skye is it?

Below is the Scapula (right) and Radius of an Ankylosaurus magniventris, Hell Creek Formation (FIresteel memeber, latest Cretaceous)



Note the terrible condition with extreme fracturing and mudstone matrix (a real joy to recover). No other material was found of this dinosaur.

Below is the forelimb of an Edmontosaurus annectens after preparation in the display case of the museum where I was the former director. Top view. (Again Hell Creek, Firesteel member latest Creataceous).



Below is the leg (left I think) and most distal vertebrate elements (tail) of another Edmontosaurus annectens after preparation. (Again Hell Creek, Firesteel member latest Creataceous).



Below is the nasal elements of a Triceratops horridus after preparation in view from the top. (Again Hell Creek, Firesteel member latest Creataceous).



RS

Below is the view of an Edmontosaurus annectens scapula (shoulder blade) as it was seen almost to the point before jacketing. Hell Creek formation, Firesteel member latest Cretaceous.



Here is a piss poor photo of the very same specimen after preparation. Sadly the very dorsal portion had rotted away. This area is the most thin section of this part of the bone. ALso there is no size chart but most of these adult bones are about 2 feet long.



These photos were all taken before quality digital camera existed, and sadly I never bothered to expose more film when I had the opportunity.

Hopefully y'all can still enjoy the images.

RS

Alnilam wrote:

That's not on skye is it?

No, it's near Broome in Western Australia. The sauropod prints are from the same general area too.

Not as spectacular as the above, and not as old, but here are some sedge roots (so I guess) from the Miocene in a lacustrine limestone. The site is about halfway up Bat Mountain, the southeasternmost block of the Funeral Mountains near Death Valley, California. It's in a quite diverse set of rock units collectively known as the Titus Canyon formation.

Finally, this is what I think is a sponge from near the Pennsylvanian/Permian boundary -- could be either the Bird Spring Formation or the Toroweap from Southern Nevada. It was loose in a wash which cut both units, so I couldn't be completely sure of its source. This is a poor picture, and I think I need to take some more. It's very well preserved, with some of the puffiness retained, although it doesn't show well in this photo. The weathered surface shows a lot of fine detail that the image doesn't.

No, it's near Broome in Western Australia. The sauropod prints are from the same general area too.

That's good then I had went all the way over to skye to find prints that look exactly like that but the whole beach area was covered in impossible to shift seaweed. It was like it was super glued onto the rock and I couldn't shift it. I was so upset that I didn't get to see them. Apparently they only become visible after big storms and harsh sea's whipping off the seaweed. I saw what I thought was one but I'm not sure. It kind of looked like a really bad example of one but I didn't take a picture. I thought I saw some of the baby footprints that were there as well but it was also in a rock pool covered in seaweed and water

Alnilam wrote:

No, it's near Broome in Western Australia. The sauropod prints are from the same general area too.

That's good then I had went all the way over to skye to find prints that look exactly like that but the whole beach area was covered in impossible to shift seaweed. It was like it was super glued onto the rock and I couldn't shift it. I was so upset that I didn't get to see them. Apparently they only become visible after big storms and harsh sea's whipping off the seaweed. I saw what I thought was one but I'm not sure. It kind of looked like a really bad example of one but I didn't take a picture. I thought I saw some of the baby footprints that were there as well but it was also in a rock pool covered in seaweed and water

The theropod print in my photo is also rarely viewed. It is only exposed at very low tide, a few brief times per month. I have been going back and forth to Broome for work for a few years, but this (mid last year) is the first time I chanced it right.

These are great! Keep them coming.

Faithfree wrote:
You are looking at an ancient sandy seabed from the bottom up, which has been tilted up on end. The burrows would have been paired depressions, which have been filled in by sand to form a cast that appears as paired lobes. You may just be able to see that they are also peppered with vertical burrows.

Just noticed the thread. That's my favorite so far. Amazing.
I'll have a few weaker contributions soon.

Fossil leaf (Daphnogene lanceolata)from the upper Oligocene of Enspel, Collection of the GDKE Rheinland-Pfalz, collection number PB1999_5755. When this leaf was examined it had become detached from the organic rich shale in which it had been preserved. It was put on a microscope slide and scanned in B&W at a high resolution (reduced here for web use). The red lines indicate two places where insect damage has occured, in both cases simple hole feeding (DT1). Scale bar is 1cm.

Susu,

Great photo and good to see you have arrived here!

RS

Very impressive leaf! I love it when the pics have the story to go along.
Here are pics of 2 more I have. I just started collecting them.
I'm not able to name species' unfortunately.

This is a (clam?) shell I found while skipping rocks on the beach in Ma, roughly 15 years ago. . It's the first fossil I ever found



Trilobite. I bought it at Ohio Caverns gift shop for $8.00 last fall.

A few more of my field photos; once again, previously posted in a buried thread on Rationalia.


Vertical cross-section through Neoproterozoic (~800 my) stromatolites. Stromatolites are found in limestone and other carbonate rocks and form by the sediment-binding activity of mats of sticky cyanobacteria (“blue-green algae”). Cyanobacteria and their relatives were the pinnacle of life for much of Earth history, and were responsible for the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere that ultimately allowed the development of “higher” forms of life.


Vertical cross-section through a single large stromatolite – the successive growth lines, a bit like tree rings, are clearly visible.


Modern stromatolites growing in Shark Bay in Western Australia. Imagine a vertical cross-section through one of these and you would have something similar to the previous photo.

Ah, Shark Bay! On my "to-do" list when I'm done working. Blazing sun and an Ice cold Rum-n-Coke, and nothing to do but look.

RS