Scheduling conflicts, rain and cold weather seems to be the order for the month of March 2022! Finally, got to go on a group field trip to North Alabama to hunt Carboniferous/Mississippian Period Marine Fossils to end this month. Getting up early isn't fun at all, but when you are with your hunting buddies and get to hang with them and others it turns out to be a fun day of discovery. When we arrived at our designated meeting site, there were a lot of folks who showed up for this excursion. There was a caravan to the site. Once, we had the talk we were free to hunt within the boundaries of the site. You couldn't ask for a gorgeous day considering most weekends, it was sunny, not a cloud in the sky. It was cold though and it didn't help that the wind was gusting at times to the point where I lost my footing a few times on flat ground!
I discovered that the hundreds of piles of rock around the area were different, some new, freshly dumped there, and others that had been dumped years ago. It was the older piles that I paid attention to... it was there the stone had time to weather from the main slabs where fossils loosened and fallen out from them! Crinoids, lots of em' as well as Blastoids, Brachiopods and hash plates consisting of Archimedes/Fenestella!
I rarely find Crinoids other than the 3D stems and segments of ones when I'm out in the field. In this place I found more than all my hunting days combined, some full and other in pieces like the ones pictured above.
My coolest finds of the day were the 3D Crinoid Flowerette called a Phanocrinus bellulus pictured above. The before and after picture of the 3D before gluing. The small button like object in the middle picture is the bottom of the Crinoid that holds the arms called a Calyx. The last picture was in a slab of rock that weighed more than a hundred pounds, so a picture had to do.
Blastoids are one of my favorite hunted Mississippian Period fossils and probably popular among fossil hunters in general. Some are found in 3D form, others found in hash plates and some smashed beyond recognition... here are a few I found that day.
Another favorite of mine are the hash plates. This process happens when dead organisms pile upon each other on the ocean floor packed tightly when sediment covers them. These two hash plates come from different areas of the state. One is a two color white to beige and the other is a two color gray to blue tint.
Oops! I forgot to add images of the wildlife found on the site. I encountered two nesting sites with clutches of eggs from the Killdeer bird. Those eggs are well camouflaged so stepping on them would of been easy and had to watch my steps! I found it humorous that these birds made use of the material around them including fossils seen in picture #1! Then there were the tracks made by them in the mud. With the right environment and chemical processes, these tracks could become trace fossils in a million or so years, how funny is that!
What a great hunt that day and ends March 2022 with some great finds! Being around people with like minds and just enjoying the fellowship, sunshine and gorgeous weather to boot. Hope to come back again soon!
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