Geobulletin alpha

The Basin That Keeps On Giving 

Once we’d found a basin with bone, we hit the area with a fine tooth comb, spending a week scouring the hillsides for more sites. In total we turned up a few fragmentary theropod bones, a very large upper leg bone in sandstone, some crocodile scutes, a few turtles, plant fossils, and one hillside with 42 … Continue reading The Basin That Keeps On Giving

Plant Fossils at Mesa Verde 

This plant fossils are on display at the Mesa Verde National Park as of August 2014. The area is rich in geological history going back 2 billion years. The national park was founded in 1906 to protect the Anasazi Native American sites found on the mesa tops, cliffs, and canyons. The exposed areas found in the park are from the Mesozoic Era, Cretaceous Period (about 100-78

Paleocene fossils from the Sentinel Butte formation 

The fossils that are found in the Sentinel Butte Formation of North Dakota always grab my eye when the I see them. Usually I see a piece of brown-tan shale with a Ginkgo leaf impression on it and I'm immediately drawn in.The Sentinel Butte formation was deposited as part of a large basin called the Williston Basin during the late Paleocene period (Thanetian stage). The portion of the formation that contains the fossils I am most interested in comes from isolated clay lenses deposited in [...]

Cottonwood Encounters 

Cottonwood leaf in mud.Cottonwoods are common in the American West, even in the drier parts (they often mean water's close by).  I was pleased to meet three on my recent trip in eastern Utah.  The first was an old friend.  The second I've seen occasionally and always loved for it’s beauty.  The third was a complete surprise – new to me even though it’s quite old. Cottonwoods lined the narrow road down Sheep Creek Canyon on the north side of the Uinta [...]

Fossil Algae from the Bertie formation in Canada. 

I'm a little surprised that I hadn't posted anything regarding some plant fossils I found last fall in Canada. These next few posts should rectify that starting with some humble Algae. The carbon coating on dolostone below is thought to be a fossil algae and was found in the Bertie formation at Ridgemont Quarry, Fort Erie, Canada. The Bertie formation is better known for it's Euryptid fauna but plant material is actually more rare.This was collected last fall from the Ridgemont Quarry which is [...]

A couple of Carboniferous plant fossils from Spain 

I'm cleaning out a folder of images on my computer and I found these pictures of some plants from the Carboniferous of Spain.The first specimen is of Neuropteris ovataThe second specimen is Annularia stellataBoth specimens come from near La Magdalena in the state of León, Spain. They are estimated to be from the Stephanian B stage (of the Carboniferous in Western Europe which correlates to the Kasimovian stage of the ICS and the upper Pennsylvanian period (Missourian stage) in North America. [...]

More plant fossils from the Florissant formation 

Here are some more plant fossils from the Florissant formation that I found 20 years ago.This is only a partial leaf but it reminds me of an alder treePine needleSome sort of evergreen foliage I think.Fossil reedsBoth halves of a partial oak leafThe Florissant formation is the remains of a temporary lake that is dated to the Eocene period (Priabonian stage) and is located in Colorado.If you want a good book with pictures of some spectacular fossils that have been found in the Florissant [...]

Plant fossils from the Florissant formation 

A number of years ago I had the opportunity to collect the Florissant formation at a pay quarry outside of Florissant National Monument. I found a number of interesting fossils which I will show here and in upcoming posts. Today I have some plant material in the form of various leaves.Juniper?These next couple look like Willow (?) leavesSome MetasequoiaI'm not sure what this is, a fern of some sort?The Florissant formation is a layer of paper shale that was lain down in a temporary lake in a [...]

Zamites feneonis fossil cycad from France 

I don't have many plant fossils from the Mesozoic era so I was pleased when I received a specimen of Zamites feneonis in a recent trade. Zamites was a genera of Cycad that lived during the upper Jurassic period (Kimmeridgian stage) near the coast of the Tethys ocean in what is now alpine France (the Jura mountains) near Geneva. This fossil came from a site near the "Orbagnoux deposit" which is a well known and studied occurrence of Kerogen (an early stage in the formation of Hydrocarbons). [...]

Pararaucaria patagonica Cone Fossil 

These plant fossils are very interesting showing conifer cones of the Pararaucaria patagonica.  These plants existed in the Middle Jurassic (Callovian - 160 million years ago). Fossils found in the Santa Cruz Province of Argentina.  One of the cones has been cut in two and its flat sides are polished.Thanks to Mark Palatas for letting me photograph these specimens in his

Carnegie Museum of Natural History 

Recently, I got to visit the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and spent a number of hours there.  It is a great place to visit if you like natural history museums.  The displays of dinosaurs and minerals are excellent.  They have a transparent wall where the fossil preparers can be observed working in the PaleoLab.  During my visit, they appeared to be working on a dinosaur from Argentina and another group was looking for teeth in gravel under a microscope. Museum [...]

Headed home 

Brooke still had some plant fossils to collect, so Tim and I spent the day sightseeing and packing to leave. Wyoming is beautiful country, and as on past trips I find that I have lots of interesting pictures that never made it into a blog post.As much as I enjoy coming to Wyoming, I always find myself eager to return to Virginia. I began this trip with a reference to Stan Rogers’ song Northwest Passage, and as we prepare to leave in the morning I find the last verse just as relevant:How, [...]

Age of the Dinosaur 

At the Natural History Museum in London the dinosaurs are currently undergoing a long-overdue dusting-down. This might disappoint you or your irritating, shrieking sprogling(s) should you visit, but not to worry - there's a temporary exhibition on until September 4 that promises plenty of Mesozoic action. It's entitled 'Age of the Dinosaur', and circumstantially I happen to have been twice. Here's a run-down. (Awesome Tarbosaurus, below, from the exhibition.)Essentials first - it'll cost you [...]

Plant Taphonomy 

Plants can be preserved in the geologic record in various ways: as a mould, as compression/impression fossils, as permineralized fossils and even as unaltered plant remains.- A compression fossil forms simply by plant remains that became embedded and buried by accumulating sediments. The water is squeezed out and the plant flattened. The original organic can be conserved as thin carbonaceous film forming a silhouette of the original plant or lost completely. In this case the rocks preserve only [...]

World Conference on Paleontology and Stratigraphy 

Ya está disponible la segunda circular World Conference on Paleontology and Stratigraphy que se va a celebrar en Diciembre de este año en Tailandia. Una buena oportunidad para hacer turismo y ciencia. Os adjuntamos un poco de información y el enlaceThe World Conference on Paleontology and Stratigraphy (WCPS 2011) is an international conference held in order to celebrate His Majesty the King's 84th Anniversary on December 5, 2011. The conference is held by the Northeastern Research [...]

Earlham-Roanoke-VMNH field trip to Beckley 

On Saturday VMNH, Roanoke College, and Earlham College ran a joint field trip to the Boxley-Beckley Quarry. In spite of atrocious weather that hovered close to freezing all day with a mixture of rain, snow, and hail, 24 intrepid students, faculty, and volunteers spent the day collecting plant fossils and attempting to sort out some of the geologic history of the deposit.With so many people scouring the rock piles, we found a number of beautiful specimens that were frustratingly too large for us [...]

Cycadalean and Bennettitalean Foliage from the Triassic Madygen Lagerstätte 

Moisan, P., Voigt, S., Pott, C., Buchwitz, M., Schneider, J. W., and H. Kerp. 2011. Cycadalean and bennettitalean foliage from the Triassic Madygen Lagerstätte (SW Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia). Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 164:93-108. doi:10.1016/j.revpalbo.2010.11.008 Abstract - Plant fossils recently collected from the Middle–Late Triassic Madygen Formation in SW Kyrgyzstan, Central

French Plant Fossils 

Plant fossils from France.  Thanks to Herb for

Whorlies 

I don’t actually know all that much about plants. I took a number of biology courses in college and graduate school, but they were all in evolutionary theory or animal anatomy, with little or no botany. So all this work I’ve been doing lately on plant fossils from Beckley has had me scrambling through identification guides and paleobotany texts, and getting DB to sketch a lot of plant anatomy cross sections for me, to plug this glaring hole in my education. It also means that in many cases [...]

Asterophyllites 

Asterophyllites plant fossils of the Late Carboniferous Period found in Perry County,