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Udig fssils utah revies1/2/2023 ![]() I only got one photo in this morning of yesterday's finds:ĥ kinds of brachiopod, colonial coral, and horn coral. The last task was to try to get as much sand off of my person so that the rental car didn't look like I'd spent the day at the beach. The operator of the excavator was good! He lifted the jacket out and hauled it to the top of the space so that later retrieval will be much easier. There were only a few of us left and we all worked together to get a net under the large jacket, then hooked the net over the teeth of the bucket of the excavator. A little into the day, I found a gar tooth a little later I found fish bones, including a fin spine.Īt the end of the day, a man driving a big excavator came around and asked if we needed anything lifted out of the quarry. In day one, I was assigned a 1-meter square to work, that had part of a gomphothere vertebra showing. They have found LOTS of animals, including such otter, gomphothere, fish, birds, turtles, a saber-toothed cat that takes the age of this taxon from 1 million years back to 5 million years ago! Eventually the FLMNH was contacted and began excavating in the fall of 2015. The landowner's granddaughter found bones in it while looking for arrow heads. This quarry was first opened to mine road bed material. My application was approved, so I'm in for four days of digging 5 million year old dirt. I saw an article in The Fossil Project newsletter and decided to see if I could join the team of volunteers for a few days. ![]() The Florida Museum of Natural History FLMNH is digging Miocene strata at the Montbrook Site, in northwestern Florida. Both the turtle shell and limb bone have been removed so either I, or the next one assigned to the square can look for more. Meanwhile, I continued clearing my square. Also a juvenile, this and the other tooth add to the possibility that this spot was an oxbow of a river, collecting parts that washed downstream. Then Art Poyer found a rhino tooth, in nearly the same level of the quarry. It is likely the tooth, the cusp of a molar, of a juvenile bear! Terri Tydings - in the red shirt, standingĪround this time of day, a tooth was found that caused quite the stir. He mentioned looking for ways to promote ancient history (paleontology, geology, etc.) studies by young people, perhaps using the most recent technologies available. He is planning a trip to the Badlands of North Dakota this summer. Bruce McFadden, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Florida Museum at the University of Florida in Gainsville. It seems, though, that veterans of this dig had gotten to the point where they felt "Oh, another turtle." That's okay - it is my first turtle!Īt lunch, I met Dr. I found gar scales, fish spines, another turtle toe, and other shell fragments while clearing that space. I spent a good part of the morning working around this turtle, finding bits of things. ![]() I kept moving sand and realized I'd found turtle. My tool struck something hard, and I could just see something between sand grains that was whitish. Today there are several commercial quarries operating in the Wheeler Shale including U-Dig where you can dig your own trilobites.Back in the sand this morning, I started cleaning around that fragile bone I found yesterday. Walcott awarded the areas limestone rocks and clay their title, but long before Walcott, Native Americans in the region regarded the trilobites with respect and appreciation. The Wheeler Shale, a remnant of an ancient embayment where the ocean intruded into Utah, is perched in the strikingly arid and steep terrain of the House Range. Trilobites were tough, dominating, and diverse- yet they did not make it beyond the mass extinction at the end of the Permian (250 mya). Rapid burial and underwater landslides helped to preserve a snapshot of their life on the edge. ![]() There must have been a significant food web- which is an ecological conundrum at this time.Įlrathia kingi lived in a sunless world whose primary producers may have used energy sources that still remain a mystery. ![]() The size and prolific presence of Elrathia kingii is extraordinary for an inhabitant an exaerobic world. Elrathia proves that adaptation to such inhospitable environments had developed as early as the Middle Cambrian (509-497 mya). Trilobites, one of the earliest arthropods, first appeared in the Early Cambrian (521 mya) They are relics of the Cambrian Explosion. Trilobites being collected in the Wheeler Shale. ![]()
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