| Today Me and Roz headed west with a geologic map in hand and some old references. | ||
| The very first stop was an abandoned shale pit. Unfortunately this turned out to be completely devoid of fossils. Not a single dang one to be found. The lower shale part is a section of Mineral Wells formation and the top sandstone is Hog Mountain sandstone. | ||
|
|
|
| After this we headed further west and crawled along an old back road near the Brazos and found three small but productive little exposures. | ||
| Here we found all the crinoid cups pieces similar to Ethelocrinus crinoids (lots of bumps). I also found a bit of a large Conularid. | ||
 |
 |
Juresania brachiopod (Roz)
|
Juresania brachiopod (Roz) |
||
| The ground is littered with red nodules containing abundant large brachiopods which I did not collect. There are also hash plates filled with snails, brachiopods and crinoids. Roz gathered lots of this. | |||
 |
(pic by Roz) |
||
| This is one of Roz's hash plates and it's a cornucopia of carboniferous critters! . These snails are ONLY about 1/4 to 1/8 inch long. | |||
hash plate (Roz)
|
hash plate (Roz) |
hash plate (Roz) |
|
Leda bellastriata / Phestia clam.
|
Leda bellastriata / Phestia clam
(same) |
Leda bellastriata / Phestia clams. |
|
Nucula type clam (Roz)
|
Nucula type clam (Roz) |
Nucula (Nuculopsis) clam |
|
| This is some heavy limestone shelves separated by gray clay. The division between the two is pretty sharp. Here the clay has eroded underneath the massive limestone shelves which are falling forward. The fauna here was very different but equally interesting. | ||
 |
 |
|
Some cool unknown crinoid columnals. 3/4 inch wide.
|
(same) |
Composita brachiopods.  |
Caninia torquia coral? (ID from Finsley's book) |
Caninia torquia coral? (Roz) |
Neospirifer cameratus brachiopod |
Neospirifer cameratus brach. (same) |
||
