Friday, September 24, 2010

Aquia Fm. visit part 2

My previous post explained my trip and the local geology so this one will be about the fossils I found.

I'll start with the greenish oysters that I left off with in my last post. These seems to be two different species.

The first is Ostrea compressirostra which is identified by it's wide flattened valves:






The second is Gryphaeostrea vomer which has a fuller profile than O. compressirostra:





As Oysters are wont to do, it's easy to find the shells clustered and growing on/with each other:






Some sections of the sediments have been cemented with leached iron from overlying sediments. This seems to have been the case with a layer that is profuse with Turritella fossils as the internal molds are very abundant on the beach resembling corkscrews.



Here is a chunk of matrix with a Turritella internal mold preserved in situ.



Some clam shells had been preserved in the same way and their internal molds were occasionally found as well:




One of the more fascinating fossils were the spiderweb like remains of the shell boring sponge Cliona. They had been preserved as though hovering above the internal shell molds like a net holding a precious cargo:





More Sand Shark teeth were found with one poking out of the cliff face:



My find for the day was this extinct Mackerel shark tooth Otodus obliquus that I found lying next to my backpack.





This site was very productive for me on this trip and I will definitely visit it again in the near future when the tides are low.

1 comment:

  1. Wow! Beautiful turritella molds! I hardly find them around here, and they don't ever look that good! I think in one of those pictures you've found more than I've found total in hours of searching! Still working on finding a shark's tooth.

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