View allAll Photos Tagged fossil
I've always thought fossils were fascinating... after all here is a small moment of life (actually death) from millions of years ago captured in rock and surviving through the eons. It also reminds me of Belloq, "who knows Dr. Jones, maybe even someday you'll be worth something".
Fossil Flower (unknown species) preserved in the Green River Formation. Flowers are very rare in the fossil record. The taxonomy of fossil flowers is highly uncertain. Detailed identication is usually impossible because the fragile parts necessary to make an ID do not survive burial and fossilization. The Green River Formation is a laminated limestone precipitated from calcium-rich waters. The limestone is interbedded with many thin layers of volcanic ash and mudstone. Fossil Butte National Monument. Near Kemmerer, Lincoln Co., Wyo.
View of the canyon above Fossil Creek from Fossil Creek Road (FR 708) in 2006. The flume (now removed) that once fed water from the diversion dam at the springs to the Irving power plant is visible running along the length of the canyon. This section of road is currently (2016) closed due to safety issues caused by rock falls along the cliff above the road.
Fossil Creek is one of only two National Wild & Scenic rivers in Arizona and is fed by springs coming from the cliffs of the Mogollon Rim. Over 30 million gallons of water are discharged each day at a constant 70°F. The high mineral content leaves travertine dams and deposits, giving rise to fossil-like features.
In 2005, Arizona Public Service (APS) decommissioned the Fossil Creek Dam and Flume, restoring full flows to Fossil Creek. The diversion dam at Fossil Springs was partially removed, allowing the creek to flow freely. The flume that once carried water to the power plant was disassembled. The Irving power plant and other buildings around the site were removed. Traces of history remain visible at the Irving site and along the Flume Trail in the form of old building foundations, rock work along the flume's maintenance road, and concrete pilings that once supported the flume.
Photo by Deborah Lee Soltesz, November 26, 2006. Credit: Coconino National Forest, U.S. Forest Service. Learn more about Fossil Creek Wild and Scenic River on the Coconino National Forest.
This is a stitched panorama. Some portions of the edges (mainly the sky) were edited to fill in areas that were not photographed.
YELL-92020: This head of a roughly 520 million year old Ptychopariid trilobite (YELL-92020) is one among many identified from the Pilgrim Limestone, on Mt. Holmes in Yellowstone National Park. Trilobite order Ptychopariid, was abundant during the early Cambrian and became extinct at the end of the Ordovician (~444 million years ago). But, at the end of the Permian all trilobites vanished, along with over 95% of all marine life.
Collecting any natural resources, including rocks and fossils, is illegal in Yellowstone.
Photo by Megan Norr;
March 2016;
Catalog #20801d;
Original #YELL_92020
This is a small fossil found at the "Brickyard" (Rattlesnake Hill) in Newcastle. I didn't see any rattlesnakes that day, but they probably saw me. North Texas is a great place to hunt for fossils, especially along road cut embankments and rocky riverbeds. This one was wrapped in a few layers of paper towel and tucked into a pocket of my small camera bag. I usually carry some soft wrapping material with me on my day hikes, and make sure there's empty space in my bag to accommodate small fossils or bits of petrified wood found along the way.
DSC-7138
Fossil Winged Fruit (Lagokarpus lacustris). This specimen is the holotype for the species, first described in 2010. No modern fruit exhibits the same characteristics. Further classification is pending. This plant lived during Eocene time, about 50 million years ago. These fossils are preserved in laminated limestone precipitated from calcium-rich waters. The limestone is interbedded with many thin layers of volcanic ash and mudstone. Fossil Butte National Monument. Near Kemmerer, Lincoln Co., Wyo.
Mammuthus columbi (Falconer, 1857) - fossil Columbian mammoth skeleton (cast) from the Pleistocene of Utah, USA. (public display, Sternberg Museum of Natural History, Hays, Kansas, USA)
From museum signage:
"Columbian mammoths roamed throughout the United States and south to Mexico during the Ice Age 1,900,000 to 10,000 years ago.
During the same time period, woolly mammoths were living in Canada and the northern United States, closer to the great glaciers. The woolly species was adpated to living in Arctic tundra conditions.
Columbia and woolly mammoths became extinct when the Ice Age ended. Mammoths living in Eurasia and Africa evolved into today's elephants.
Another Ice Age animal that looked much like a mammoth was the mastodon. Both mammoth and mastodons had trunks and tusks. However, mastodons were smaller and their teeth were more "bumpy".
It is not unusual for Kansans to find teeth, tusks, and bones of mammoths and mastodons in sand and gravel deposits.
The teeth of mammoths and mastodons are easily told apart. Mammoth teeth are flat on top, with ridges of hard enamel. These teeth were adapted to grinding grass, much like you would grind wheat between two stones.
Mastodon teeth have several large bumps. These bumps would mesh with the humps of the tooth above or below it, crushign the food in the mouth. Mastodons ate branches, bark, and leaves, so their teeth were well suited to crush this material for digestion.
This skeleton is cast from a specimen discovered in 1988 at the Huntington Reservoir in Utah. It is important to science for several reasons:
- the intestines contained small twigs, fir needles, oak and maple leaves, and grasses - its last supper.
- radiocarbon dating show that it lived about 11,000 years ago.
- most mammoth specimens are found in plains environments, but this one was found at a very high elevation in the Wasatch Mountains.
- late Paleolithic human artifacts found nearby include stone tools and a complete projectile point.
- a giant short-faced bear, mastodon, horse, and bison were found near this mammoth.
"
Classification: Animalia, Chordata, Vertebrata, Mammalia, Proboscidea, Elephantidae
Locality: Huntington Reservoir, northeastern Sanpete County, Wasatch Mountains, central Utah, USA
-------------------
See info. at:
Title: 'Craig' [Crag] fossils
Creator: James Sowerby (1757-1822) for William Smith (1769-1839)
Description: Depictions of characteristic fossils found in the Crag stratum.
Source: Smith, William, 'Strata Identified by Organized Fossils, Containing Prints on Colored Paper of the Most Characteristic Specimens in Each Stratum', London: W Arding, (1816-1819).
Smith was the first person to recognise the importance of fossils in identifying strata of equivalent age, thus enabling rocks to be correlated across country. His work as a surveyor and engineer involved him travelling up and down the country during which he accumulated a large collection of ‘characteristic’ fossils of the British strata. By 1815, his financial problems (caused in part by a bad investment in a quarrying concern in Bath) led to the sale of his precious fossil collection to the British Museum. This publication is part catalogue/part explanation of his collection and theories, the illustrations (by the natural history illustrator James Sowerby) printed on coloured paper to correlate with the geological colouring on his 1815 map of England and Wales.
Format: Hand coloured engraving
Image reference: 23-04
To purchase a copy of the above image, visit our website at: www.geolsoc.org.uk/Library-and-Information-Services/Pictu...
To find out more about the Library of the Geological Society, click here: www.geolsoc.org.uk/library
Purple owl's clover (Castilleja exserta ssp. venusta) along with Bigelow coreopsis (Leptosyne bigelovii) and some form of Pincushion (Chaenactis sp.) growing South of Fossil Falls, along HWY395, North of Little Lake, Inyo County, California
Caution! This is a 2-dimensional image taken with my craptastic cell phone camera.
I found a good place to go fossil hunting. I'm not sure what the name is of this old plant, but this example was one of the best preserved I have ever seen of them.
Fossil stromatolites in a block of Bass Limestone, in Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. (NPS Photo by Cassi Knight, Paleontology Guest Scientist)
Fossil-fish drawing (8 x 15 cm.)
Repository: Ernst Mayr Library, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University
Call number: bfAg 168.60.7e
Fossil Fuel playing somewhere in Marin County, California.
Hear them play
(1) Daguerre, collection de fossiles, daguerréotype, 1839 (coll. CNAM). (2) Couverture du National Geographic, mai 2009, mammouth congelé.
Fossil Reticulated Beetle (Cupedidae fam.) in the Green River Formation. This specimen lived during Eocene time, about 50 million years ago. The original color pattern is preserved on the elytra. Fossil Butte National Monument. Near Kemmerer, Lincoln Co., Wyo.
The forces of nature split this rock after I had put it in my garden border, revealing the bright, unweathered interior of the rock. There are also a couple of fossil shells on this otherwise relatively nondescript rock.
Paleontology GIP Kelly Hattori found a fossil leaf within a slab of mudstone - Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado. (NPS Photo by Kelly Hattori, GIP)
Title: Green Sand fossils
Creator: James Sowerby (1757-1822) for William Smith (1769-1839)
Description: Depictions of characteristic fossils found in the Green Sand stratum.
Source: Smith, William, 'Strata Identified by Organized Fossils, Containing Prints on Colored Paper of the Most Characteristic Specimens in Each Stratum', London: W Arding, (1816-1819).
Smith was the first person to recognise the importance of fossils in identifying strata of equivalent age, thus enabling rocks to be correlated across country. His work as a surveyor and engineer involved him travelling up and down the country during which he accumulated a large collection of ‘characteristic’ fossils of the British strata. By 1815, his financial problems (caused in part by a bad investment in a quarrying concern in Bath) led to the sale of his precious fossil collection to the British Museum. This publication is part catalogue/part explanation of his collection and theories, the illustrations (by the natural history illustrator James Sowerby) printed on coloured paper to correlate with the geological colouring on his 1815 map of England and Wales.
Format: Hand coloured engraving
Image reference: 23-08
To purchase a copy of the above image, visit our website at: www.geolsoc.org.uk/Library-and-Information-Services/Pictu...
To find out more about the Library of the Geological Society, click here: www.geolsoc.org.uk/library
Trilobites appeared suddenly in some of the earliest rocks of the fossil record, with no intermediate ancestors. This sudden appearance of a great variety of advanced, fully developed creatures is called the Cambrian Explosion. Trilobites are especially interesting because they have complex eyes, which would need a lot of evolutionary progression. However, there is no evidence of any evolution leading up to the Cambrian Explosion, and that is a serious dilemma for evolutionists.
Trilobites are now thought to be extinct, although it is possible that similar creatures could still exist in unexplored parts of deep oceans.
Rapid formation of strata - latest evidence:
www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/
See fossil of a crab unchanged after many millions of years:
www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/12702046604/in/set-72...
Fossil museum: www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157641367196613/
GIP Julie Rozen cleaning fossils with a Junior Ranger at Fossil Butte National Monument, Wyoming. (NPS Photo by Julie Rozen, GIP)ulie Rozen, GIP)
Ali explaining how much of the Midwest was once covered by a shallow sea more than 300 million years ago! Hence, seashell fossils.
Detail of a fossil found near Dunhampstead in Worcestershire. Found on the surface of a grassy field, on the ridge os Permian/Rhaetic beds. Each button c 1cm diameter. Rock is shiny, brittle, seems compacted, varies in colour between pale fawn to pinkish peach, several pieces like this found. From the same field as the reddish sandstone containing Lycopod stems. www.flickr.com/photos/84265607@N00/1769806587/
Detail of previous pic
Help with identification much appreciated.