What else has been going on

Some of these¹



have been doing some of this,



while nearby, this² was found:



Toothwort³ mania began in earnest.



We had visitors⁴.



This



gave way to this⁵.



There was also this⁶, which is not the same.



And neither is this⁷.



Some excavation⁸ was going on.



But was apparently not satisfactory.



Ahhh it's almost trillium time⁹.



Tiny snails were observed, and also something else¹⁰ that I'm still pondering.



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¹Virginia Bluebells, Mertensia virginica
²See this earlier post if you're curious about the redrock fossils.
³Dentaria spp. Or is it all Cardamine now? I get confused.
⁴Canada Geese, Branta canadensis. I would say, "I know that you knew that already, I'm just trying to be consistent," but since there was a woman on a game show last night who did not know that the northern neighbor of the US is CANADA, for crying out loud, I'm not taking any chances.
⁵Hepatica or Liverleaf
⁶Rue Anemone, Thalictrum thalictroides
⁷Jacob's Ladder (Polemonium reptans) with Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica) flower
⁸I'm guessing Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus), but I'm not sure.
⁹Trailing Trillium, Trillium decumbens
¹⁰Little groups of tiny, tiny rocks are held together and to the larger rock surface like glue. Is something alive in there?

Fossil week, day 4

Alethopteris? Pecopteris? Neuropteris?

I think it's some type of seed fern, but a) the fossil isn't that clear, b) it's missing the top and bottom portions, and c) I think I'm in way over my head at this point in Fossil Week.

I believe I found this one at the in-laws' old lake house in Winston county. There was a nice little beach with lots of shale - great for onsite fossil hunting. But after pointing this out to a few of the prospective buyers, I realized that most people's standards of what constitutes a really cool house feature are just not the same as mine.

Fossil week, day 3

I haven't been much of a fossil nut until just lately. But I am something of a packrat.

When I was 10 or so, my friend who lived in Reece City (Etowah county) said, "Let's go pick up some fossils." We thought they were dinosaur bones, which they aren't, and I shudder now to think how close to the road (and the speeding cars) we were when we picked these up.

These are fossil Crinoid stems - most of them anyway. After looking at the picture I started wondering if maybe the one in the middle wasn't something different.

They're sometimes called sea lilies, which is confusing since they were not plants. They're echinoderms, related to the starfish (which is not a fish). Anyway, they floated around gracefully while anchored on stems like the above. The stem fragments survive in fossils a lot more than the rest of them.

Although that's the only time I've ever found them, they're apparently pretty common. And cheap. A whole box can be yours for only $3.40.

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Fossil links:

More about Crinoids here, here, here, and here.

An interesting fossil ID tool (ID by shape).

Some nice posters with line drawings of Pennsylvanian period fossils.

Fossil week, day 2

This one is one of my favorites - a pith cast of Calamites, the ancient horsetail tree. (Compare to images here and here.)

Like the fossils from yesterday, it's about 300 million years old.

Most of north central Alabama's fossils are from this Carboniferous period. (Map.) Here is a nice color-coded map for the whole US. (You can see part of Canada as well, although as usual it's shaded darker, as if nobody ever goes up there.)

My bad mistake with this fossil was not noting where I found it. But I believe it was either at my in-laws' old lake house (Smith Lake, Winston county) or at one of our old birdwatching spots (Jefferson county).

Fossil week

Updated: see below.

While posting recently about the rocks here, I mentioned that the red ones often contained plant fossils. By request, here they are.







I'll post more fossil pics later this week and try to come up with some IDs.

These are possibly leaves of Lycopods - Lepidophylloides maybe. Like this and this. The ancient lycopod tree had different types of leaves, and the grass-like ones were called Lepidophyllum. I believe that would put them in the Pennsylvanian period, about 300 million years ago.

But I'm not sure about that. I've never found any more entire leaf impressions than these. So if you know differently please tell me.

They could possibly be from the other clubmoss tree, the Sigillaria, or the horsetail tree, the Calamites. (They are all from roughly the same time period.)

Updated: I found this at the Virtual Paleontology Lab, which explains why the leaves can have a different scientific name than the rest of the plant:

Because we don't always know which leaves belong to which seeds when they are first discovered, we use the convention of form taxa. When organs are found isolated (not in organic connection), each type of leaf and seed is given its own binomial name (genus and species name according to the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature), without making any assumption about what belongs to what. To use the example discussed by Oliver and Scott (1904), leaves were described as Lyginopteris (genus only for brevity), seeds as Lagenostoma, and stems as Lyginodendron. The similarity of the first syllable gives a hint that the describing paleobotanists (others besides Oliver and Scott) suspected some relationship, but were unable to make a strong inference link. The last syllable of each name gives a hint to the organ type: "dendron" = stem, "pteris" is often used for frond-like foliage, "stoma" = seed. However, after Oliver and Scott's recognition of the unique glands on Lagenostoma lomaxi and species in the other organ form genera, they were able to make the whole-plant link with greater confidence. The whole plant then takes the name of the organ first described, in this case Lyginopteris. When you are writing, take care to make clear whether you are talking about form taxa (organs) or whole-plants.

Also, this is what the globe looked like 300 million years ago. Plate tectonics! Continental drift! Gotta love it.

If I'm right about what these are, the fossils pre-date dinosaurs. Pretty cool.

Here's what it's thought to have looked like around here at that time, more or less. There are modern relatives of some of these ancient plants, such as the plant-rescue ground cedar I tried (unsuccessfully, as it turns out) to transplant here last year.

Sue the T-rex? Sniff. Ho hum. My fossils are older than that. Almost five times older! Now if I could only find somebody to pay me $8 million for them...

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P.S. I have learned so much since I started writing this blog - looking all this stuff up so I can pretend like I know what I'm talking about.

Rocks in my head

Sometimes we find rocks made of rocks.



I tried to get a snapshot showing how rocky it is near the top of the hill.



But maybe this closeup of the old logging road bank shows it better. It's limestone at the bottom of the hill and sandstone near the top.



Hubby has started building these little rock towers everywhere.



The creek bed has huge boulders in some places, but this pebbly area is better for wading.



I made a little rock collection near the edge. The red ones often have plant fossils in them.



When I was a kid I was convinced that these were moon rocks.