Versailles State Park Pt 2 - Fun with Fossils

So as Allison mentioned in her last post, we spent a recent Saturday hiking around Versailles State Park looking for outcrops of the Waynesville and Liberty Formations (Katian; Richmondian). Many of the outcrops as you probably noticed and would have suspected, were covered in varying degrees of ice. It was also about 5 degrees C out, so we didn't feel like hiking through ice-cold streams was a wise idea. #JanuaryFieldWork As a result, most of our fossil hunting was restricted to the various cobble deposits along the stream's banks. There were plenty of goodies to be had there though!

This first image is of a rather sizable fossil that was seemingly randomly located along the trail approaching the stream. Not sure where it came from exactly BUT, it is rather neat! Here we have a large coral, likely a Tetradium (click the link for additional images of Tetradium from the Cincinnati Arch region).  

This image I am rather fond of. Here we have two different Ordovician bivalves, an Ambonychia  (link to the Ordovician Atlas page) on the right, and a Caritodens on the left.  Bivalved mollusks are typically aragonitic in composition which is why these clams are moldic (aragontie does not preserve as well as calcite) but what is notable about these critters is they are impressively large! My guess is these guys came from either the Wayensville or Liberty Formations.

This next image is from one of the outcrops Allison shared previously. To the immediate right of the scale bar is a jumble of brachiopods called Rafinesquina, very common to the Ordovician of the KY-IN-OH tristate. We often refer to these beds of jumbled Rafinesquina as 'cornflakes beds'. I imagine the name is self-explanatory!

This is another set of brachiopods from that same outcrop as the Rafinesquina, There are two primary brachs that you can see in this image, the one just right of center is an orthid brachiopod, likely a type of Hebertella.

Lastly a nice view of the iced lake as we were hiking back to our car.

All in all, it was a fun day hunting for outcrops and fossils and I look forward to getting out in the field more and sharing with you our discoveries!

Versailles State Park

This past weekend Christopher and I, with our friend Kyle of the Dry Dredgers, took advantage of the nice weather and head out into the field. We made our way to Indiana, lead by Kyle, with the objective of viewing some late Ordovician exposures. 

Waynesville/Liberty (Upper Ordovician) outcrop along the cut bank of the stream

A lot of ice on the stream and outcrops, but still some nice exposures. #JanuaryFieldWork

Notice the distinct blue color of the shale, common to shales of Waynesville and Liberty Formations

View from the top of the hill we hiked up after following streams in search of outcrops