Ordovician in Tennessee (Help!)

[DWhatley]

Global warming must mean local cooling

I think the official name has been changed to Global Climate Change to more correctly identify the oddities in weather.

It's just like being there, isn't it

Not exactly, unless I pretend the skinned up knuckles from my LR are from digging around in the rocks.

 

[Terri]

Hi Kevin, I'm afraid this will be non- ceph, but it is near the stromatoporoids that I thought might be cephs I took this pic. when I found the sponge reefs posted earlier in this thread, this is the bottom of a huge slab hanging out over the rock face that the reefs are on. If my memory serves me about 20 ft overhead. To give a little scale the hour glass shape in the left upper side of pic. may be a little longer than my hammer (guesstimate). I'm wondering if these could be sponge or just some odd stuff on the bottom of a rock?
I'll have to re-check but I think that location was the Nashville Group; Bigby-Cannon Limestone.

 

[Architeuthoceras]

It looks like the bottom of whatever was growing on the sea floor, probably those Stromatoporoids.

Was it foggy that day?

 

[Terri]

Terriably foggy

 

[DWhatley]

A very little photoshopping will make the fog evaporate.

 

[Terri]

Thanks D, it really wasn't foggy at all, just a bad picture. I guess I'm going to have to learn how to photoshop I would rather be fossil hunting

 

[DWhatley]

Actually for that kind of over exposure issue, any simple photo program (including Google's free Picasa ) will offer enough really simple correction to sharpen the image and remove the "fog" in 2 minutes tops. Bad focus, however is not something easily adjusted.

 

[Terri]

Actinocerid??

 

[Architeuthoceras]

Yes!

Nice find, looks like a big one. Glad you could get out and do a little fossil hunting.

 

[Terri]

Well, I'm learning something or it was a really good guess! This next fossil is really getting on my nerves, if there were no ammonoids in the ordivician (correct me if I'm wrong) then this must be a gastropod?

 

[Architeuthoceras]

It's kinda flat on top and the whorls expand downward, yea it's a gastropod, looks like Maclurites.

 

[Terri]

Thanks Kevin!

 

[Architeuthoceras]

Ammonoids first appear in abundance in Devonian rocks, so this is a little old for them. Most fossils of chambered cephalopod shells will show some sign of the septa, without septa they are probably gastropods. Maclurites is a very common fossil in Ordovician rocks, some of them on THIS search look a lot like yours Terri. And THIS old thread shows one I found, and was wondering if it was a cephalopod.

 

[Terri]

Thanks again Kevin, that is one of the many reasons I love this forum, I always get a response and information. I also feel so much better knowing that at one time you also suspected a gastropod of being an ammonoid.

 

[Architeuthoceras]

Terri, you don't know how many little deer drops I've picked up thinking they were goniatites.

Many a fossil has been a cephalopod until the evidence shows otherwise.