I’ve gotten over my lazyness, pulled out the tripod and taken a macro close up of the fossil I found in my backyard, and I’ve labeled the bits I am curious about. There’s a penny in the photo for scale, and if you click on this thumbnail you will see the larger version. If you know more about Pennsylvanian period fossils, which is my guess for these, please drop a comment as I’m inexpert and these are my best guesses after looking at common fossils found in this area. (Note: what I have labeled “Nautilus?” is more likely an ammonoid.)
After examining the odd lump of rock mentioned in the previous post with the magnifier from my Compact Oxford Dictionary I found all kinds of fossils.
So it’s not a fossil, it’s fossils. It’s crusted with Echinoids, Crinoids, and what appear to be some flatworm things (were there segmented varieties?) round things, and what appears to be some sort of pre-nautilus critter, with soft parts partially fossilized. The photo to the right has an L-Square next to the fossil for scale, and below is a gallery of the miniature fossilized sea life coating the sandstone or limestone rock. (I’m not an expert, and could use some help here with the labels if you know what these are. Most of the external parts of this appear crusted with crinoid junk as a previous commenter noted, I found attachment points in a couple places, perhaps some plates…)
The rock around here is all carboniferous age, and the echinoids and crinoids put this in the Pennsylvanian period of the Paleozoic era, so about 323 to 290 million years old.
Here’s the gallery:
here is the fossil viewed from top down with an L square for scale
On the left you see an impression from a soft body or plant, in the center a spiral shell, and on the right an echinoid
Apologies for the lighting relics in this, upper left is an echinoid, middle appears to be plant matter, and lower right is a round fossil that I haven’t a clue about
This came out blurry so I used it to label the fossils
This one I’m unsure of, I can’t find it with magnifying glass, this only shows up when the photo is enlarged greatly
Appears to be a flat, or flattened worm. This wraps around an edge of the limestone or sandstone
