take plenty of photos - and enjoy!

I clicked on the painting ("150 years" etc) to see if the painting was actually painted 150 years ago ... because if it was, and was accurate, it would show the extent of a century and a half of weathering/erosion ... alas - a different painting showed up, and no details about either ...

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I find it to be an uplifting experience. (groan)

That uplift was caused by the quartz monzonite batholith to the west and a great deal of faulting has occurred in the Paleozoic rocks on the batholith's descending eastern front wherein lies my(?) outcrop.

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(By the way, I hate it that so many papers in the areas of planetary science and geology are not easily available to the dreaded "non-subscribers". It is like they are screaming at me: "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH". Good, I feel better now.)

"Quaerendo inventis"

Ah, like facultative anaerobe. I've heard of that.
In fact I very occasionally respire anareobically myself...
(oh- checking up on Wikipedia. I see that is actually 'fermentation'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermentation_(biochemistry)
Fermentation occurs in mammalian muscle during periods of intense exercise where oxygen supply becomes limited, resulting in the creation of lactic acid
)

So a facultative photosynthetic organism would be capable of photosynthesis under the right conditions, but would not be obliged to use it to live. I see...

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New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

This will be my third trip there. My mother just bought me a digital camera for my birthday, so I'll be taking many many pictures. I also have a four drive vehicle, so I can take the off the beaten track trails.

Okay guys, I'm still having dizziness issues from my new hypertension meds and reading and typing seems to exacerbate it, just wanted to say before I log out for a while and nap is I'm going to try to get some pictures up tonight. While the big fossil isn't any trouble to find as I keep tripping over the darn thing, finding both havles of the copralite is a little more difficult to locate in my pack rat-like pile o' wierd stuff. Yes, I hate to say it, but I seem to be having difficulty getting my poop together.

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

I'm sorry. Did someone mention dinosaur poop?

From the dinosaur digs in Utah (given to me by a geologist who worked there).

Thats a nice piece of, err, poop.

I somehow always thought of a bigger pile.

__________________
(By the way, I hate it that so many papers in the areas of planetary science and geology are not easily available to the dreaded "non-subscribers". It is like they are screaming at me: "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH". Good, I feel better now.)

"Quaerendo inventis"

You should be, you've put me off my food.

No way. I want to know what it is made of , originally. Have you cat scanned or MRI or X-rayed it? Are there any external clues of what the animal ate?

__________________
(By the way, I hate it that so many papers in the areas of planetary science and geology are not easily available to the dreaded "non-subscribers". It is like they are screaming at me: "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH". Good, I feel better now.)

"Quaerendo inventis"

Oh I do too. We're finally onto dinosaurs

But poop, however excellent the source, is still poop.

I haven't had it examined in any way at all and there are no outward signs of what the animal ingested, at least none that I recognize. The rock is very waxy on the unweathered surfaces, no cleavage and quite hard. So, maybe chalcedony?

At least a couple of people have reacted with disgust after handling the rock before I told them what it was.

If you go to ebay and search on dinosaur poop or dinosaur dung, there are lots of samples to buy. At a good price too - approximately $10.00. They make good gifts for the rock hound.

Here's a gallery of photos some Southwestern U.S. Geology sites.

While I was on break at work (cough) I discovered this site that details the geology of Little Cottonwood Canyon much better than my USGS map. The last page (38) of the pdf is the page to go to.

Also, I found that the quartz monzonite batholith was emplaced approximately 37mya which I find interesting because the Henry mountains to the east are about 33-35 mya. The fact that it is quartz monzonite rather than a mafic intrusion tells me that it is subduction melt as are the Henry mountains.

I wonder how many geologists crawled all over that canyon to put together the details of the area. When I get a break (cough) at work I'll see what I can find.

__________________
(By the way, I hate it that so many papers in the areas of planetary science and geology are not easily available to the dreaded "non-subscribers". It is like they are screaming at me: "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH". Good, I feel better now.)

"Quaerendo inventis"

I agreed with you before, Jim, but after going through some of my field trip photos, I've gotta ask:

are you sure about that?



even rocks get sick sometimes ...

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A great fossil Geonuc, now I am jealous of you.

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You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time. But you can not please all of the people all of the time.

"Why change passwords when you've got a baseball bat?"

Although I tend to prefer collecting non-critter involved rocks, I do have a number of fossils. Here is a trace fossil - interpreted as skolithos. Trace fossils are not the fossilized body parts of animals or plants, but rather the 'traces' of their existence, such as footprints or, in this case, burrows in sand. This was was collected from the Middle Poleta Formation, a Lower Cambrian deposit that once was the western margin of North America (now eastern California/Nevada). The rock is quartzite and was once a tidal zone in a tropical shoreline. In other words, an ancient beach. The animal left a tapered burrow but was not itself fossilized.

And, of course, I've forgotten to add something for scale.

The burrow descends from the top of the rock 6 cm, or about 3/4 of the way down the rock as pictured. It is a little over 1 cm wide at its largest.

OK, this was found in a drainage ditch in amongst other similar sized glacial erratics that had been placed there for erosion control. Therefore all taphonomic information is lost. The ironstone suggests Cleveland shale member. Coral or sponge; help me out here.

Ohio Shale Concretions

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(By the way, I hate it that so many papers in the areas of planetary science and geology are not easily available to the dreaded "non-subscribers". It is like they are screaming at me: "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH". Good, I feel better now.)

"Quaerendo inventis"

I'm surrounded by Miocene rhyolitic volcanics.

The first image is of a fossil tree trunk bured in volcanic ash.

The second image is of strange red coloured disks within rhyolite boulders.
Any suggestions?

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Nice rock.

Sponge or coral? Beats me - I have a hard time classifying fossils even with the rock and my paleo book in front of me. The fact sheet suggests that these concretions typically form around small bits of organic matter. Yours might be quite a find.

I have a bunch of Lake Superior concretions.

Are you certain those are disks in the second image and not stems of some sort? Perhaps small branches?

I assume small - like me, you haven't provided scale.

probably neither, according the literature ...
it seems to conform to the description of a weathered upper shale member - a vertically flattened or discoidal concretion, with evidence of the embedding shale layers (whether the "pitting" occurred in situ due to compression responses, or subsequently due to differential weathering, I don't know) ...

the elongation suggests the original (core) object was long rather than round - eg, a fish or a bone ...

I haven't read enough to learn the proposed mechanism of concretion ...

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yes ... do a search on "volcanic bombs" -
these look like some textbook examples ...

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I wouldn't be too quick to discount coral or sponge. Fossils from either of those animals should show diagnostic features such as spicula, pores, septa, etc, right? And with concretions, it is my understanding that the fossils are fairly well preserved due to the process. I could be wrong about that, too (paleontology class was long ago).

How would subsequent differential weathering produce those pits? Wouldn't the layers protect the core from weathering?

Did that. are you talking about the "boulders"? As they are near a dome vent I agree this is highly likely.

"branches"? Do you mean fossilised plants?

Volcanic bombs are chunks of lava throw into the air by the volcano which solidify before hitting the ground. I have several examples. None exhibit the features shown in your photos.

I am. I the first photo, you have what you describe as a fossilized tree. I am asking if it might be possible the other shows fossilized smaller parts of the plant.

I agree. It is organic and not created by an accident of nature. However I agree with you and Cran that most concretions contain things other than sponges or corals. I have submitted a request for identification to a friend at the Field Museum in Chicago who specializes in Bryzoans. If he can identify the animal that should constrain the age of its deposition and consequently which stratigraphic member it belongs.

__________________
(By the way, I hate it that so many papers in the areas of planetary science and geology are not easily available to the dreaded "non-subscribers". It is like they are screaming at me: "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH". Good, I feel better now.)

"Quaerendo inventis"

I refer to the "red coloured disks" (embedded in the rhyolite - which might be rhyolitic tuff) ... some have been described as far back as Charles Darwin ...

http://petrology24.grweb.info/


http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Agglomerate


“GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS ON
VOLCANIC ISLANDS
By CHARLES DARWIN”
http://englishatheist.org/darwin/coral/volcan.html


http://www.geo.ua.edu/volcanology/le...materials.html

so, geonuc - do any of those seem to fit the picture?

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only if the layers were still there when found ...

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They were.

__________________
(By the way, I hate it that so many papers in the areas of planetary science and geology are not easily available to the dreaded "non-subscribers". It is like they are screaming at me: "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH". Good, I feel better now.)

"Quaerendo inventis"