I felt the need to get out do some collecting today, but not having wheels means I have to keep my trips local for now. London is not known for many things other than my internationally famous cat, and geologically it is post-glacial vomit of sand and erratics several hundred feet deep. That being said, those erratics get sorted and used for all sorts of purposes. Today I visited a spot I had written off five years ago. Upon closer examination with my now more knowledgeable eyes, I bumped into all the Devonian formations up to and including the Dundee, as well as possibly bumping into an Ordovician oddball. Beds of Leptaena. There were also beds of the common red and white Devonochonetes. This tells me Dundee. Bits and pieces of Eldredgeops rana and Crassiproetus also says Dundee Fm. Still on the Dundee kick, here are some wee Coronura aspectans bits. Appears jet black when opened, but browns when it is exposed to air. It doesn't quite behave like shale, but more like black chert. There were some other segments (not pictured) that looked very much like asaphids. Just this one rock was mostly sand and purple brachs. That may be an Anchiopsis anchiops impression, so it is possible this is the Oriskany. Turreted gastropod steinkern, matrix-free Paraspirifer with both valves, a free cheek imprint, and a calcite encrusted nautiloid. Anchiopsis again, platycerid gastropod, and a bunch of dumpy Anchiopsis. A Calymene platys pygidium from the Bois Blanc. It may continue into the rock. The surprise trip-maker was these two Terataspis fragments. What is amazing is they are about a 20-30 minute walk from my house. There were other smaller bits of this species around, but I left them in the field.
So, Bois Blanc, Amherstburg, Lucas, and Dundee formations were represented in this material, of which I only made a six hour surface scan of half the area. A return trip is now a must. I'm not expecting riches, but it is convenient with just enough to keep me interested. And, yes, there were rostroconches, but I didn't take pictures of them... or the crinoidal packstones, the blue cherty corals, the tabulate corals, the zillion other types of brachs and bryozoans, etc. I can say for certain that I bumped into these trilobites: Anchiopsis anchiops, Crassiproetus crassimarginatus, Pseudodechenella sp. (not pictured), Burtonops cristata (too fragmentary to bother photographing), Coronura aspectans, Eldredgeops rana, Calymene platys, Terataspis grandis. And, possibly that Ordovician oddjob. Of the known, eight species of bugs. Not bad at all. Comments are closed.
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Kane Faucher
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February 2024
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