Delicate Looking Fossil Impressions

We walk Boomer around Grams and Gramps' neighborhood several times a day. Now that we know there are fossils around we keep our eye out for new discoveries. This morning, ED wanted to jump off a big, flat boulder. I leaned down to have a closer look and noticed these delicate fossil impressions. The rock face was a different consistency than rocks in which the crinoids (see the posts below) are embedded. This rock face was relatively smooth and flaked/chipped away easily. Anyway, I found these impressions amazing too and had to share more fossil pictures here.

By the way, we also did some fossil hunting south of Alice Springs where we used to live. We found a lot of brachiopods and gastropods (I think that's what the ones that look like snail shells are called): http://thehomeschoolden.blogspot.com/2009/10/fossils-that-we-found-back-in-june.html 

LD Finds a Fossil

Grams uses rocks from the area to decorate her garden. As LD was exploring and looking around he noticed a brachiopod fossil embedded in one of the rocks. The more we looked around, the more amazing fossils we found in the rocks around their house!

Well Preserved Brachiopod Fossil

We all walked up the hill from Grams and Gramps' house and looked around at the rocks in the field there. LD found an amazingly well preserved, complete brachiopod fossil! It's about two inches across. From what I can tell, this fossil and the others we found are well over 300 million years old.  I find that simply astounding.

Fossil Hunting

A few days later while we were walking around Grams and Gramps' neighborhood we saw an outcropping of rocks. Upon closer inspection, we saw that the ENTIRE rock section was covered with fossils. Most of the fossils and fossil bits are crinoids (ancient sea lilies). Many of them were loose on the ground, thousands are embedded in the rocks and they vary in size from just barely visible to as big around as our thumb and 5 inches long! We only found a few other fossils in that outcropping: a tiny little starfish and a couple brachiopods.

You can find out more about crinoid fossils by viewing this power point presentation.

And more fossil hunting!

Above you can see a brachiopod embedded in the rock along with lots of crinoid pieces.

Look how long this crinoid stem is!



















We brought a fossil book out with us and LD spent along time reading through the book and comparing our finds to the illustrations and photos in the book. That's learning at its best, right?!

Ancient Sea Life

When we were at the La Brea Tar Pits in California last month, I took this photo of a painting depicting ancient sea life. In the painting you can see crinoids (sea lilies) in the background, trilobites (towards the bottom of the painting), ammonites (which look like snail shells) and more.

Fossils that we found back in June

These are the fossils we took over to show the scientist
this morning. LD and DD selected their favorites and
were excited to be able to show him their finds. They
had a large tray of fossils just like these on one of the
counters in the science lab! I also posted a picture
of where we were when we found the fossils-- again
these pictures were from June (not from today!)