Cave Fossils

[UnderGroundEarth]

[Squirrel Girl]

It's kinda hard to tell from the picture, but it looks like a cluster of horn corals. Maybe it's a colonial coral, but I don't think so.

What age was the rock that the fossils are found in?

[graveleye]

its hard to tell and hard to get perspective but they look almost like crinoid stems.. I see you're from Georgia, and I've found bountiful crinoid stems up in NW Georgia, but no idea the age of the stone...
http://www2.flickr.com/photos/lotterymo ... -fossiles/


edit... blew the picture up some, and I'm pretty sure those are crinoid stems. Where'd you see them?

[UnderGroundEarth]

I'm not sure the age of the rock. We saw them in a cave in NW Georgia. The picture above doesn't do them justice but here is another one I have here at work. There were literally thousands of them. I've got some other cool pics of this cave at home, i'll post them later tonight.

[Squirrel Girl]

Yeah, they could be crinoid columnals. But they seem a little too aligned, and cross bedding for articulated parts. But then it's hard to tell from the picture, especially with the coating. In cross section, they do look a lot like crinoid columnals.

[UnderGroundEarth]

the first picture they are in the stream, the second picture is on the ceiling

[graveleye]

I'm pretty convinced.. would have to have a closer look though to know for sure.
Thats a very common fossil from Rome on up north. I've found them on the football field at one of Romes high schools... unfortunatly, the rock was incredibly rotten, and they would almost crumble in your hands, but it was intersting to find them in such a common place. There must be beds of them buried from local to local. I've seen plenty of sponges and such in caves, but dont recall seeing crinoids - wasnt really looking for them though. Interesting.
thanks for sharing the pics!

[Amemeba]

If the cave is in the Bangor Limestone the fosssil you note is likely the Mississipian rugosan colonial coral "Cyathophyllum"



http://www.geocities.com/historiadaterra/devcorais.html

Don't ya think?

[UnderGroundEarth]

Here are 2 other photos of something strange we saw in this same cave. Does anyone know what this is?

[Amemeba]

It looks like...

a dried crust of bat guano that was deposited on a clay mound that has since been dissected by miniature rivulets of water that has seeped from above the calcite stalagmite shown in the photograph.

If that is the case you should have been able to see some evidence of a sizable bat roosting site in the ceiling above the mud slope.

[Ralph E. Powers]

Here are 2 other photos of something strange we saw in this same cave. Does anyone know what this is?

Dunno about the first one but the second kinda looks like a smoothed out Horta ... eek!

[Ralph E. Powers]

Here's an interesting fossil that can be found if one knows where to look...




The second pic has my hand in it (photo credit Tamie Jensen) to better give an idea of it's scale.

[bigalpha]

That first pic looks like a cluster of lithostrocian. That's in high abundance here in TN. The black color probably comes from manganese staining [well, that's what it's from in my area]