Jack Kallmeyer

@nathan-newell, @evan-walsh  My thought was a moldaic preservation of a crinoid stem segment.

Jack

@geoff-ruonavarra  I don’t see any fossils myself.  It looks like a piece of man made terrazzo or something that was cut with a diamond saw.  A natural break would not be that smooth and parallel sided, especially since the smooth break goes through all the clasts with no unevenness.  That’s my opinion.

@hunter-thurmond  Poop!  It looks like a fecal string to me.  I found crap like that (pun intended) in my screenings at Venice Beach years ago.

Jack

@inkar-arzah  At first glance, this looks like a fragment of a worn horn coral (Grewingkia) to me.

@gail-tennant, @jim-chandler  I’d say it is definitely bone and I don’t see any matrix on it.  You need to have someone put eyes on the specimen before you start removing anything that you think is matrix as it may be part of the fossil.

The specimen looks quite porous. Is it fairly light in weight or really heavy like a rock of the same size?  I agree with Jim in that it could be a hoof core.

Jack

@jordan-oldham  Jordan,  I don’t see in your description where you found this other than near your university.  You didn’t identify the university.  Sorry if I missed something.  I’d like to see clearer photos in hi-res that I could enlarge.  Having said that, here is what I think so far:

This does appear to be a Eucalyptocrinites (this is the currently accepted genus as they have dropped using “crinus” on this one).

The crinoids in Fossils of Ohio from the Cedarville Dolomite are internal molds.  No actual original calyx plates are preserved.  That’s why they may look like blobs plus the illustrations of them in Fossils of Ohio is not all that great.  Is this the correct Formation where this was found?  From what I can see, your specimen appears to have original calyx plates and that would be very unusual for the dolomite. The Eucalyptocrinites proboscidialis from the Cedarville Dolomite illustrated in Fossils of Ohio is the same illustration used in the Treatise (T497, Fig 299, 1d).  The specimen is an internal mold and does not appear to be what you have.

Jack

@benny-bottles  This is an enrolled trilobite.  What you are seeing are the thoracic segments of the body.  What does the other side look like?  If it complete, the other side should show the head and pygidium (tail).

@llundgren,  @lmccall, @willis-dc, @jbauer

Lisa, I noted during the webinar a lot of people wanting to take a field trip to where Don Bissett found his beautiful Calymene sp.  Just so people don’t get their hopes up, these trilobites don’t come out of the ground looking like that.  They are usually in matrix and professional prep is needed to reveal them.  Also, Don did explain that he has collected this quarry for 40 years and has only found 6 of them.  That’s pretty slim pickings.

Jack

@llundgren, @matthew-croxton, @egardner, @jeanette-pirlo  I knew I should have slept on this before giving all of that information about the specific names last night.  I made an error!!  The two species names I listed for John’s Primaspis are actually species names for Cryptolithus.  Primaspis should be Primaspis crosotus.

For more information and ID help with Cincinnatian trilobites go to the Dry Dredgers website trilobite pages: http://www.drydredgers.org/trilobit.htm

Jack

@llundgren, @matthew-croxton, @egardner, @jeanette-pirlo  For my trilobite it was Ceraurinus icarus.  John’s little trilobites were Primaspis but I don’t recall the species name Brenda used.   The trilobite that Tom Johnson had was some species of Isotelus – maybe maximus or gigas or maybe neither.  Don’s Silurian trilobite from Indiana was a Calymene of some sort.  His Moroccan one is Wallicerops but I don’t know the species (and yes, it is real). Matthew’s enrolled trilobite was a Flexicalymene retrorsa from Mt Orab.  Matthew’s trace fossil is a type of “cruziana” which is a morphological descriptive term not a genus or species.  This is a trace of some critter moving through the sediment going from here to there.

Jack

@linda-lewis, @vperez  Here in the Cincinnatian we often see glacially or stream transported fossils of younger ages .  Fossils that are found in streams are always suspect as to exact origin as they could be newly exposed and “local” or transported and “alien”.  Usually the transported ones are heavily worn like your horn coral but not always.  Surprisingly, one of our members found a perfect Phacops trilobite in matrix that had been transported all the way from Toledo in the northwest part of the state.

Jack