Paleozoic Tropics

A couple weeks ago I made a drive east to check out some Silurian coral reefs in Indiana. I had about 5 different localities mapped out, however I was only able to collect at one because of No Trespassing posts. One interesting spot was a cemetery on a hill. Walk through the cemetery and on the other side is a river exposing Silurian rocks. I did not collect any fossils from this location as the rocks were partially submerged in water. Instead, I admired some of the old grave markers. I spent the most time at a small roadcut slicing through a coral reef. You can see the core of the reef clearly from this google earth shot. I collected mostly from the northeast side of the core. Here are some examples: Unknown Mollusk Platyceras Sphaerexochus romingeri Syringipora sp.

This was a club field trip to the Vulcan Quarry in DeKalb, IL April 13th, along with Dr. Roy Plotnick's Paleontology class from UIC. The quarry exposes mid- late Ordovician Period. I was primarily interested in the spoil piles of discarded Maquoketa rocks. There were abundant Isotelus fragments in what looked like the upper Scales Shale and the Brainard. The Galena and Platteville groups seemed to be piled together, but I didn't spend too much time examining these rocks. After a 15 minute training session and driving into the collecting area, we only had about 2.5 hours total at the quarry - not very much time. It was fun pointing out to the students a large slab of Isotelus parts which they apparently did not see. Shortly thereafter, one of the students found a large complete enrolled Isotelus sp. Galena/Platteville Isotelus cranidium before after Some microfossils Conodont (scolecodont?) I was able to extract this tiny gastropod to mak