Can you find anything in a sandstone concretion?

[mrrockpickerforever]

I was going through old posts awhile back and noticed Larry quartz asked Jean rockpickerforever if we ever found any thing in the sand concretions we find in the desert.

Dec 22, 2014 0:11:47 GMT -5 quartz said:

Do those round concretions have anything in them, crabs or clams? Thanks for taking us along, fun trip with nice scenery and finds.

Here is a link back to the thread that started this post.

forum.rocktumblinghobby.com/post/784191/thread

You don't usually find anything in the round sand concretions, but some times you get a surprise. In 2004 I was walking up a sand ridge with both arms full of petrified wood, when I noticed a round sand ball about 8" in diameter. While it is not uncommon to find round sand concretions there, this one was different. Normally these concretions are found in groups. This one was on the side of the hill all by itself, and it had a large patch of white in it. I am always on the look out for white because it is a sure sign of a fossil. I dropped the pet wood in mid stride and ran down the hill to pick up the ball. There was no doubt  it was a fossil. I took it straight back to the truck. I never did go back for the pet wood!

After a few years I met and became friends with Bob Clark the head fossil preparer for the San Diego Natural History Museum. When I mentioned finding this sand concretion with bone in it, he asked if I would like to know what the bone was from. I said yes and the next time we met I showed him the fossil. Bob told me it was a camel vertebra. He then asked if I would like him to remove it from the matrix and prepare it. After getting his assurance that the museum would not confiscate it, I agreed to let him prepare it for me.

There were three different types of camels living in Anza Borrego between 3 1/2 to 1 million years ago, during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs. With only a single vertebra it would be hard to distinguish the species, but it's probably Camelops or Gigantocamelus.

Three more before pictures.

After getting the fossil back from Bob, I machined an aluminum plate with a groove to accept an acrylic dome for protection.  Using a dab of hot glue I mounted the vertebra to the plate.

The following are the pictures after mounting.

Here are a few links on the formation of concretions and nodules, I found very informative. You may like them.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concretion

science.kqed.org/quest/2012/01/12/confounding-concretions/

These last three are about sand spikes -concretions found south east of the town of Ocotillo, near Signal Mountain. 

allanmccollum.net/amcimages/edwards.html

allanmccollum.net/amcimages/sanborn.html

epod.usra.edu/blog/2013/11/sand-spike-concretions.html

Thanks for looking hope you enjoyed.

Bob

 

    

    

[jakesrocks]

Very interesting Bob. You must be finding the sand concretions in an area I never hunted.

For those who don't know what a sand spike is, I collected this in the early 50's when they could still be found.

[Fossilman]

HOLY MOLY,those are crazy cool!!!!

[quartz]

That's quite a find, and a nice display case.
Larry

[snowmom]

way cool!

[gingerkid]

Many thanks for sharing your camel fossil vertebrae, mrrockpickerforever! That's a very rare find! Didn't know we had camels roaming our deserts at one time, ahem...

I had to look up more info on camels. I found this article that I wanted to share with you:

www.chron.com/news/bizarre/article/Workers-in-Arizona-discover-10-000-year-old-camel-1547753.php

Too funny that you left the pet wood.

[johnjsgems]

Very nice find. We have small limestone concretions with micro size bugs but nothing like that. I have a few of the sandstone concretions my parents collected many years ago. I I had a pile of sandstone pseudomorphs after quartz crystals but foolishly sold them all early on.

[Tommy]

That's very cool Bob, thanks for the post and pictures. I'm pretty sure I would have walked right by that and not recognized it for what it is.

[rockjunquie]

What a great specimen and sweet display!

Read a little of those links. I'm really curious now about the whole pointing west thing. Very curious.

[inyo]

Mar 16, 2015 7:33:58 GMT -5 gingerkid said:

Many thanks for sharing your camel fossil vertebrae, mrrockpickerforever! That's a very rare find! Didn't know we had camels roaming our deserts at one time, 

Yes, camels were varied, and plentiful, in the ancestral US southwestern areas (now desert) up until approximately 10,000 years ago.

Here's an animated view of four sides of a Western Camel (Camelops hesternus) phalanx (toe bone) I came upon in the Pleistocene Manix Lake Beds, Mojave Desert, California, several years ago (the world-famous George C. Page Museum of Rancho La Brea Discoveries in Los Angeles has a complete skeletal reconstruction of the Western Camel, assembled from vertebrate material recovered from the Pleistocene La Brea Tar Pits):

Western Camel Toe Bone

[rockpickerforever]

While we're on the subject of fossilized camel toe bones, here's something I pieced together jigsaw fashion from a pile of fossilized bone bits found out at Ocotillo Wells.  These were found weathered out on the surface of the desert, spread out over about a 10 foot diameter area.  They were within a mile or so of where the vertebrae was found.

Comparison to camel bones found in the book, "Fossils Treasures of the Anza Borrego Desert."  Was not found in ABDSP, however; the camels lived all over out there.

I had posted these photos on TFF (The Fossil Forum) in Sept 2012.  link to thread

Jean

[inyo]

Mar 16, 2015 14:09:52 GMT -5 johnjsgems said:

Very nice find. We have small limestone concretions with micro size bugs but nothing like that.

Yes, a few years ago, I wrote up a cyber-field trip to a locality on California's Mojave Desert that yields fossiliferous calcareous (limestone) concretions, within which lie exceptionally well preserved 17 million year-old silicified three-dimensional insects, spiders, and fairy shrimp--all of which can be recovered intact from residues left behind from a diluted solution of acid. Below is a link to what the fossil-bearing concretions look like:

Concretions That Contain Fossil Insects, Spiders, and Fairy Shrimp

[rockroller]

Ever find one of these camel toes out there?





Cheers!
~Roland