Nice stuff in the bedrock...

[trinityau]

Hello all, I got out today with one of my friends and we went exploring. We were moving up a wide draw that had water running in it and came up on an inside turn where we found evidence that someone had been playing around recently. There was a black plastic gold pan lying near the creek by some cleaned out cracks. We had not found any gold yet so we decided to stop for a bit and see what was in the area. Chris used his small pick and scraped out a few shallow cracks that had moss covering them. He then panned the material out to see several pin point bits of gold. The area was worked all around by the old timers but I am pretty sure the fine gold is what they were recovering. I continued to detect near the water's edge and finally got a soft signal on the bedrock, but It turned out to be a tiny piece of lead.



While on my knees and looking at the bedrock in front of me I saw what I thought was a boot track in the bedrock. In the split second that my mind was telling me one thing I was thinking another. This is pretty hard bedrock and there should be no print. Looking again I realized that was looking at fossilized ground. Checking closer I could see lots of prints embedded in the rock. I don't know what many of them are but it sure was neat seeing them like that. After playing around and taking some pictures we decided to move on and see if we could find a piece of gold a bit larger than what was in the pan.






As we were going up the public side of the draw I spied a digging up the hill on the private side. We checked out our location on the phone and have it earmarked for a possible trip in the future if we can gain permission from the owner. We were real close, however without permission it was a no go for me.



I would appreciate any information that anyone can offer as to what the names are for some of these creatures we found in the rock.
Thanks, TRINITYAU/RAYMILLS

TRINITYAU.COM


Sorry about the confusion with the pictures from another site. This should work for all.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

A History of Mining on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska - Grab it through Amazon!

[Lanny in AB]

Cool pictures of the fossils. With old rock like that, makes you wonder when the gold was laid down.

Enjoyed your pictures--thanks for posting them.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[TrinityBigfoot]

Great pictures I almost would think that this find would be almost is good as finding gold.

 

[DizzyDigger]

Looks great Ray!

Unfortunately, I couldn't see the pics enlarged as they are
hosted on another site that I don't belong to.

 

[Featherdfishead]

Ray, this may start you in the right direction. I agree with not trespassing, dont want to cause trouble for the rest off us and piss off the locals.

The principal sources of geologic data for the Cottonwood District of the Ono Quadrangle are detailed geologic maps, detailed stratigraphic sections, and detailed information on the stratigraphic relationships at fossil collecting sites provided by subsequent papers. Murphy, Rodda, and Morton (1969) provides a detailed geologic study of the area. Stratigraphic studies with data on fossil collecting include Murphy (1956), which provides data for lower Cretaceous rocks, and Murphy and Rodda (1959, 1960), which provide data on the area’s upper Cretaceous rocks. Jones, Murphy, and Packard (1965), and Hill (1975), provide data for the Huling Creek-North Fork of Cottonwood Creek area.

Many other publications discuss the general distribution and relationships of the geological and fossiliferous units exposed in the Cottonwood District. These include Hacket (1966), Ingersoll (1979), Ingersoll, Rich, and Dickinson (1977), Lachenbruch (1962), Murphy, Peterson, and Rodda (1964), Ojakangas (1968), Olmstead and Davis (1961), Peterson (1966, 1967), Pierce (1983), Popenoe, Imlay, and Murphy (1960), and Repenning (1960).

The shells of Cretaceous marine mollusks, including gastropods (snails), bivalves (clams, oysters, etc.), scaphopods (tusk shells), and cephalopods (ammonites, nautiloids), are by far the most abundant and most extensively described fossils in the Cottonwood District. Of these, the most widely distributed are the ammonites. They are also the most important scientifically, because they serve as the standard index fossils for determining biostratigraphic ages through the Mesozoic (the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods) and for establishing correlations with rock units in distant areas.

For more than 145 years the ammonites and other fossil invertebrates from the Cottonwood District have thus been the subject of numerous papers. Nearly 300 named species of invertebrate fossils have been recognized in the Cretaceous rocks of the area, including 180 species of ammonites, 50 species of gastropods, 50 species of bivalves, 1 species of scaphopod, and 3 species of brachiopods. Of these, 50% were described as new species on the basis of the specimens collected, or probably collected, in the area, mostly from the North Fork of Cottonwood Creek and the Huling Creek drainages.

 

[Aufish]

Yeah I see shell imprints more than I would say a boot print... wheres the other foot / boot? You're on an old sea / lake floor.

 

[captain_mike]

They look an awful lot like large bivalves, probably from the inland sea that became the Sacramento & San Juaquin valleys. I believe the northern shoreline was close to you. Very cool find Ray

 

[G-bone]

Here in Ventura CA we have a lot of Crustacean deposits.
Then again, this whole area was under the ocean for quite a while, so no surprise.
Behind my house we have this layer that has been pushed up and exposed, that is just THICK with shells.
And it is all in a very Dark, Mocha colored sediment.


I've tracked this "Shell Vein" for about 3 miles until it disappears into the mountain.
Unrelated (or maybe not) to Mr. Mills post, but neat anyway and thought I would share.

 

[captain_mike]

Very cool stuff. Yours is from the coastal seabed, and rays is from a giant inland lake. It would be interesting to date them and see which is older. I would guess it's rays, but that is just my opinion, not a carbon dating.