Jefferson

Summer, 2001 - Jefferson Co, AL

Several times during the summer, members collected in north Jefferson county, in an area being cleared for a shopping center.

Jefferson

Alabama

May 29, 1999 - Carboniferous Fossils - Jefferson Co, AL

Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, Alabama

The field trip on May 29, 1999, was to an abandoned strip mine in Kimberly that is now being re-excavated by the owner of the Warrior site which was described in the report of the March 27, 1999, BPS field trip. This is a new site for the BPS and we were most likely the first people to seriously look for fossils in the area, at least since the mine was active.

Although the postcard for the trip stated that we would be visiting the same Warrior site as on March 27, it was understood at the last BPS meeting that we would visit the new site and check it out. We decided to visit the new site first and left it as an option for attendees to visit the site on their own, since that site is much easier to find. About 15 people, including BPS members and guests, attended today's field trip.

--Edited by Vicki Lais

The site turned out to be a particularly good one for finding a variety
of Carboniferous period plant fossils. The area was so vast that even
with 15 people we really did not explore it all. Many rock piles
surround an open area where we could park our vehicles. Fossils of
Calamites, including 3D stem casts, stem impressions, foliage, and
cones were abundant in some areas.

Ferns seemed less abundant,
but good specimens were found nonetheless. Finely detailed fossils of
the top foliage of arborescent lycopods were found in abundance. Bark
impressions of Lepidodendron and Sigillaria were also found.

The
main difference between this site and the Warrior site is that the
fossils at the latter site are concentrated in a small area that is
easy to explore.

At the Kimberly site, the fossils were spread
out over a much larger area and finding them required a great deal of
tenacious searching. Also, since you could not necessarily drive your
vehicle up any of the steep hills, carrying a large fossil to your car
was challenging to say the least.

There were numerous highlights of this trip. One attendee showed me a
rare (so far as I know) cast fossil of a small part of a stem of
Cordaites, a gymnospermous tree with no modern relatives. The stem of
this tree consists of a series of horizontal ridges and is easily
distinguished from Calamites, but I had never seen one this nice
before. Some very nice pieces of Calamites itself were found. The
inimitable Ken Hoyle showed several of us two spectacular Calamites
casts he found, each about 6 inches long and 4-5 inches in diameter.
The two pieces were obviously part of the same plant, but he could not
find any of the missing parts.

Steve, Dena, and Molly Hand were
also very successful in finding good 3D casts of Calamites, as well as
a nice piece of Asterophyllites equisetiformis, the characteristic
foilage of the branches of Calamites. Ken Wills, who previously spoke
to the BPS last year, found a nice piece with many Calamostachys
impressions, representing the cones of Calamites. Christina and Larry
Hensley found a big rock with a stunning impression of the bark of a
Lepidendron arborescent lycopod. It was beautiful but too big for
anyone to carry. 3D casts of the rhizophore of Stigmaria ficoides, the
root system of arborescent lycopods, were also found by several
attendees, including myself. The largest, 15 inches long, was found by
Bruce Relihan.

This small piece shows
impressions of the upper branches of an arborescent lycopod.

Partial cast fossil stump
of
Sigillaria, an arborescent lycopod. The dark scars are the usual
parichnos scars associated with this genus.
The stump is about 1 foot in diameter

Particularly interesting were the stump fossils found at this site. On
the top of a hill, I found three fossil stumps of Sigillaria. All three
pieces showed the characteristic parallel bands of parichnos scars. The
two largest pieces are about a foot in diameter and 3 to 6 inches
thick. A smaller piece showed the strongest bands. I managed to get
these to my car with difficulty, and needed help with one piece. Gerry
Badger had a tougher time, however. He found a much bigger stump of
Lepidodendron and practically had to roll it down to his car from some
distant point. The stump looked to be 70-80 lbs in weight and showed
weak scars. A very much larger stump was found by several others near
the base of a hill. I heard it was maybe 30 inches in diameter. But by
the time I heard about it, I had no energy to go and see it! Ken Wills
and Bruce Relihan also found partial stump casts.

In summary,
this was quite an interesting field trip. When I first "scouted" out
this site in April, I was not sure we would find much since casual
searching during a period of one hour did not reveal many fossils. The
intensive searching by attendees on this trip was much more revealing
about the site, and showed it to really be nearly as good as the
Warrior site. It will be worthy of a second visit in the future.

April 24, 1999 - Carboniferous Fossils - Jefferson Co, AL

Thanks to the efforts of Bill Newman, and the courtesy of the Drummond
Company, a group of 15 members of the Birmingham Paleontology Society
were able to visit the Shoal Creek Mine, a working underground coal
mine on Saturday, April 24.

The
Shoal Creek Mine is a modern, high-tech coal mine, having begun
operation only 5 years ago. Following an introductory safety
presentation (mandatory for visitors to the underground workings of the
mine), and a fitting of personal safety paraphernalia (hardhat with
light, steel-toed rubber boots, and an emergency "self-rescue unit" to
remove carbon monoxide from the air in case of fire), we descended
about 1900 feet below the surface in a speedy elevator. Once there, we
were ushered into several Humvees, the standard mode of motorized
travel through the mine's vast network of tunnels. We then drove
several miles to see one of the areas being actively mined.

In
the Shoal creek mine, coal occurs in two narrow nearly horizontal
seams, named the Mary Lee and Blue Creek seams. The rock just above and
below the seams is a sandy shale bearing plant fossils, as we
discovered at one stop in the underground tour. Two types of mining
techniques are used in the mine, continuous mining and longwall mining.
Continuous mining machines tunnel directly into the rock, and have been
used to form a network of tunnels. In the longwall operation we
witnessed, a line of automated shields support the mine ceiling just
next to a long (typically a thousand feet) rock face, while a drum
shearing machine moves slowly along the length of the wall,
continuously gouging about 39" of rockface off and dumping it onto a
continuously running chain conveyor belt. The belt delivers the mixture
of rock and coal to a continuous rock crusher, and the chain conveyor
then connects with a series of conveyors, the last of which carries the
coal and rock to the surface along an exit tunnel sloping up to the
surface at a 17 degree angle. At the surface, a series of operations
separates rock from coal, and sorts coal into sizes appropriate for
different uses. The principal customer for the coal from the Shoal
Creek mine is Alabama Power Co.

Many of us were quite impressed
with the efficiency of the operation and the thorough measures in place
to ensure the safety and comfort of the miners. The mine visit was an
outstanding educational experience. In fact, it was also a lot of fun.
Our thanks to the Drummond Company, the courteous and helpful mine
management and miners, and to Bill Newman, who made the arrangements
for the tour on behalf of BPS.

Jefferson

Alabama

Carboniferous

March 27, 1999 - Jefferson Co, AL

Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, Alabama

The field trip on March 27,
1999 was the second
organized BPS trip to a construction site near Warrior. The
trip was attended by about 25 people, mainly from Birmingham,
Huntsville, Tuscaloosa, the Florence area, and the University of North
Alabama. Attendees included BPS members, guests, children, professors,
and students, and the day was sunny, clear, and warm.

View of the site from across the road.

	Fossil hunters at the main rock pile where Lepidodendron and Sigillaria specimens were abundant.

The site was
first
identified as being a source
of Carboniferous-period plant fossils by BPS member Gerry Badger, and
the first BPS field trip to the site took place on November 15, 1997.
Although various BPS members and probably others have visited the site
at various times during the past year, the site has changed so much
that on March 27, the site was better than it had ever been before as
far as numbers and quality of plant fossils are concerned.

The most abundant plant
fossils found during
our most recent visit were bark impressions of the giant arborescent
lycopods Lepidodendron and Sigillaria. These were mainly found in rock
piles around the area of a northeast wall of rock. Large slabs showed
the familiar Lepidodendron leaf scars, which look like fish scales. In
many cases the scars were clear and well-defined, making the specimens
extremely beautiful examples. On close inspection, the leaf scars show
characteristic bundle and parichnos scars representing leaf attachment
points, and many of the pieces are probably of the same species.
However, after checking various books I have not yet identified the
exact species at Warrior. It is clear also that more than one species
of Lepidodendron is present at this site. It is also interesting that
specimens of Lepidodendron at Warrior came in both direct and inverse
impressions. In direct impressions, the leaf scars are raised, and are
more like molds of the original object. In most pieces, however, the
leaf scars are simply inverse impressions of the original raised scars,
and therefore appear as depressions in the fossil.

Example
of decorticated Sigillaria fossil (Syringodendron) showing pairs of
parichnos scars along parallel bands.

The
Sigillaria specimens are more abundant now at
this site than they were on November 15, 1997. They are characterized
by parallel bands of leaf scars distinctly different from the spirally
arranged scars seen on Lepidodendron, although a spiral arrangement may
still be present. Several species were found, but I have not been able
to make exact identifications. Sigillaria specimens attendees found
included not only outer bark impressions, where the leaf scars are
roundish and almost overlapping, but also beautiful decorticated
impressions, direct and inverse, where only parichnos scars are seen
either as small spots or close pairs of small spots. These are as known
as Syringodendron. The decorticated specimens are cases where the outer
bark is gone, so they represent an inner bark layer.

Also abundant at this site,
but not necessarily
found in the rock piles, were several types of seed ferns
characteristic of the period. These were found at a specific level of
the east rock wall less than a foot above the ground level and about 20
feet from the rock piles. The ferns found included beautiful examples
of Eusphenopteris, Mariopteris, Neuropteris, and Alethopteris form
genera, but I have not yet determined exact species. Because many of
these were found in situ, they were still beautifully preserved with
dark carbonaceous remains of the original plant material and fine
details of vein systems in individual pinnules. Several attendees spent
much of their time searching for ferns at the rock wall, and many were
found. According to Dave Kopaska-Merkel, one young person, whose first
name was Jonathan, split a large slab and found some very nice large
ferns inside. Although I am not aware of any examples found during this
trip, the site also is known for having Lyginopteris ferns which are
distinctly different from the others. Several different species of
Sphenopteris ferns have also been found in the past.

	View of rock wall on east side of site where ferns were found in situ.

	Typical example of a set of ferns extracted from the above part of the wall.

Fossils
of the well-known
horsetail, Calamites,
have also been found in abundance at this site. Several attendees
(including myself) found three-dimensional Calamites stems further down
the same rock wall where the ferns were found. Dave Kopaska-Merkel
found a nearly foot-long Calamites specimen embedded in a larger rock.
Also found were excellent specimens of the foliage of Calamites,
including a fine small piece of (probable) Asterophyllites
equisetiformis shown to me by Gerry Badger. At least three different
species of Asterophyllites have been found at this site.

There
were a few interesting
highlights from the trip. Wayne Canis, several of his students from the
University of North Alabama, and guest Richard Keyes of Huntsville,
found a large and extremely beautiful example of a lycopod root system,
Stigmaria, with dozens of root impressions emanating from the sides and
clear deep small depressions or root scars on the main body, known as a
rhizophore. The fossil was so fragile that Richard went off site to buy
a can of spray glue to insure the piece would hold together during the
drive home. Also found today were large fossil "stumps" and logs of
arborescent lycopod stems. Gerry Badger located a 64 pound stump in the
one of the upper rock piles at the site, and Wayne Canis and one of his
students each found a similar piece. Particularly interesting was a
long, nearly vertically-standing log found in an upper rock wall near
the back of the site. Except for the log, no other fossils were obvious
in this wall. Gerry Badger heroically tried to get the main body of the
log off with a hammer. This

Gerry Badger at the big
"log" on a wall in rear of site.

was
at great risk since the
specimen was under a large rock overhang! The job was not easy and
afterward I saw the specimen in pieces in the back of Gerry's car, but
he still was upbeat about it.Later, I found another stump fossil in a
rock wall on the north side of the main site level. It, too, was the
only fossil noticed in that particular area, although several of us
thought we saw the end of a highly flattened stump still in the wall
but much higher up in the same area. The stump I found is about a foot
long and weighs 77 pounds. Unlike the others found, it is covered with
hundreds of small scars and impressions, indicating a fairly definite
identification as an arborescent lycopod cast. These "stumps" and logs
represent cases where a hollow cavity left by the stem was filled with
mud which later solidified and preserved the general shape as well as
any inner details. They are not "petrified" in the usual sense.

77 pound arborescent
lycopod cast found near north rock wall.

In summary, this field trip
was a very
enjoyable experience for all who attended. On a wonderful day, we all
experienced a part of Alabama's past and took home the beautiful relics
of a bygone era of Alabama natural history.