This past weekend we went fossil hunting with UT Professor Emeritus Jim Sprinkle! We visited several spots with outcrops of the Cretaceous Austin Chalk (although this was the most picturesque)
Jim was awesome, he really knows his local fossils!
We were all hunting for the best specimens!
Check out the spoils!
A beautiful oyster with original coloration, this is Exogyra tigris (tiger striped Exogyra)!
Another oyster bored by sponges (Exogyra ponderosa)
Some weird and wonderful serpulid worm burrows!
A host of steinkerns, casts, and molds (brachiopod on left, gastropods on right)!
The echinoids were my favorite though, I never find these in the field! Here's a very pretty regular echinoid (Salenia texana)
And a big beefy irregular echinoid (Heteraster obliquatus)
Oh, and a wee little shark tooth!
