Dotternhausen Quarry

Over the last two days we visited the Dotternhausen Museum, collections, and quarries. Many thanks to Annette Schmidt-Röhl for the amazing visit! We had a great time! For those not familiar with the Early Jurassic in Germany, here is a stratigraphic column representing the Posidonia Shale (it is the Pink unit, epsilon):

The coolest part of our visit was getting to go into the quarry!

Here we have the Pleinsbachian-Toarcian boundary (not terribly pretty...)

And the seagrass beds (really just a heavily bioturbated unit)

Here is the section, standing on the Fleins and looking up at the fossil rich shale (also the TOAE isotope excursion)

We collected lots of ammonites, one small lobster claw, and an indistinguishable Vampyromorph.

The museum has some beautiful ichthyosaurs!

And some nice crocodiles with armor plates!

Also some sharks!

And fish...

And crinoids of course!

They have a great wall of pyritized ammonites!

There were some ammonites with little crayfish or lobsters inside them!

And some very nice lobsters! This one is Proeryon

Here's his "face"

And here's his tail

This guy is a different lobster, Uncina posidonia

And of course, the octopods! Check out that ink sac!

If you get the light just right, you can see growth lines on the gladius. Those growth lines tell us what the shape of the gladius was and thus, what genera and species we are looking at.

They look like little parallel scratches making a series of V shapes!

In the house of Seilacher

Today we visited the fossil collections and Museum at the University of Tübingen... Dolf Seilacher's old stomping grounds!

The university also has a fabulous collection of Posidonia Shale fossils. The Posidonia Shale is an Early Jurassic (Toarcian, ~183Ma) fossil Lagerstätte. There are some exceptional fossils in this unit, including..... some amazing Coleoids (octopods and squids)! Here is a drawer full of octopod guards (Check out this link for a great squid dissection with photos of the guard).

Some of them have ink sacks too!

And there are some tiny little lobsters!

But mostly we just looked at lots of octopods!

The museum itself has a fabulous range of specimens! At one point in time, all the fossils collected in the region were reposited in Tübingen, and they have a wonderful collection thanks to this man... Dr. Quenstedt.

Pleisiosaurs!

Crocodiles (my student was very excited!)

Sharks!

Ichthyosaurs!

Lots of them.... some with skin impressions!

Ammonites of course.

 

Pieces of wood with bivalves growing on them (I think Dolf did the chalk outlines!)

 And the amazing crinoids (sea lilies) that lived attached to floating bits of wood!

This one blows my mind... it is HUGE!!!

And some normal fish too....

NEXT STOP: DOTTERHAUSEN!

Photography in the field

This week we are out in the field checking out Paleocene-Eocene carbonates. We are in Slovenia, with a nice view of the Adriatic Sea!

There are some beautiful large benthic forams, check them out!

And some cute little corals!

And an echinoid!

One of the big problems we are encountering is this stupid fence on the roadcuts (good for safety, but tough for geology)!

My friend Kathleen Ritterbush gave me some great photography advice that has really helped us out this week! I thought I would share it here, in case it will help any other field geologists. Kathleen told me to get a Collapsible Light Reflector, like this one:

This portable piece of photography equipment is awesome, because you can direct light towards a shaded fossil, or block the light if you need your shot to be shaded. With the fence over the roadcuts, the shading disks are a lifesaver! So you can make a shot go from this...

To this...

I am also loving my new camera! It is a Canon Rebel SL1.

It is a digital SLR from Canon (so most of the new (EF) lenses fit on it) but it is as light as a point and shoot (body is 13oz)! While it isn't as rugged as some of the bombproof camera (this is mine, it is also great in the rain/dust/getting dropped/ underwater) it takes amazing photos and is WAY cheaper than a top-tier DSLR. You can compare the specs with a higher end camera like the awesome EOS 6D here. Obviously the 6D is better, but for the money (Sl1 body and standard lenses is about $600 vs $2000) and for the weight (13oz vs 24oz), I like this little Rebel a lot!

TL;DR: Canon Rebel SL1 takes wonderful photos and is light enough to be a field camera, but it isn't "rugged".