What`s under the earth?

[kannik]

I made an exciting discovery this summer and I`ve been having
great fun telling people about it.  Our apartments have had some 
excavations about four feet deep going on all around the buildings
to replace the ancient French Drains put there in the late 40s / early 50s.
I noticed a whole bunch of SEASHELLS on top.  So I took some
over to McGill University`s Geology Department and they confirmed
my suspicion that they were from the Champlain Sea that was 
all over this area from about 10-13,000 years ago.  If you live south 
of Lake Champlain or much west of Ottawa, your area might not have 
been part of it, but a good part of Ontario and Quebec were.  (See
Wikipedia "Champlain Sea".)  

Montreal was smack in the middle of it, and our two "mountains"
(probably extinct volcanoes), Mount Royal and Westmount 
Mountain, would have been small islands projecting about 200 feet
above the water.  As I live at the top of a rather steep hill going down
to the St. Lawrence River, I find this hard to picture, but entirely 
believable!  As most people know, major floods are part of just about 
every culture`s history.

Has anybody else dug up or found anything interesting this summer?

Or any other time, for that matter?

I don`t want to limit this in any way!

[Gordon Lee]

Greetings Ms. kannik
.
Just about every time I go back down to Elizabeth Creek, especially after a rainfall, I find ammonite fossils. For awhile I would pick them up and bring them back to my deluxe custom-made double-wide and plop them on the mantle of my outdoor fireplace. I quit doing that for some time now 'cause I've run out of space on the mantle.
.

.
ELIZABETH CREEK AMMONITES
.
Respectfully,

Gordon Lee

[kannik]

Thanks for that gorgeous photo, Mister Lee - I haven`t found
any fossils yet, but Wiki on the Champlain Sea says that
there were three species of whale around here back then!
We occasionally get some poor deluded whale up the St.
Lawrence River as far as Quebec City - probably looking for
its great-great-great to-the power of 256 - grandmother!
I`m going to look ammonites up and see what they are.
Cheers for now!

[kannik]

Hey, what ever happened to Mister Lee`s photo?

[crazyquilter]

My son found 3 old Coke glass bottles when we dug up the flower garden.

[kannik]

Sept 12, 2014 11:17:42 GMT -5 crazyquilter said:

My son found 3 old Coke glass bottles when we dug up the flower garden.

Were they a pale shade of turquoise?  If so, they might be worth more
than just a nickel!  It might mean they are very old - it might be worth 
checking out.  I have one of those, but I haven`t checked it out yet.

[crazyquilter]

Sept 13, 2014 10:45:23 GMT -5 kannik said:

Sept 12, 2014 11:17:42 GMT -5 crazyquilter said:

My son found 3 old Coke glass bottles when we dug up the flower garden.

Were they a pale shade of turquoise?  If so, they might be worth more
than just a nickel!  It might mean they are very old - it might be worth 
checking out.  I have one of those, but I haven`t checked it out yet.

Yes one of the bottles is . I did a search to find a picture of the bottles but could not find these.

[clif]

Jul 28, 2014 13:42:43 GMT -5 Gordon Lee said:

Greetings Ms. kannik
.
Just about every time I go back down to Elizabeth Creek, especially after a rainfall, I find ammonite fossils. For awhile I would pick them up and bring them back to my deluxe custom-made double-wide and plop them on the mantle of my outdoor fireplace. I quit doing that for some time now 'cause I've run out of space on the mantle.
.

.
ELIZABETH CREEK AMMONITES
.
Respectfully,

Gordon Lee

those are cool ... I love collecting fossils and have gone through several personal collections (I tend to leave them behind when I move around since they weigh so much). Might have to head down to Texas to find some of these!

[clif]

I collected these from the south shore of Lake Superior (up around Whitefish Pt.)

[kannik]

Beautiful! - my favourite is the stripey one, which, I would guess,
is sedimentary rock of some kind! Do the stripes go all the way
through the rock?

[clif]

Nov 12, 2014 12:26:32 GMT -5 kannik said:

Beautiful! - my favourite is the stripey one, which, I would guess,
is sedimentary rock of some kind! Do the stripes go all the way
through the rock?

most of these are igneous and metamorphic ... if you're talking about the black and white stripey one I think that is a metamorphic gneiss. The one to the right of it, the brown with faint stripes, is a banded chert (which IS sedimentary) ... what my girlfriend calls an agate. The girlfriend has a PhD in geology ... I only have a BS (and most of a Masters) ... so I generally defer to her opinion 

[kacyds]

Nov 12, 2014 13:24:54 GMT -5 clif said:

so I generally defer to her opinion 

Smart man......     I normally do the same.

[clif]

here are some pics from that trip ... first, the beach at Whitefish Pt.


me standing in the ~40 degree water



the rocks on the beach ... you can see that collecting them is NOT difficult


one more of the rocks

[kannik]

Nov 12, 2014 13:24:54 GMT -5 clif said:

Nov 12, 2014 12:26:32 GMT -5 kannik said:

Beautiful! - my favourite is the stripey one, which, I would guess,
is sedimentary rock of some kind! Do the stripes go all the way
through the rock?

most of these are igneous and metamorphic ... if you're talking about the black and white stripey one I think that is a metamorphic gneiss. The one to the right of it, the brown with faint stripes, is a banded chert (which IS sedimentary) ... what my girlfriend calls an agate. The girlfriend has a PhD in geology ... I only have a BS (and most of a Masters) ... so I generally defer to her opinion 

Well, now I think the black-and-white stripey one is a "nice metamorphic" one too!
I wish I had someone around who could identify my various rock finds.  Even 
when I was a member of the Montreal Gem and Mineral Club and even though
I have a friend who has a Masters in Geology, it has been hard to identify them.
I`ll really have to see if I can put some photos up here one day soon.  I have 
SUCH trouble working through those Cloudy places - I belong to 4 of them and
have not managed to follow my Stamp Bear instructions through yet.  Time, you
know ...  And I haven`t tried since they changed the policy here.

[clif]

I use photobucket at home ... my school computer won't allow me to use photobucket even though our tech person has said that it should work. At school I just use Imgur. It's pretty easy to use.

*oh and there's a "policy"? 

[JanetC]

Nov 12, 2014 16:29:31 GMT -5 clif said:

I use photobucket at home ... my school computer won't allow me to use photobucket even though our tech person has said that it should work. At school I just use Imgur. It's pretty easy to use.

*oh and there's a "policy"? 

Those are some beautiful pictures and I enjoy looking at them as I am a rock collector myself.  


We would like to ask a favor from you though.  It would be very much appreciated if you only put one picture per post.  Unfortunately, some bears still have dial up connection and it is really hard on them when more than one picture tries to load.  

[clif]

no problem I can do that!

[clif]

here's a few from a recent collecting trip to Sylvania Ohio. The fossils were collected from the Silica Shale (Devonian in age ... ~400 million years old).

this photo is of a slab of the rock ... couldn't actually collect anything out of it, but at least 4 phyla are represented. Arthropoda (trilobite tail), Brachiopoda (the seashells), Echinodermata (crinoid stems), and Bryozoa (on the left edge).

[clif]

some of the brachiopods

[clif]

a nice (small) trilobite pygidium (tail)


and a closer pic