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+--- Thread: Field Trip To The Alexander Hills Fossil District, Mojave Desert, California (/showthread.php?tid=26220)
Field Trip To The Alexander Hills Fossil District, Mojave Desert, California - Inyo - 2023-04-27
Not too long ago, I uploaded to https://inyo7.coffeecup.com/precambrian/precambrian.html a new page, entitled "Field Trip To The Alexander Hills Fossil District, Mojave Desert, California." Includes a detailed text, with fully captioned on-site images and photographs of fossils.
It's a fascinating paleontological place, indeed, situated outside the southern sector of Death Valley National Park. The Precambrian sequence, for example, not only yields stromatolites, concentrically laminated cyanobacterial structures roughly 1.2 billion years old, but also some of Earth's earliest shell-bearing organisms, skeletal elements from eukaryotic unicellular testate amoebae over three-quarters of a billion years old. The early Cambrian sequence provides the first trilobites in the regional stratigraphic succession, archaeocyathids (extinct calcareous sponge), annelid and arthropod tracks and trails (ichnofossils), and perhaps the earliest evidence of echinoderms in the fossil record. Miocene strata produce exceptionally well preserved petrified palm and dicotyledon wood, permineralized grasses, and camel and horse tracks. And the Pliocene-Pleistocene section contains loads of vertebrate remains, including mammoths, a mastodon, camels, large and small horses, a llama, a large antelope, microtine rodents (the voles, lemmings, and muskrats), and a flamingo--plus, such invertebrate kinds as freshwater gastropods, ostracods (a diminutive bivalved crustacean), and diatoms (single-celled photosynthesizing algae).
RE: Field Trip To The Alexander Hills Fossil District, Mojave Desert, California - Brice - 2023-04-28
I think I found your writeup about a month ago perhaps? Maybe I am confusing it for another. Anyway, tons of great info there and definitely planning to check out the area. Thanks!
RE: Field Trip To The Alexander Hills Fossil District, Mojave Desert, California - GowerGulch42 - 2023-04-28
Very cool! Adding to my list of geo-tourism sites in the neighborhood. Glad you made the move to the new forum!
RE: Field Trip To The Alexander Hills Fossil District, Mojave Desert, California - Daymoth - 2023-04-29
This is great stuff! Ive been really intrigued about the whole area around Tecopa. Do you happen to have some vague map of the field trip? . Im not that great at retaining written info.
RE: Field Trip To The Alexander Hills Fossil District, Mojave Desert, California - Kauri - 2023-04-29
Inyo, I'm glad you found us here on the new forum! I've missed your fossil and paleontology posts!
RE: Field Trip To The Alexander Hills Fossil District, Mojave Desert, California - MojaveGeek - 2023-04-30
Great fossil info, thanks!