Visit to Gray Fossil Site

Alligator brickwork at Gray Fossil Site, Tennessee.

Over spring break, I visited the collections of the Gray Fossil Site and Museum with Hermsen lab member Zack Quirk. The Gray Fossil Site represents an ancient lake that filled a sinkhole. Fossils preserved in the sediments of this ancient lake are about 4.5 to 7 million years old, much younger than the surrounding rock. Because of this, Gray Fossil Site offers us a unique opportunity to study a relatively young fossil assemblage in the Appalachian region.

Gray Fossil Site is especially well known for its diverse vertebrates, which include animals like alligators, red pandas, mastodons, and tapirs. There are also plant remains at the site, mostly in the form of seeds and fruits. Some plants that have been described from Gray Fossil Site include grape, tupelo, hickory, bladdernut, and Chinese moonseed. More discoveries coming soon!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New publication: Fossil fruits from Laguna del Hunco

Image
Laguna del Hunco A new paper describing fossil Ceratopetalum (coachwood, New South Wales Christmas bush) fruits has been published in Annals of Botany . The paper documents new winged fruits from the early Eocene (ca. 52 million years old) Laguna del Hunco flora of Chubut Province, Patagonia, Argentina. I co-authored the paper with Dr. María A. Gandolfo of Cornell University. Update (March 2017): A short synopsis of the paper can be found in the Content Snapshots  section of the March 2017 issue of  Annals of Botany. 
Read more

Outreach about ancient passionflowers in Tennessee

Image
Modern and ancient passionflowers. Left: A maypop flower. Right: A fossil seed. I have recent been doing outreach about the fossil passionflowers I described from Gray Fossil Site, Tennessee. See the following for more: ETSU News: "Paleontologists discover extinct relative of Tennessee state wildflower":  https://www.etsu.edu/etsu-news/2021/12-december/passionflower.php In Defense of Plants: Episode 360: Exploring a 4.5 million year old flora:  https://www.indefenseofplants.com/podcast/2022/3/13/ep-360-exploring-a-45-million-year-old-flora
Read more