I sometimes long for the times I used to work with macrofossils and question all my life’s decisions as Kim and I are painfully extracting microfossils (106 – 250 microns) from the dis-aggregated shale from the Wanakah, Windom, Cashaqua, and Rhinestreet Members. Nonetheless seeing who/what is in these members is important to answer our bioturbation questions in addition to the desire to just know what is out there in that ancient lithified mud.

We are pretty certain that these ‘blobs’ are fern spores of some sort. Our location of extraction is very near known Devonian fern forests. Some time with the SEM and elemental mapping should confirm.

Kim did find some really neat stuff outside of these … Check out some of our mystery friends below! Some are known tentaculites (stylolites) among ostracods … while others bare strong resemblance to the shape of rotifers (way too early in geologic time) … perhaps architarchs or chitinozoans? Stay tuned!