That water looks tropical! Amazing! Good day and thanks for Paleo Joe's info. I'm checking his site out for sure. I'm sure I'll learn a lot. Right now it's bed time. Have a great day.
YES!! learned somethings new about the placoderm fish.... look for the blue vivianite. Makes total sense because vivianite is a phosphate mineral, and there was phosphorus and calcium in the bones of the fish. And those big "cabbage-looking" stromatolite microbe colonies are very large and beautiful! Wish I had one of those stromatolites in my yard! Good to see them in plane view and longitudinal section also. Impressive! Great info, Rob. Thanks for steering me to it! :))
@@MichiganRocks And my learning is to serve you and all your students too, Rob. If you have new questions, just ask, like you already do, in your videos. Two or three heads are better than one, even if we're ALL cabbage!! :)) Thank you for being so open to all our comments and for being so responsive. You are the Michigan treasure! :))
OMG, Spectacular video and views, love it and Paleo Joe was interesting also. I gotta go see him next time he does some kind of informational appearance.
It probably is the best place as long as people don't expect me to identify their fossils. Rockport is a big place. There's lots of parking. How exactly would you suggest I do something like a meet and greet? I would do it on a Saturday so people who are working could come. Weather could be a problem. What happens if I announce it a couple weeks early so people can plan and then it rains? I guess I'd just go anyway and let people decide if they want to join me. What would we do? Would everyone arrive at the same time and we'd all go to the beach or the quarry or the sinkholes together? Would it be better for me to stay in the parking lot all day and say hi to people before they headed off to a place of their choice? These are serious questions. I'd love to hear your ideas.
Yes all sounds great....I suggest meeting in the parking lot in the middle of the afternoon and have a set time where you'll be at the quarry and a time to go on the Beach would be the easiest.... Or maybe reach out to a Rock club and have them organize a rock swap or rock show and have you as a guest!!...... Maybe ask you fans for suggestions and they can come up with something better
@@charlesbordner9240 I'll have to think about it over the winter. I tend to run into people who recognize me there more than any other place. It's fun to actually see some of them people who watch my videos. You guys all know what I look like, but I don't know many of you.
Was just there this past weekend. It was my 2nd time and im hooked. Its my new happy place. Absolutely beautiful. Braught home many goodys. Its like a gold mine for fossils.
what an interesting field trip! thanks for bringing us along. i would never get to see any place like this, probably. my favorite rock is at 8:00. lots of character. cool that you can spot all of the fossils in it.
The star gazing here is some of the best you can get, without driving all the way to the desert! Headlands International dark sky park in Mackinaw City is phenomenal as well! I did have one good night at Tahquamenon Falls State park, but it was overcast most of the time.
I asked Paleo Joe about those and he said that they were either sponges or stromatolites (he didn't say stromatoporoid). I found a rock a couple yeas ago that someone on a Great Lakes Rocks Facebook group identified as stromatoporoid. I remember looking up the difference at the time. They look pretty similar if I remember correctly. Anyhow, I remember he said stromatolite because we talked about how Kona Dolomite is also a stromatolite.
I think you might be right. I find sea urchin spines in a ditch in Alpena, where I live. They are shaped a little different though. They're sort of like a chicken drumstick. Pointed on one end and more bulbous on the other end. The thing that you referred to in this video was tapered the same from one end to the other. Maybe it was a different species.
I believe the sea life was laid down during and after the great deluge. Different creatures settled out at different rates and times forming the layers.
Kathleen Norton I don’t believe that the creation story in the Bible is meant to be taken literally, but I don’t have a problem with someone taking it literally, because the point of the Bible isn’t to teach us science but to get us to Heaven. The important thing is that we believe that God created the Earth. But the Bible says in Genesis 1:20, “Let the water teem with an abundance of living creatures”. The flood doesn’t happen until chapter 7.
Thank you ! The place is kind of a strange with all the minerals and fossils and I like so much the view from the top... I live near the Atlantic coast and it’s not the same at all, lakes seem like young ocean !
Just FYI: Paleo Joe is going to be the guest educator at the Houghton Mineral Show this year in August. Everyone is looking forward to hearing his presentations during the Show.
Good to know. I ran into him leading a group in Alpena last week. I was riding my bike by as the group was leaving a park and said hi to him. He's in Alpena fairly often. I heard him speak at the museum once.
Great location and nice to hear a bit about fish fossils. Never knew the fish were that large many years ago. Very interesting video. The views are awesome !
I would suggest as well that next time you go there to go along the shoreline to the north as there are many huge Boulders that are astounding..... I mean astoundingly beautiful! Not that far.....
I walked a mile or two to the south this spring (there's a video of it) and I walked about a mile to the north about five years ago. I don't remember the boulders, but I found some really big snail fossils to the north. My wife has one that's about five inches in diameter in her science classroom. It's name is Gary.
@@MichiganRocks o snails fossils oh, how cool! I honestly didn't feel like it was that far to the North but it's been a few years so maybe it was farther than I thought. I just love Rockport! I found so many cool and amazing fossils there! Also if you follow the bike path, near that small park off of State Street, it starts with a b and I'm sorry I can't remember it but I'm sick right now... Anyhow along the shore there there's a bunch of giant slabs that I think were taken out of Rockport... And there was just covered in those little crinoids ..... Many of them which are loose, I got handfuls of perfect specimens from there!
They're not easy to find, I'll tell you that. I don't have a huge interest in fossils, I'm more into lapidary stuff, so I haven't been back to look for any more fish parts. Good luck on your hunt!
That was really good so fortunate to run into such an expert! There must be so much to find if you don't mind getting dusty! It would be fun to see some of those old rocks/fossils (if you're allowed to) sliced in sections... So, with the mixed corrals would they have been growing together like that - or did they just get jumbled around in the mud or silt before fossilizing?? Wonder what they were doing with the limestone? Was it for ag purposes, roads, slabs for building? As with famous limestones in England that end up on prestigious buildings? Lot of history there! Thanks for taking us.
Good questions. Unfortunately, I don’t know all the answers. I’ve tried searching for info on Rockport, and most of it is just about visiting the park. I have always assumed that the corals and fossils are all mixed up because they fell to the ocean floor and got mixed up there. I never thought of them actually growing together. As for what the limestone was used for, the only thing that I’ve found is that one of the last projects was helping to build the Mackinac Bridge.
@@MichiganRocks Thanks, interesting - I guess they needed a lot of stone/aggregate for the bridge and infrastructure - seems like a large quarry with a lot of debris... Shall have to do some research - certainly loads of fossils.
Visitors to Rockport are allowed to take 25 pounds of rock per year (rocks, fossils, whatever) and you can do with it as you like. Getting some of those larger boulders sliced and polished would be amazing though. There are some huge slabs along the beach there (on the far side of the harbor, past the trees) that have been weathered heavily by the waves and ice that show a lot of detail.
also, there used to be old cranes, tunnels, rusting hulks, very thick wire rope all over, gun shells, super rough gravel road, dilapidated warehouselike buildings on top of the big hills at the port, no one went there much, it was spookie and cool to explore… “Rockport”, aptly named.
There is still a tunnel under the big pile of rocks by the water. It is now barred off to protect the bats that have taken up residence there. I never saw the old buildings, but there are still pieces of cable, a few railroad spikes, and other old pieces of metal lying around.
I was just at Rockport this past weekend, it’s an amazing place for sure. Question- what did Joe put on the fossil to see the blue color? It was in the little container. Just curious, because I’m sure I’ll be going back out there someday. Thanks!
@@MichiganRocks Haha ok. It looked like a superglue bottle, but I didn’t think he’d be using that. But makes sense lol. If I go again I’ll be sure to bring a spray bottle.
Mimi Shella you can bring a hammer here, but there’s a beach in the area that I have heard you can get a ticket for using a rock hammer. This is an old quarry, so the rock is all broken anyway. I’m not sure about bringing a hammer to the beach at Rockport.
For the most part, the condition of the evidence (a general breccia of a scouring slurry of broken reef materials) would suggest Rockport Quarry represents a reductive catch-basin for a "hashed" deposit of flood-gathered material. This is NOT a coherent reef system, in situ; this is "reef-burger", the displaced contents of a reefed region that was ripped up and beaten to pieces by destructive processes, wide-sweeping and active for only hours, at most. Longer term activity of similar processes result in finer fractions, down to and including mud... With due respect for "Ancient Joe", I understand the scattered fragments of fossilized fish to be diagnostic of their DESTRUCTION, rather than their happenstance distribution by scavengers. The fact that any of this is fossilized and available for pleasant reflection requires it to have been immediately buried and isolated from the regular decompositors...similar to those we thank today for maintaining the "tidiness" of our surroundings--the relative scarcity of mortal remains.
I'm not knowledgable enough to debate this one way or the other, but could the destructive process be the mining operation? This whole area has been dug up and these are the scraps left behind.
@Michigan Rocks , I've come to appreciate your presence here, one of TH-cam's 'redeemers', IMHO. In consequence of your substantial investment in your interests, I believe your experience has given you good and sufficient knowledge to ground a review of available, observable evidence. You've done some fair wandering upon that storied stage... First off, you've posed a great, great question: Knowing the overall current general surface condition of the SITE is due to its having been commercially quarried for thirty-five years (mid-'20s to late-'50s), how do we distinguish these LATER industrial effects from the condition of this deposit PRIOR to the quarrying? Is it even possible to locate "undisturbed" evidence original to the rocks themselves?
Consider this: The skirt of the once-active Quarry is itself virgin-exposure of the Alpena Limestone Formation; mining revealed this exposure, but it remains raw and "in place" because mining did not proceed in its direction. It, therefore, contains material surficially disturbed only by natural processes; and that coherent, lithic material mass BENEATH the surface we presume to have long lain undisturbed in a fossilized condition. You were even able to find and show us good sized chunks of fossilized rubble laying loose upon the ground--large enough and coherent enough to fairly represent the material we would find still integrated with the formation. Of this material, you passingly noted its "bits and pieces" appearance. With a "due-diligence" attention to discriminating animal types from each other, we see in the material many distinct forms--all the way from single segments of crinoidal stems and their "decapitated", crushed and splayed calyxes, including a variety of blastoids similarly detached; through small fragments of branching corals and shattered bryozoans to roughly roll-worn horn corals, and large but fractured and broken "heads" of hexagonaria; to many pieces of the fabled placoderms (none yet found intact), etc., etc., etc. Nota bene: None of it is articulated or showing an integrity consistent with life; it is a post-mortem dump, all of it encased in a smothering matrix of limey hash, fining down from the recognizable to muddy base-sumps. We everywhere see what can only have been a vast regional biome violently destroyed in some equally vast turbulent event or event-series. Nothing here went "gentle into that good night."
@@thomasdykstra100 Have you been to Rockport, or are you commenting on what you’ve seen in this video? You mentioned crinoids heads and blastoids, but I didn’t find either that I know of. I know what both look like because I’ve found them in other places, not Rockport. I’m not saying they’re not here, but I haven’t found them here. Joe has found a more complete fish here. He has been gathering pieces over the years and is working on putting them back together.
At 5:08 you said here's a Petoskey stone... But I want to tell you that's not a Petoskey stone, I believe that's an ancient sponge which is different from a Petoskey in that a Petoskey is ancient Coral ..... and has definite hexagonal patterns like a honeycomb
Here in Michigan, it's just the opposite. Since the Petoskey stone is our official state stone, pretty much everyone knows what it is. I don't think most people have ever heard of a crinoid.
@@MichiganRocks i was being sarcastic. You mentioned crinoids about a dozen times,but said nothing about them. The whole World knows what petosky stones are. Anyway..thanks for the video
I have been told that those are sea urchin spines and then someone more recently told me it's part of a crinoid. I'm not sure which, if either, is true.
@@MichiganRocks Yes, its difficult to know sometimes from just a picture. If you run into Paleo Joe again, maybe he might know. I do really like your channel a lot. Just very peaceful the way you talk and of course the scenery and the waves are so relaxing. Please keep it going.
That wall of a death plate was awesome. So much cool stuff. Dude seemed to know his stuff. Great view from the top. Was fun to watch. Great video
Paleo Joe leads tours to this place and others in the area. He does seem to know what he's talking about.
Thank you so much. That was very interesting. Loved looking at the different fossils and. The beautiful views of the lake.
You're welcome, Signe.
That was fun running into that guy. Nice view too. Love your exploring vids.
It was fun running into him. It was really nice of him to agree to be in my video. He teaches a lot of people about fossils.
Love the sunrise side. Been to Rockport hunting for fossils.
Rockport is a lot of fun.
That water looks tropical! Amazing! Good day and thanks for Paleo Joe's info. I'm checking his site out for sure. I'm sure I'll learn a lot. Right now it's bed time. Have a great day.
It might look tropical, but it's usually pretty chilly.
@@MichiganRocks Good thing I like chilly. lol Have a great day. I'm getting educated by Joe right now, so much for sleeping.
I’m in Boy Scouts and I get to see this guy every year and I get to go up to Alpena and go for a camp and go to different mines
and look for fossils
That's awesome. I know some of the places that Paleo Joe takes people. He's a great teacher.
It's a gorgeous view you have there!
The view from the top of the rock pile is great. I really need to get out here with my drone one of these days.
I learn something new from you every video. I like it.
Totally loved this video. Thank you for the info and meeting Joe.
YES!! learned somethings new about the placoderm fish.... look for the blue vivianite. Makes total sense because vivianite is a phosphate mineral, and there was phosphorus and calcium in the bones of the fish. And those big "cabbage-looking" stromatolite microbe colonies are very large and beautiful! Wish I had one of those stromatolites in my yard! Good to see them in plane view and longitudinal section also. Impressive! Great info, Rob. Thanks for steering me to it! :))
I am here to serve you, Cactus.
@@MichiganRocks And my learning is to serve you and all your students too, Rob. If you have new questions, just ask, like you already do, in your videos. Two or three heads are better than one, even if we're ALL cabbage!! :)) Thank you for being so open to all our comments and for being so responsive. You are the Michigan treasure! :))
That water looks so blue !!!! TFS 🤗
OMG, Spectacular video and views, love it and Paleo Joe was interesting also. I gotta go see him next time he does some kind of informational appearance.
He has talked at Jesse Besser museum before. He also does paid guided tours around here several times a summer.
Thanks for sharing. Keep having fun.
You were right, that is a good video with Paleo Joe. A lot of interesting rocks around.
Paleo Joe is a rock star!
superfluous pastry yes he is!
Thank you for sharing the location on all your video clips, I enjoy watching them.
Gorgeous spot,cool fossils, thanks!
Omg those petosky stones are so cool!!!!!!!!!
They're not good for polishing from my experience. When you grind them, the pattern just disappears. They're great as fossil specimens though.
Great video.
Thanks Dawn.
Amazing finds if you look hard enough. So nice to see someone looking for fish fossils. Fantastic views.
Ok. I've seen Paleo Joe somewhere else on another TH-cam channel! Great info, I appreciate your knowledge. Thank you!
We talked earlier about a fan meet and greet and I think this is the best place!!!
It probably is the best place as long as people don't expect me to identify their fossils. Rockport is a big place. There's lots of parking. How exactly would you suggest I do something like a meet and greet? I would do it on a Saturday so people who are working could come. Weather could be a problem. What happens if I announce it a couple weeks early so people can plan and then it rains? I guess I'd just go anyway and let people decide if they want to join me. What would we do? Would everyone arrive at the same time and we'd all go to the beach or the quarry or the sinkholes together? Would it be better for me to stay in the parking lot all day and say hi to people before they headed off to a place of their choice? These are serious questions. I'd love to hear your ideas.
Yes all sounds great....I suggest meeting in the parking lot in the middle of the afternoon and have a set time where you'll be at the quarry and a time to go on the Beach would be the easiest.... Or maybe reach out to a Rock club and have them organize a rock swap or rock show and have you as a guest!!...... Maybe ask you fans for suggestions and they can come up with something better
@@charlesbordner9240 I'll have to think about it over the winter. I tend to run into people who recognize me there more than any other place. It's fun to actually see some of them people who watch my videos. You guys all know what I look like, but I don't know many of you.
Was just there this past weekend. It was my 2nd time and im hooked. Its my new happy place. Absolutely beautiful. Braught home many goodys. Its like a gold mine for fossils.
If you like fossils, you'll love Rockport. Have you gone to the sinkholes yet?
what an interesting field trip! thanks for bringing us along. i would never get to see any place like this, probably. my favorite rock is at 8:00. lots of character. cool that you can spot all of the fossils in it.
Cool place!
keep this man alive forever!!!
Paleo Joe is great. I had fun hanging out with him that day.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing this info and video
That's a cool place, I could spend All day. Maybe some fishing too 🎣
You could spend several days here. There's the quarry, the beach, sinkholes behind, hiking trails. It's a fun place.
The star gazing here is some of the best you can get, without driving all the way to the desert! Headlands International dark sky park in Mackinaw City is phenomenal as well! I did have one good night at Tahquamenon Falls State park, but it was overcast most of the time.
I’ll have to get out there one of these nights.
ZeroFox Gibbon There is a new International Dark Sky park at T K Lawless Park near Three Rivers.
Fascinating ! Lucky u to bump into PJ....those fossils are amazing, and the whole area is beautiful !
Awesomeness....way cool....I've gotten some polished petoskey stone from my Troll friends. Never knew it looked like it looks when it's "raw'!!
the large pieces with wavy lines are stromatoporoid fragments- sponges or corals that were major reef builders here.
I asked Paleo Joe about those and he said that they were either sponges or stromatolites (he didn't say stromatoporoid). I found a rock a couple yeas ago that someone on a Great Lakes Rocks Facebook group identified as stromatoporoid. I remember looking up the difference at the time. They look pretty similar if I remember correctly. Anyhow, I remember he said stromatolite because we talked about how Kona Dolomite is also a stromatolite.
Really enjoying your videos and seeing Lake Huron, it's on a grander scale than any in the UK.
Don't you have a whole ocean there? Seems like that's a bigger scale.
The little tiny pointy thing you found near the beginning looks like an Urchin spine.
I think you might be right. I find sea urchin spines in a ditch in Alpena, where I live. They are shaped a little different though. They're sort of like a chicken drumstick. Pointed on one end and more bulbous on the other end. The thing that you referred to in this video was tapered the same from one end to the other. Maybe it was a different species.
I would love one of those pods! That's amazing. Love watching your videos.
I believe the sea life was laid down during and after the great deluge.
Different creatures settled out at different rates and times forming the layers.
Kathleen Norton I don’t believe that the creation story in the Bible is meant to be taken literally, but I don’t have a problem with someone taking it literally, because the point of the Bible isn’t to teach us science but to get us to Heaven. The important thing is that we believe that
God created the Earth.
But the Bible says in Genesis 1:20, “Let the water teem with an abundance of living creatures”. The flood doesn’t happen until chapter 7.
Thank you ! The place is kind of a strange with all the minerals and fossils and I like so much the view from the top... I live near the Atlantic coast and it’s not the same at all, lakes seem like young ocean !
Just FYI: Paleo Joe is going to be the guest educator at the Houghton Mineral Show this year in August. Everyone is looking forward to hearing his presentations during the Show.
Good to know. I ran into him leading a group in Alpena last week. I was riding my bike by as the group was leaving a park and said hi to him. He's in Alpena fairly often. I heard him speak at the museum once.
Great location and nice to hear a bit about fish fossils. Never knew the fish were that large many years ago. Very interesting video. The views are awesome !
Nice video! Great lakes are so beautiful.
I think the small needle shaped fossl is a sea urchin spine.
I don't remember where that is in the video, but we do find sea urchin spines here.
Very interesting!! Thank you!!!
Awesome, like the history here. So was this all cover in water millions of years ago? That's amazing to think what it looked like back then.
Not only was it covered in water, it was south of the equator at that time.
Wow, that's so cool. Going to have to watch some videos on that for the knowledge. Thanks!
I can't wait to get up to Alpena and explore this place! ♥
Everything is white and snow is still falling, so you should probably wait until spring.
that's awesome!
I would suggest as well that next time you go there to go along the shoreline to the north as there are many huge Boulders that are astounding..... I mean astoundingly beautiful! Not that far.....
I walked a mile or two to the south this spring (there's a video of it) and I walked about a mile to the north about five years ago. I don't remember the boulders, but I found some really big snail fossils to the north. My wife has one that's about five inches in diameter in her science classroom. It's name is Gary.
@@MichiganRocks o snails fossils oh, how cool! I honestly didn't feel like it was that far to the North but it's been a few years so maybe it was farther than I thought. I just love Rockport! I found so many cool and amazing fossils there! Also if you follow the bike path, near that small park off of State Street, it starts with a b and I'm sorry I can't remember it but I'm sick right now... Anyhow along the shore there there's a bunch of giant slabs that I think were taken out of Rockport... And there was just covered in those little crinoids ..... Many of them which are loose, I got handfuls of perfect specimens from there!
iwantthetruth andnothingbut you’re talking about Bayview Park. I’m not sure, but I thought those rocks would have come from LaFarge since it’s closer.
@@MichiganRocks O possibly, I've never been there ...
New goal: Find pieces of placoderm at Rockport! Thanks for sharing this video!
They're not easy to find, I'll tell you that. I don't have a huge interest in fossils, I'm more into lapidary stuff, so I haven't been back to look for any more fish parts. Good luck on your hunt!
@@MichiganRocks In that case, it may take a few trips before I come up lucky! Thanks!!
@@arianasalisbury4368 Nothing bad about a few trips to Rockport.
@@MichiganRocks Amen!
That was really good so fortunate to run into such an expert! There must be so much to find if you don't mind getting dusty! It would be fun to see some of those old rocks/fossils (if you're allowed to) sliced in sections... So, with the mixed corrals would they have been growing together like that - or did they just get jumbled around in the mud or silt before fossilizing?? Wonder what they were doing with the limestone? Was it for ag purposes, roads, slabs for building? As with famous limestones in England that end up on prestigious buildings? Lot of history there! Thanks for taking us.
Good questions. Unfortunately, I don’t know all the answers. I’ve tried searching for info on Rockport, and most of it is just about visiting the park. I have always assumed that the corals and fossils are all mixed up because they fell to the ocean floor and got mixed up there. I never thought of them actually growing together. As for what the limestone was used for, the only thing that I’ve found is that one of the last projects was helping to build the Mackinac Bridge.
@@MichiganRocks Thanks, interesting - I guess they needed a lot of stone/aggregate for the bridge and infrastructure - seems like a large quarry with a lot of debris... Shall have to do some research - certainly loads of fossils.
Visitors to Rockport are allowed to take 25 pounds of rock per year (rocks, fossils, whatever) and you can do with it as you like. Getting some of those larger boulders sliced and polished would be amazing though. There are some huge slabs along the beach there (on the far side of the harbor, past the trees) that have been weathered heavily by the waves and ice that show a lot of detail.
Sort of looks like the Sonora Desert 🌵
Cool. I guess I can save some gas money traveling to Arizona.
I will have to go back when I’m feeling better. Threw my back out the day before so made a very quick visit. Definitely will want to stargaze there
I have never gone there to look at the stars. I'm always looking at the ground.
yes there are trilobytes, found one myself 45 years ago. On surface of a boulder right by the lakeshore not in the port area.
Do you ever take groups on a tour?
I don’t, but Paleo Joe does once a month in the summer. His info is in the description of this video.
also, there used to be old cranes, tunnels, rusting hulks, very thick wire rope all over, gun shells, super rough gravel road, dilapidated warehouselike buildings on top of the big hills at the port, no one went there much, it was spookie and cool to explore… “Rockport”, aptly named.
There is still a tunnel under the big pile of rocks by the water. It is now barred off to protect the bats that have taken up residence there. I never saw the old buildings, but there are still pieces of cable, a few railroad spikes, and other old pieces of metal lying around.
I was just at Rockport this past weekend, it’s an amazing place for sure. Question- what did Joe put on the fossil to see the blue color? It was in the little container. Just curious, because I’m sure I’ll be going back out there someday. Thanks!
I think that was just super glue. It was to keep the fossil from falling apart rather than for color.
@@MichiganRocks Haha ok. It looked like a superglue bottle, but I didn’t think he’d be using that. But makes sense lol. If I go again I’ll be sure to bring a spray bottle.
When* I go again lol.
Nice Mucrospirifer brachiopods there.
I found one of those the other day with really long pointy parts (don't know the proper word for those) that were perfectly preserved on both sides.
Thanks for the dark skies information. Always good to know when the meteor showers or northern lights are happening!
You're welcome. I think Negwegon State Park near Ossineke is also a dark sky location.
Is it legal to go to areas like this a use a pick ax to open up the stones?
Mimi Shella you can bring a hammer here, but there’s a beach in the area that I have heard you can get a ticket for using a rock hammer. This is an old quarry, so the rock is all broken anyway. I’m not sure about bringing a hammer to the beach at Rockport.
@@MichiganRocks Thanks!
(2:54) That's probably a tentaculitid (e.g. Tentaculites). They are quite common in Middle Devonian rocks of eastern North America.
Thanks. I just looked those up. I had never heard of them before.
Are people allowed to break up larger rocks in the quarry?
I think so. There aren't any signs saying not to. You might not want to take my word for it and do a little research before doing that though.
3:00 that is a tentaculites shell- unknown taxon- maybe a type of worm tube
I never heard of that one. I just looked it up and it sure looks similar. Thanks for the ID!
For the most part, the condition of the evidence (a general breccia of a scouring slurry of broken reef materials) would suggest Rockport Quarry represents a reductive catch-basin for a "hashed" deposit of flood-gathered material. This is NOT a coherent reef system, in situ; this is "reef-burger", the displaced contents of a reefed region that was ripped up and beaten to pieces by destructive processes, wide-sweeping and active for only hours, at most. Longer term activity of similar processes result in finer fractions, down to and including mud...
With due respect for "Ancient Joe", I understand the scattered fragments of fossilized fish to be diagnostic of their DESTRUCTION, rather than their happenstance distribution by scavengers. The fact that any of this is fossilized and available for pleasant reflection requires it to have been immediately buried and isolated from the regular decompositors...similar to those we thank today for maintaining the "tidiness" of our surroundings--the relative scarcity of mortal remains.
I'm not knowledgable enough to debate this one way or the other, but could the destructive process be the mining operation? This whole area has been dug up and these are the scraps left behind.
@Michigan Rocks , I've come to appreciate your presence here, one of TH-cam's 'redeemers', IMHO. In consequence of your substantial investment in your interests, I believe your experience has given you good and sufficient knowledge to ground a review of available, observable evidence. You've done some fair wandering upon that storied stage...
First off, you've posed a great, great question: Knowing the overall current general surface condition of the SITE is due to its having been commercially quarried for thirty-five years (mid-'20s to late-'50s), how do we distinguish these LATER industrial effects from the condition of this deposit PRIOR to the quarrying? Is it even possible to locate "undisturbed" evidence original to the rocks themselves?
Consider this: The skirt of the once-active Quarry is itself virgin-exposure of the Alpena Limestone Formation; mining revealed this exposure, but it remains raw and "in place" because mining did not proceed in its direction. It, therefore, contains material surficially disturbed only by natural processes; and that coherent, lithic material mass BENEATH the surface we presume to have long lain undisturbed in a fossilized condition. You were even able to find and show us good sized chunks of fossilized rubble laying loose upon the ground--large enough and coherent enough to fairly represent the material we would find still integrated with the formation.
Of this material, you passingly noted its "bits and pieces" appearance. With a "due-diligence" attention to discriminating animal types from each other, we see in the material many distinct forms--all the way from single segments of crinoidal stems and their "decapitated", crushed and splayed calyxes, including a variety of blastoids similarly detached; through small fragments of branching corals and shattered bryozoans to roughly roll-worn horn corals, and large but fractured and broken "heads" of hexagonaria; to many pieces of the fabled placoderms (none yet found intact), etc., etc., etc.
Nota bene: None of it is articulated or showing an integrity consistent with life; it is a post-mortem dump, all of it encased in a smothering matrix of limey hash, fining down from the recognizable to muddy base-sumps. We everywhere see what can only have been a vast regional biome violently destroyed in some equally vast turbulent event or event-series. Nothing here went "gentle into that good night."
@@thomasdykstra100 Have you been to Rockport, or are you commenting on what you’ve seen in this video? You mentioned crinoids heads and blastoids, but I didn’t find either that I know of. I know what both look like because I’ve found them in other places, not Rockport. I’m not saying they’re not here, but I haven’t found them here.
Joe has found a more complete fish here. He has been gathering pieces over the years and is working on putting them back together.
Thanks for reading my "take"... Keep squiring us about Up North! I'm down in a south-westerly direction: Holland, Michigan lakeshore...
Does all of that coral get imbedded in the sediment during some kind of natural disaster?
I don't think so, I think it's just many years of stuff building up on the sea floor.
So you can take fossils out of the quarry without penalty ?
Yep, up to 25 lbs. per year.
@@MichiganRocks , which means you'd have to break down some of those larger coral heads, correct?
@@thomasdykstra100 Yes, if you wanted to take them with you. Some of those are way too heavy to carry out even if you wanted to.
Yes. I believe the rule is 25 pounds per year.
At 5:08 you said here's a Petoskey stone... But I want to tell you that's not a Petoskey stone, I believe that's an ancient sponge which is different from a Petoskey in that a Petoskey is ancient Coral ..... and has definite hexagonal patterns like a honeycomb
I think it just doesn't show up well in the video. That did have a hexagonal pattern (it's hexogonaria after all) and was definitely a Petoskey stone.
we all know what crynostems are..but not Petosky stones.
Here in Michigan, it's just the opposite. Since the Petoskey stone is our official state stone, pretty much everyone knows what it is. I don't think most people have ever heard of a crinoid.
@@MichiganRocks i was being sarcastic.
You mentioned crinoids about a dozen times,but said nothing about them.
The whole World knows what petosky stones are.
Anyway..thanks for the video
@@tedzilla5826 Oh, sorry, I didn't recognize the sarcasm. It doesn't come through in text very well.
Time 2:51 to 2:58 might be a broken piece of sea urchin spine.
I have been told that those are sea urchin spines and then someone more recently told me it's part of a crinoid. I'm not sure which, if either, is true.
@@MichiganRocks Yes, its difficult to know sometimes from just a picture. If you run into Paleo Joe again, maybe he might know. I do really like your channel a lot. Just very peaceful the way you talk and of course the scenery and the waves are so relaxing. Please keep it going.
@@johngiorgi4000 Wil do!
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