Stone City Bluffs

Mr. Rushings 6th grade

 So what is geology
And why do we care?
Stone City Bluffs
Whiskey Bridge
 Why do they call it that?
This location is famous for being the most
fossiliferous site in Texas! (so far)
But thats not why they call it Whiskey
Bridge..
They have called it this because this was the
closest place that Aggies could get a drink
during prohibition. Brazos County was dry but
Burleson County was not.
 Moseley Ferry?
Stone City Bluffs, alias Whiskey Bridge
was also called Moseley Ferry
After the Brazos River crossing in the early
days of Texas
Before it was a Bridge, it was a ferry
And before it was a ferry it was a ford.
So this area has a long history
 Who first discovered it?

A German geologist named Roemer in 1848. He was sent here by

the Berlin Academy of Sciences to see if Texas was fit for
settlement!
 Many people come here to collect
and study the geologic formations

One of my professors at Texas A&M, Dr. Yancey is one of the foremost experts on this
depositional environment.
 How old.
Geologic time is sometimes a little hard to
understand.
We talk about things that are millions and
billions of years old.
To make sense of things we name different
time periods
Like the dinosaurs disappeared during the
Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary.
But that was before the Whiskey Bridge fossils
were deposited.
 How old is this ?
Exposed strata (rock layers) in the
Whiskey Bridge area are about 35 million
years old
To get a better handle on how long ago
that was in Earths history we have rocks
on Earth that we have dated to be 4.6
BILLION years old
In that respect, 35 million years ago is just a
blink of your eyes!
 How old is that old?
So, the fossils you found are that old!!

Man has only been around for about 200,000

years and that is a tiny fraction of the age of
the rocks that you will see in your samples.

The key geologic material in this area is

glauconite.
 But what is glauconite
It is a blue-green sandy material (glaukos
is Greek for color).
How did it get here?
The rivers carry sand, silt and clay into the
ocean. The glauconite started out as clay and
was chemically changed by the ocean and the
creatures that lived there.
 Fossil
Hunting
What are we
looking for?
Snails as
predators?
 More things
to look for

Clams
BUT the most
sought after
(and rarest)
fossils are the
squid beaks
and shark teeth
You could find
them in your
samples.
 Most common
You have
a sheet
with the
50 most
common
fossils
found in
this area. Using your hands and tools, try to identify as many
fossils as you can.
But there isnt any ocean here?
Now there isnt
But for many hundreds of thousands to
millions of years most of Texas was under
water!
Actually, somewhere between 50 and 200 feet of
water.
What would happen if we had that much water
here now?
So, what did
your team
find in your
samples?
 What was the hard stuff
Some of your samples also had some
hard material that was tough to break off
with your hands
This is a thicker cemented layer of siderite (an
iron carbonate) hardground which is resistent
to weathering and is the reason that the bluffs
remain higher.
Siderite also means that there was low
sedimentation rates at the time it was
deposited.
 What did our class find
So, how could we analyze our results?
What kind of questions could we ask?
 (biometrics) or relative numbers

Predator vs. Prey

How many predator fossils did you identify?
How many prey fossils?

Large vs. Small

How many large fossils did you identify?
How many small fossils did you identify?