From: GeorgiasFossils

1. An Introduction to Georgia’s Fossils Fossils as Evidence of Organisms That Lived Long Ago From: GeorgiasFossils.com

2. A special thanksfor advice & support Dr. Paul F. Huddlestun Retired Lead Coastal Plain Researcher & Author Georgia Geologic Survey Georgia Department of Natural Resources * Dr. Burt Carter Invertebrate Paleontologist Department of Geology & Physics Georgia Southwestern State University Americus, GA * Dr. Donald M. Thieme Geoscientist Department of Physics, Astronomy & Geosciences Valdosta State University, Valdosta, GA From: GeorgiasFossils.com

3. Georgia’s Fossil Record, Partial Some of the animals known to occur in Georgia Common name Years Ago Humans Present 17,000 (Source: Ocmulgee National Monument) Columbian Mammoth 17,000 Giant Sloth 20,000 Giant Bison 21,000 Beaked Whale 1 million Rhinoceros 4 million Horses (Hipparion) 4 million Killer Sperm Whale 10 million Giant Shark (megalodon) 10 million Terminator Pigs (Entelodonts) 35 million Early whales (Basilosaurus) 35 million Manatees (Siren) 35 million Many Sharks 35 million Land & Sea Turtles 35 million Brontothere (Rhino-like) 35 million Large Snakes (15 feet) 35 million Auks (warm water) 35 million Proto-whales (Georgiacetus) 40 million Billfish (Cylindracanthus rectus) 40 million Turtle (Agomphus oxysternum) 61 million Ostrich Dinosaurs 78 million Hadrosaurs 78 million Appalachiosaurus 78 million Many Cretaceous Sharks 78 million Giant Coelacanth 83 million Pterosaurs 83 million Hypsognathus 200 million Trilobites 500 million From: GeorgiasFossils.com

4. The Different Types of Fossils What is a Fossil? A fossil is the evidence of ancient life, of organisms which lived long ago. It is the remains of an animal, animal activity or plant which has been persevered. There are some basic types: • Invertebrate Fossils; lacking a backbone • Vertebrate Fossils; possessing a backbone • Plant Fossils; as petrified wood and leaf impressions • Trace Fossils; tracks, burrows, tunnels… There are three basic environments for organisms as applied to fossils… • Aquatic; freshwater • Marine; saltwater • Terrestrial; land Typically, these terms are combined to explain both the basic type of fossil and its basic environment, such as; Marine Invertebrate * Aquatic Plant * Terrestrial Vertebrate There are common fossils which are neither animals nor plants; foraminifera are a wonderful example. Microscopic foraminifera, called forams for short, are related to amoeba but they form a shell. They are used by paleontologists to accurately date sediments. The Fossil Record The fossil record is the history of fossils over time. Georgia’s fossil record stretches back about 500 million years, that’s half a billion years! From: GeorgiasFossils.com

5. Invertebrates Invertebrates are animals which do not have a backbone. There are many kinds of invertebrates. • Terrestrial invertebrates would include insects, spiders, snails and worms. • Marine invertebrates would include starfish, sand dollars, sea shells and crustaceans (crabs, lobsters & shrimp); there are many others. • Fresh water Invertebrates would also include some crustaceans ( fresh water shrimp), insects, snails and clams. Georgia has a rich record of marine invertebrate fossils including clams, oysters, sea snails, corals, sand dollars, and scallops. There are many others from a wide span of time, each with a story to tell. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

6. Vertebrate Fossils “Vertebrate”, means an animal which has a backbone, or spinal column. The most common vertebrate fossils are teeth and bones. Teeth are the hardest things the body makes, so they are the most easily preserved. Georgia’s most common vertebrate fossil is the shark’s tooth, a marine vertebrate. This is our State Fossil. Georgia also has terrestrial vertebrates in its fossil record, including dinosaurs. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

7. Plant Fossils Plant fossils are well known from Georgia. Petrified wood is a plant fossil; it is wood which has absorbed minerals and slowly turned to stone. Leaves of plants can also form fossils, usually as impressions. The above painting is by Xavier Sims and depicts some of the plant life living n Georgia while dinosaurs walked the Earth. Special thanks to Professor Laurel Robinson and the Georgia Southwestern Visual Arts Department for som many wonderful illustrations. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

8. Trace Fossils Trace fossils are the last main group. These are not the remains of animals, but the evidence of their presence and activity. Burrows and tunnels are the most common marine trace fossils. Animal tracks are the most common terrestrial trace fossils. Coprolites are fossilized poop (funny huh?), but these are important as they are used to study what animals ate. Paleontologists often use trace fossils to understand behavior. GeorgiasFossils.com

9. Paleontologists A “paleontologist” is a scientist which studies fossils. They are also called paleobiologist. “Paleo” means ancient. There are vertebrate paleontologists, invertebrate paleontologists and paleobotanists. A botanist studies plants, a paleobotanist studies ancient plants. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

10. The Preservation of Fossils; Step 1 How do fossils form? Burial. All fossils are rare. Very few organism leave fossils when they die. The conditions for forming fossils are unusual but when those conditions are met, many fossils can form. When most organisms die the processes of decay and scavenging quickly consume the remains. Other plants and animals are nourished. For a fossil to form, the remains of the animal or plant must first be preserved from decay and savaging, this usually means natural burial of some sort. Then those remains may form fossils. The most common form of burial involves water. Terrestrial animals are sometimes buried when they die in rivers. Their remains might be quickly buried or transported downstream to coastlines where rivers empty into seas and deposit sediments. Hipparion horse fossils are known from Georgia’s sediments, where they were transported by water; in some cases they were transported several time by rising & falling sea levels. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

11. The Preservation of Fossils; Step 2 How do fossils form? One way is mineralization. If you mix water and table salt, then place a drop onto a hard, clean surface, the water will evaporate leaving the salt behind…salt is a mineral; (primarily, sodium chloride but most table salts also have additives like iodine). This is one way fossils form, mineral-rich ground water soaks the biological material (bone, tooth, wood…), the minerals precipitate into the material, the minerals are left behind by the water. Over time, the minerals can actually replace the biological material on a cellular or molecular level, turning the remains to stone. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

12. Molds, Casts & Impressions Molds Sometimes a fossil is completely dissolved and only leaves the shape of the organism in the matrix as a cavity or negative. This is a mold. The “matrix” is the rock hosting the fossil. Molds of sea shells are common and frequently preserve very fine detail. Casts Sometimes a cavity (including a mold of a fossil) is filled with sediments and creates a duplicate. This is called a cast. In Georgia, you will often see casts formed when fine sediments fill cavities made by dissolved shells and later harden into rock. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

13. Invertebrate Fossils Dating & Environments Marine invertebrate fossils occur around the world and in Georgia. They can tell us many things. For one thing, small invertebrate species appear and go extinct frequently, constantly evolving new forms and leaving a fossil record of their history. Stratigraphy: Fossils are arranged in beds, or layers, like a stack of pancakes with the oldest on the bottom and the freshest on top. The study of these beds is called stratigraphy. Radiometric dating: One way fossils can be dated is through their mineral content. There’s no simple way to explain this but some minerals decay into other minerals. For example; uranium “decays” into lead. Over time radioactive uranium becomes non-radioactive lead. This is true for several minerals. The rates of decay are known and can be measured by scientists. Therefore, you can frequently test a mineral and establish with accuracy when it originally formed. Combining stratigraphy & radiometric dating: Dating methods have been done on many species in the fossil record. Once you know how old a particular species is, you also know the age of other species present in the same layer. Anytime you see one of these fossils, you know the age of the sediments holding it. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

14. Paleo-environments Sometimes conditions are right and great quantities of fossils can form in one bed. By comparing fossils to modern species, we can learn what conditions a particular fossil likely preferred. Then when scientists find many fossils together, all of which prefer a certain climate, they know what the climate was when those fossils lived. In Georgia’s southern Houston County you’ll find exposures of the Tivola Limestone, it is very rich in small invertebrate fossils. Research shows that these animals preferred a tropical or sub-tropical sea. These beds have been dated to around 35 million years ago. At that time Houston County was covered by a tropical or subtropical sea. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

15. The stratigraphy of the Cemex limestone quarry in Houston County Georgia where the Tivola Limestone is mined. See the Tivola Limestone in yellow. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

16. Georgia’s Oldest Fossils 500 million years ago Trilobites have long been collected from Northwest Georgia. This is a small specimen, some are much larger. When they lived, 500 million years ago, this was the floor of a shallow sea and there were neither bones nor trees on all the Earth. Neither had yet emerged. The Appalachian Mountains, one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world today, was still 200 million years in the future and because of continental drift Georgia was deep in the Southern Hemisphere. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

17. Continental Drift The continents move, very slowly. More slowly than your fingernails grow. Sometimes they crash together. Sometimes they pull apart. This movement is called Continental Drift or Plate Tectonics. When they come together and coastlines are pushed against each other, the ground will buckled and fold. Imagine that you put together two puzzles and then slid them across the table until their edges touched. If you keep pushing the edges together they will begin to flex and then will fold and pieces of the puzzle will buckle and one puzzle will likely slide beneath the other. This is what happened when continents collide; mountains are built this way, the pieces of the puzzle lying on top would be like mountains pushed up on the edges of a continental collision. Now take one puzzle, all put together, and slowly try to pull it apart, gaps start to open between the pieces... This is what happened when the continents move away from each other. Gaps, or valleys, appear in the ground. These are called rift valleys. The Atlantic Ocean began as a rift valley in Pangaea. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

18. Rift Valleys Dr. Tim Chowns is a Professor of Geology for the University of West Georgia; he reports that the skull of a 200 million year old Triassic reptile, genus Hypsognathus, was recovered from a deep drill sample near the Savannah River in South Carolina at a depth of 2,016 feet (nearly half a mile deep). Hypsognathuswas a primitive reptile about 13 inches long and very much like a modern lizard, though they are unrelated. Dr. Chowns reports that the area producing the fossil is a buried rift valley. Rift Valleys form when continents move away from each other, The forces of continental drift tried to tear the Southeast apart. When Hypsognathuslived there wasn’t yet a flower on all the Earth, the flowering plants had yet to emerge. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

19. When sea levels were high. When sea levels were high a fertile shallow sea covered much of North America as well as all of southern Georgia and Florida. This was a tropical, or sub-tropical sea. During this time the powerful Suwannee Current crossed South Georgia, connecting the Gulf of Mexico to The Atlantic. This sea also covered much of the interior of the USA and Canada as the Western Interior Seaway, Hudson Seaway and Labrador Seaway. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

20. The Suwannee Current Dr. Burt Carter at Georgia Southwestern in Americus, Georgia and Dr. Paul F. Huddlestun (Retired) of the Georgia Geologic Survey (closed) did extensive research on the Suwannee Current and its influence on Georgia. Research that was driven by invertebrate paleontology. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

21. Ever Changing Earth The Earth changes, and is still changing. Climates change. • The world cools and ice ages come; a vast amount of sea water gets trapped as glaciers. The glaciers grow from the poles toward the equator. • The world warms and ice retreats, glaciers melt away and the water returns to the seas, many times the earth has been so warm that the both poles were ice free. Sea levels rise and fall, in response to global cooling and warming. • Sometimes sea levels were so low during the ice ages that the coastline moves 30 or 40 miles further out to sea, all the way to the continental shelf. • Sea levels have frequently been high enough for Georgia’s Fall Line to be coastal. • Several time sea levels have risen high enough for coastline to be north of the Fall Line. • There have been at least 27 significant shifts in sea levels in the last 2 million years. The continents move. • Sometimes they come together, raising mountains. • Sometimes they move apart, opening valleys, even oceans. Fossils record these events. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

22. Sea Level Change over the last 100 million years GeorgiasFossils.com

23. The Georgia Whale In 1983 a mass of whale fossils was discovered in Burke County Georgia during the construction of Nuclear Power Plant Vogtle. Researchers would show that this was a proto-whale (early whale) previously unknown to science. It was named Georgiacetus vogtlensis. Eventually, fossils from three separate individuals were recovered. Scientists would show that Georgiacetus was the most advanced known proto-whale and possibly the ancestor to all modern whales. Georgiacetus as illustrated in 2011 by Xavier Sims, a student at Georgia Southwestern Visual Arts Department. How fossils show change The Georgiacetus fossils were found 93 miles inland from the modern coastline. The invertebrate fossils found with the proto-whales showed that they died offshore, maybe 30 miles south of the shoreline that they knew. When these whales lived the shoreline rested on, or north of, the Fall Line. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

24. Appalachiosaurus montgomeriensis Appalachiosaurus lived 78 million years ago and was discovered by a team including Dr. David Schwimmer at Columbus State University from a nearly complete skeleton of a young animal (juvenile) in Alabama, it also occurs in Georgia. Appalachiosaurus is a ancestor to Tyrannosaurus Rex. 2011 Artwork by Jordon Walker while a student of Georgia Southwestern’s Visual Arts Department. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

25. A 35 million year old brontothere tooth was found near Gordon, Georgia by a research team including Dr. Dennis Parmley of Georgia College and State University. Artwork by Quentin Lonon, created in 2011, Georgia Southwestern Vista Arts student. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

26. Ostrich dinosaur Dr. David Schwimmer has reported Ostrich Dinosaurs (Ornithomimisauridae) from 78 million year old sediments in West Georgia near Columbus, Georgia . 2012 Artwork by Hasani Jones, Georgia Southwestern Visual Arts Department. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

27. Georgia Pterosaur Dr. David Schwimmer at Columbus State University has also reported 83 million year old pterosaur fossils from the Columbus area, they were likely pterodactyls, though the species could not be determined. A larger pterosaur is imaged here in 2012 artwork by Hasani Jones while a student of the Georgia Southwestern Visual Arts Department. From: GeorgiasFossils.com

28. Goblin Shark Dr. Schwimmer at Columbus State University also reported a large population of goblin sharks (Scapanorhynchus texanus) from 78 million year old sediments near Columbus, Ga. 2011 Artwork by Hasani Jones, GSW Visual Arts student From: GeorgiasFossils.com

29. Mammoths Columbian mammoths (Mammuthus columbi) have been reported from the Savannah area by Dr. Al Mead at Georgia College State University in Milledgeville. This large animal also occurs in other Georgia locations. Artwork by Elisa Boswell; 2012, Georgia Southwestern Visual Arts Department From: GeorgiasFossils.com