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Coral Ridge Locality

Southern Jefferson Co., Kentucky

Fauna discovered / described by James E. Conkin, published in 1957. More information will be share soon.

David Horn looking for fossils. Brick plant in background. 2010.
View of an inactive mining area. The front end loader was coming from the active mine out of this photo.
Another view of a previously mined area. Collected here was not real productive.
An older, weathered exposure was better for finding fossils.
The small fossils meant you had to get close to the outcrop.
A typical exposure. The thin line in the middle is a layer of unusual sedimentary cone-in-cone structures.
Deep gullies and erosion showed up after mining operations ceased. Our last visit was March 8, 2010.
A few of those reddish speckles in the blue-gray clay were fossils. Most of them were pieces of ironstone.
There are a few fossils among to rock sitting on top of the weathered New Providence Shale.
Photographing a cluster of pyritized snails before they were collected.
The snail Glabrocingulum ellenae is the most common invertebrate fossil in the mollusk-dominated Coral Ridge fauna.
Mr. Cephalopod, John Catalani, looks for the tiny goniatites – ammonoid cephalopods – famous in the Coral Ridge fauna.
Chris Cozart demonstrates the most practical approach to looking for fossils – hands and knees!
A geodized / pyritized blastoid, Granatocrinus kentuckiensis originial named by James Conkin (different genus now).
Looking for small fossils. Note the broken bricks in the ditch and the road in the background.
The Button Mold fauna is perhaps 10-feet above the Coral Ridge – calcified instead of pyritized. Mostly a different fauna with more crinoids and brachiopods, less mollusks.
A crinoid basal ring is among the ironstone fragments (BMK fauna).
Numerous crinoid columns and body plates are in the BMK fauna.

Fossils

Winchelloceras goniatite ammonoid
Winchelloceras through a microscope
Polaricyclus ammoniod on ironstone nodule through a microscope
Michelinoceras orthocone nautiloid – virtually complete!
Glabrocingulum ellenae – the common snail
Sinuitina annae – perhaps a monoplacophoran
Sinuitina annae showing detail in a microscope
Lophospira – a taller and much rarer gastropod than Glabrocingulum.
Loxonema sp. with wonderful growth line preservation. Through a scope.
Pair of Loxonema snails – unusual find.
Bucanella sp. – a very rare bellerophont snail a few mm wide.
Platyceras – another rare genus of snail in the coral Ridge fauna.