Why Grandma, Lookit them teefs!

Pink calcite crystals buried in chert (blue).

one o them rocks

White nodular limestone and dark gray shale. Suitable for framing, perhaps. Formed on a shallow sea bed and rather deeply buried at least twice, as mountains grew & were worn away.

467 ft (142 m) below surface, Cambrian Conasauga Formation, more than 1/2 a billion years old, photo by Ann Arnold. 2-inch-wide (5 cm) drill core.

Tiny trilobite

Three views of same specimen. Trilobite about 1.5 mm long. Agnostus sp. Conasauga Formation, Upper Cambrian, Alabama. Photo by Ann Arnold.

bath time

Fossil sponge, about half a billion years old. See the little white spicules?

I tell you it's a sponge, but you don't believe me. WHY don't you believe me!!!

I'm a star now

"Every rock is beautiful...."

one moar fossil

This 0.4 millimeter diameter sphere is all that's left of some ancient critter. 500 million years, Conasauga, Alabama subsurface.

minute pyrite cubes

Field of view less than 1 mm wide. Photo by Ann Arnold.