Types of Fossils Found in the Appalachians

Appalachian Mountain Fossils

• Cretaceous marine and terrestrial dwelling animal and plant fossils such as the lobed finned fish called the Coelacanth, snails, bivalves, sharks, rays, early marine mammals, dinosaurs and angiosperm or flowering plants can be found in the gravel, sandstone, siltstone and shale rocks located through out the entire Appalachian Mountain region.

Red Hill, Pennsylvania Fossils

• Red rock from the Upper Devonian era found in northern Pennsylvania, consists of red sandstone that contains vertebrate fossils that are more diverse in type and quality than in other areas of the central Appalachian Mountains. The most notable fossil is that of the amphibian Hynerpeton bassetti, an early tertrapod with four powerful limbs that walked on land. Other fossils include armored fish called placoderms, ray-finned fish and lobe-finned fish.

Fossils Near Washington, D.C.

• Fossils from the Paleozoic warm ancient seas came from animals that lived in very warm tropical waters. Fossils found in limestone and sandstone of the Valley and Ridge Province near Washington D.C. include trilobites, sea scorpions also known as eurypterids, brachiopads, bryozoans,; mollusks, echinoderms, conodonts and stromatoporoids. Tube worm burrow fossils called skiolithos have been found in the Blue Ridge Province and are evidence of the ancient tidal flats or beaches that used to exist in that area. Fossiliferous fossils of the Piedmont Province such as reptilian tracks and freshwater lucstrine fossils such as crustaeceans, mollusks, stromatolites, fish teeth and scales, clam shrimp, tadpole shrimp, and ostracodes can be found in the red stone beds of the Piedmont Province.

Southern Appalachian Mountain Fossils

• Tertiary bivalves or hinged shell fish like clams called the Cheaspecten jffersonius can be found in Virginia. Fossils of tertiary shark teeth, goblin shark, mackerel, tiger shark and sand shark as well as the Carcharodon megalodon shark can be found in the southern regions of the Appalachian Mountains. Tertiary-age whales such as the Zhygorhiza kochii and Basilosaurus cetioedes are found there as well. Basilosaurus means "King of Lizards," which reflects the thoughts of the paleontologists that originally found the whale's fossilized skeletal fragments and believed that they belonged to a large reptile instead of a whale.