The Falls of the Ohio State Park has updated their website recently and it looks nice. You can find it at http://www.fallsoftheohio.org
This is a great place to visit if you are visiting the Louisville, Kentucky area. It is located almost directly across from the main city skyline. Usually visitors will travel across the Kennedy or 2nd Street bridges from Louisville to get to Jeffersonville or Clarksville Indiana. If you travel to the park, the road leading along river will take you past the river side parks. Park the vehicle there on the in or out and take a picture of the Louisville skyline. It is a great photo opportunity.
What I like about the revised website is under Discovery Center and then Fossils are a number of resources talking about Collecting Fossils, Fossil ID, Brachiopods, Are Fossils Important, Corals, Crinoids & Blastoids, Discovering Fossils, Mollusks, Patch Reef, River Pebbles, and Trilobites. I have not had a chance to review all the material yet but it looks informative.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Indiana Blue Crayfish
Okay, this pictures are of creatures that are not fossils... yet. They could be distantly related to trilobites.
While pruning the Concord grape plants the other day I came across the remains of blue crayfish. Some animal maybe a raptor or raccoon tends to leave remains near the grape arbor (usually a pile of feathers). I guess it could be a cat killing the crayfish and then a bird bringing the remains to the grapes to finish eating it. The tail, internal organs, and legs were missing from these crayfish. I think there were at least three crayfish and the remains were within a meter radius of each other. I estimate the crayfish could have been 6 inches (15-18 cm) long.
What really caught my attention was the blue color of the pincers and parts of the shell. I will have more detailed pincer images tomorrow. Doing a little research I found this nice website on blue crayfish. I also found this website on Indiana crayfish. Maybe this species is a Procambarus alleni, P. clarkii or Orconectes rusticus. I wonder if these crayfish are naturally blue or something in the environment is turning them this color. Should the water be tested? These remains were found in Clark County, Indiana.
One last thing, these are burrowing crayfish. Their mounds are all over the yard where water runs through from an irrigation pond. They are probably nocturnal.
UPDATE: Thanks to the nice people from www.bluecrayfish.com for identifying these pieces. They identified it as a Cambarus diogenes and it is blue because the sun bleached it.
CLICK ON IMAGES TO SEE MORE DETAIL.
While pruning the Concord grape plants the other day I came across the remains of blue crayfish. Some animal maybe a raptor or raccoon tends to leave remains near the grape arbor (usually a pile of feathers). I guess it could be a cat killing the crayfish and then a bird bringing the remains to the grapes to finish eating it. The tail, internal organs, and legs were missing from these crayfish. I think there were at least three crayfish and the remains were within a meter radius of each other. I estimate the crayfish could have been 6 inches (15-18 cm) long.
What really caught my attention was the blue color of the pincers and parts of the shell. I will have more detailed pincer images tomorrow. Doing a little research I found this nice website on blue crayfish. I also found this website on Indiana crayfish. Maybe this species is a Procambarus alleni, P. clarkii or Orconectes rusticus. I wonder if these crayfish are naturally blue or something in the environment is turning them this color. Should the water be tested? These remains were found in Clark County, Indiana.
One last thing, these are burrowing crayfish. Their mounds are all over the yard where water runs through from an irrigation pond. They are probably nocturnal.
UPDATE: Thanks to the nice people from www.bluecrayfish.com for identifying these pieces. They identified it as a Cambarus diogenes and it is blue because the sun bleached it.
CLICK ON IMAGES TO SEE MORE DETAIL.
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