Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2024-05-22T03:33:35.381Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Heating and quenching of fossils

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2017

John Pojeta Jr.  and
Marija Balanc
John Pojeta Jr.
Affiliation:
U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia 22092
Marija Balanc
Affiliation:
U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia 22092
Get access

Extract

Rapid temperature change can be used to free fossils from some types of rock. Using this method, rocks are alternately heated over a gas burner and quenched in cold running water. The method is especially useful for obtaining specimens of small species (5mm–7mm), but whole specimens up to 50mm long have been released from rock. Heating and quenching should be tried on those limestones that break through both fossils and matrix when the rock is struck with a hammer or broken with a rock splitter. In such limestones, it is often difficult and time consuming to remove specimens using needles and grinding wheels (Sohl, this volume, chapter 19). Many more specimens can be obtained for study more rapidly by heating and quenching such rocks than can be obtained by mechanical preparation. In most instances, only one side of a specimen is exposed when limestone is split mechanically, and the opposite side of the specimen adheres tightly to the remaining rock. In such cases, heating and quenching can free the entire specimen of all rock.

Type
Techniques for Megafossils
Information
The Paleontological Society Special Publications , Volume 4: Paleotechniques , 1989 , pp. 218 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 Paleontological Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

ANONYMOUS. 1951, Heat treatment frees Pre-Cambrian fossils. Science News Letter, p. 261.Google Scholar
Driver, H. L. 1928, An aid in disintegrating samples for micro-organic study. Journal of Paleontology, 1:253–254.Google Scholar
Kummel, B., and Raup, D. (eds.). 1965. A Handbook of Paleontological Techniques, San Francisco, W. H. Freeman and Company, 852 p.Google Scholar
Macvicar, D. G. Jr. 1951. Extraction of fossils by heat. The Micropaleontologist, 5:15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macvicar, D. G. Jr. 1952. Thermal disintegration of sedimentary rock. American Journal of Science, 250:271–274.Google Scholar
Pojeta, J. Jr. In press. Preparation of Fossils. In Webers, G. F., Pojeta, J. Jr., and Yochelson, E. L. (eds.), Cambrian Mollusca from the Minaret Formation, Ellsworth Mountains, West Antarctica, Geological Society of America, Memoir 130.Google Scholar
Webers, G. F., Pojeta, J. Jr., and Yochelson, E. L. (eds.). In press. Cambrian Mollusca from the Minaret Formation, Ellsworth Mountains, West Antarctica. Geological Society of America, Memoir 130.Google Scholar