#formation pieces

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Big post in the making!

As the last post Involving ALL the formation stream pieces got too long to be comfortable for scrolling I have decided to start a new one this year! For new people a little recap:

The Formation streams are an ongoing series of live streams on my Twitch/YouTube channels where I draw every week one of these menageries, portraying the flora and fauna of a locality or whole geological formation. The Discord community helps along and before you ask: no there are no prints of this and yes I would like to turn this into a book one day but no idea when and how.

Here a link post I kept expanding unto end of 2025 HERE

First piece of the year was the Elliot Formation from early Jurassic South Africa!

Adding the Agate Fossil Beds from the Miocene of Nebraska. A paradise for many bizarre ungulates.

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420 Million years before the reign of Mamdani, two Acutiramus wake up from their daylight slumber as thousands are Eurypterus begin to invade the shallow, warm waters of New York. This is the Fiddlers Green or Bertie Formation, a Silurian lagerstätte known for its eurypterids

The research history of this formation unfortunately causes much confusion here because what was once the Bertie Formation is now the Bertie Group which includes the Fiddlers Green Formation, but certain authors, especially on the Canadian side still call it the Bertie Formation

This caused a little bit of a headache during the research phase for this piece but I think we have it now figured out and the Wikipedia page also got already some updates. Beyond that Fiddlers Green is rather straight forward. These near shore waters were home to many critters

most prominently the eurypterids which most likely gathered here to molt, away from large open water predators, but other animals like weird oncoceratid cephalopods and even some interesting marco-algae can be found here as well.

The most common large eurypterid from is Acutiramus, which might have been a largely nocturnal predator of softer prey. Interestingly no vertebrates have been described so far! Size charts by Discord member Montana.

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Result from the Burgess Shale #paleostream! This piece turned into one of the busiest yet, and yet we only scratch the surface here! Burgess Shale is a fossil bearing deposit high up in the Canadian Rockies and is sometimes called the "most important fossil locality of all time"

This Cambrian lagerstätte is famous for animals like Anomalocaris and Opabinia but it's beginnings are humble. Found by Walcott in 1909 the incredible fossils were at first sorted in familiar groups with only renewed interest in the 60s revealing the alien world we can observe here.

Because Burgess ranges in time, space and preserved fauna we focused on a single locality: the original Walcott quarry. It's suited at the base of the Cathedral Escarpment, a cliff that represents the former edge of an submerged platform, visible to this day. That means the site

was at least 100 meter, but probably more like 150 to 200 meters below seal level. A place that was reached by very little natural light. Such environmental conditions also promote a certain look in animals. Despite having eyes one can assume that animals down here weren't super...

...colorful or patterned. As such I focused more on the many bizarre shapes and the overall vibes certain spots in this ecosystem could create. Walcott was largely dominated by a flat, muddy bottom, so I put the scene next to the escarpment around a denser patch of sponges.

Despite that, many faunal elements remain absent here. As you can see in this size chart by Discord member Prehistorica, even just this quarry is a true treasure trove that still yields new species to this day!

As a side note this piece was inspired by Gothic architecture and images of WW1 zeppelin air raids.

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Result from the Tiaojishan Formation stream, or rather Yanliao biota stream. This incredible assemblage was on my mind from the very start of doing these pieces, not just because it has tons of fascinating critters but because a big portion of the vertebrates here appear...

to have been at least partially arboreal. Tons of small pterosaurs, feathered dinosaurs, mammals and even a few lizard show adaptations for living in the canopy. With weirdos like Yi or at least two lineages of gliding mammals. Few formations offer a glimpse into this world...

that is usually omitted from the fossil record. The outcrops of the Tiaojishan Formation and the rest of the Yanliao biota are known from Northern China, especially Liaoning but also Hebei and Inner Mongolia. These incredibly well preserved fossils were preserved in lakes in...

which fine volcanic ash quickly covered up carcasses. The surrounding forests have been assumed to be subtropical for a while but a new publication actually even compares them with tropical moist montane forests. The flora was dominated not by conifers but Bennettitales which...

made up more than 30% of the flora. These plants, that were probably close to angiosperms, had flower like organs and give this forest a little more color. Besides that we have ginkgos, ferns and other gymnosperms. But the true diversity lies with the inverts...

Over 700 species have been described so far (here only a selection), often with color preservation articulated bodies. We also have bizarre leaf mimics, giant fleas and the largest mesozoic spider, Mongolarachne. When it comes to the vertebrates an interesting aspect is the very small fish...

assemblage, with two lampreys and one or two ray-finned fishes. Instead a large diversity of salamanders filled many aquatic niches and a docodont with beaver tail joined them too. On land, small dinosaurs and mammals can be found. So far missing are any really large animals probably due to a taphonomic bias for small animals to be preserved more easily. The vertebrate size chart is a collaboration between me and Discord member Avery, who also did the inverts. Plants where assembled by JW.

Full size can be seen here: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1X_ypdI4M00FkkVSr6lKImNEZzS-BCjK2

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Result from the Wadi al Hitan #paleostream! The "valley of the whales" as it is better known is a classic locality from the late Eocene of Egypt. Most famously it is place filled with the remains of early whales, Archaeoceti, but it's less straight forward as a piece than one...

might think. Since the early 20th century people have recorded fossils from the Wadi and in 2005 it was dedicated a World Heritage Site. Besides Basilosaurus and Dorudon the remains of early sirenians and proboscideans and among the more important finds but the largest...

part of the fauna is probably in the sharks and rays. Keen eyes will notice that some prominent taxa are missing here. This is mostly due to the stratigraphy of the Wadi being an absolute nightmare.While single members are relatively well defined, how they relate to each other...

and into what formations they fit depends a lot on the author. Subsequently we near exclusively used the Temple member here, which includes most of the famous stuff. During the Eocene this part of Africa was largely covered by shallow seas, fringed by mangroves...

this created a paradise for water loving mammals but the sharks clearly dominate. Large marine snakes are also known from the Wadi but from different localities. This size chart was put together by me as well as Discord member Avery with the inverts by Discord member Gnath

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And here the results from the Solnhofen #paleostream! This image depicts large parts of the terrestrial fauna of the Altmühltal Formation, the best understood part of the litographic limestone formations of Germany. There were several reasons for gong onto land despite...

All of these creatures being preserved in marine sediments. For one it makes it possible to show all the cool pterosaurs and other stem birds from here. On the other hand, more importantly, it offers the possibility to show the environment many of these animals occupied.

Popular images of the Solnhofen islands show them as tropical paradises, often with cliffs and tall trees. The opposite appears to be the case. The islands were probably small, arid, flat and had vegetation that can be better described as shrubbery. Small conifers...

and bennettitaleans are the most common plants. The beaches were probably blinding white, consisting of sand that formed from broken down corals and sponges, as these islands were often not much more than reefs peaking above the waves. Formations/localities that housed the...

typical Solnhofen fauna form a long corridor through southern Germany but localities in France show similar preservation. The Atlmühltal Formation has iconic taxa like Archaeopteryx and Pterodactylus and was therefore the first of these formations we covered.

The size charts this time were a collaborative effort between me and 3 more friends.

As you can see there the local insect fauna had some absolute bangers. When you want large insect interacting with dinosaurs or pterosaurs: this is your place!

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Result from the Florissant Formation #paleostream! While it doesn't look like this this has been one of the most intensely researched pieces of the whole series, but more on that later. On this a late summer evening a Megacerops steps onto a clearing to take a sip from a...

puddle, but two oreodonts are already here. The clearing is the product of a volcanic avalanche, a lahar, that ripped through this part of the forest. These hot mud slides are the reason for the biggest claim to fame of this formation: huge well preserved redwood tree-stumps.

Today they form the center of a national monument that preserves the incredible natural heritage of this late Eocene formation. Redwoods might make you think of the Californian forests but the climate around this time was much warmer and so you might be faced with some cognitive...

dissonance when one part of the flora looked like Redwood Forest and the other like modern day Florida. The plant preservation form here is exceptional but not only that, it carries over to other organisms as well.

Beeches and oak relatives are among the most common plants here with tons of tree but very few preserved herbaceous plants. Subsequently the lowest tier of plants here is filled by seedlings of the tree Cedralospermum that take advantage of the sudden opening of the canopy.

When it comes to vertebrates the assemblage isn't as diverse as other Eocene localities and we have an interesting lack of amphibians and reptiles so far, but all of that just meant that we where able to focus more on the real stars of the show:

The invertebrates! So far more than 1500 species have been described, with many more still waiting. We have whole families here that didn't even get one member in. With the size and time given less than 10% of all animals known from Florissant made it into the final piece. The...

preservation here is incredibly beautiful, with complete specimens being common and color preservation not a rarity. I have to give an enormous thank you this week once again to everyone involved who helped with the research and especially the size charts!

Huge shout out goes to Montana (who did the plants), Gnath (who did the vertebrates and parts of the inverts), JW (who did a portion of the inverts) and Avery (who ALSO did parts of the inverts!).

P.s. for people unaware: for various reasons we are switching to a biweekly rhythm for the formation pieces now! Meaning we will have more time for research, finding compositional ideas or reaching out to researchers for feedback or guest appearances!

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Result from the Pisco Formation, please leave all your angry comments below! The Miocene of the Pisco basin is an absolute insane hot spot for marine life, over the course of millions of years the sediments recorded dozens of large mammals, especially whales...

which are often times recorded in astonishing details. Because of this abundance of megfauna, it became necessary to narrow it down for this piece. We went with the Sud Sacaco locality which records life of a large bay, making it possible to include some coastal and benthic...

species, importantly the sloth Thalassocnus and the whale Odobenocetops. Nowadays the Pisco basin shows little of this former biodiversity, being largely desert with many specimens laying on, or just below the surface. This makes it easy to spot them but the high levels of...

erosion also means we are losing many fossils to the elements. And of course that means that small stuff is lost quicker than big whales. Subsequently, and because of other reasons, small stuff from here is little understood while...

when you look at the 1m+ animals you are getting swarmed by fantastical creatures. Weirdly enough, you will notice that Livyatan is in our size chart but it's actually not in the piece and it would not be in the locality, not just geographically but also temporary...

And speaking of the large stuff from here: there is of course a certain shark in the room that i reduced to a pile of verts and jaw fragments. The nature of this assemblage makes it next to impossible to include it Size charts by Discord members Tim, Armin and Avery