The weather was too nice on Saturday, April 27th to stay inside and work on house projects so I took a day off and went collecting. I hit up 2 different sites in the Maquoketa formation of Southeast Minnesota in search of trilobites and maybe crinoids. Unfortunately I didn't find either. I saw a bunch of parts of trilobites, but nothing rare/nice enough to warrant joining my collection, mostly Isotelus and Flexicalymene parts. I ended up only bringing one rock home, which may be a new low record for me. However, that one rock is pretty cool. It's a small piece containing 8 Ischadites iowensis. I have only collected a small handful of these unusual things and this is the most I have ever seen on one rock. Before this the most I had seen grouped together were 3, so 8 was a very big surprise.
Ischadites iowensis (Owen, 1852)
Maquoketa Formation
Upper Ordovician, Richmondian
Southeast Minnesota