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Good day, I have photographed a good number of the better fossils in my collection and I thought I would share. Several of the fossils have been collected, several have been given as gifts and others were purchased. Fossilized Crocodile Egg and Snake Egg Bouxwiller Quarry, France Eocene Bought from a member 2012 (6 x 2.5 cm) Longusorbis Cuniculosus (Fossil Crab) Oyster Bay Formation, Shelter Point, Vancouver Island, British Columbia Cretaceous Bought from a local dealer 2012 5 x 2.5 cm Raymondites (Trilobite) Gull River Formation, Black River Group, Kingston, Ontario Ordovician Collected last spring - came across a construction site 2013 (0.7 cm x 0.6 cm) Michelinoceras (Cephelopod) Gull River Formation, Black River Group, Kingston, Ontario Ordovician Collected last spring - came across a construction site 2013 (13.7 cm x 2.4 cm) Conulariid Gull River Formation, Black River Group, Kingston, Ontario Ordovician Collected last spring - came across a construction site 2013 (1.7 cm x 1.4 cm) Diamanella (Brachiopod) Gull River Formation, Black River Group, Kingston, Ontario Ordovician Collected last spring - came across a construction site 2013 (3 cm x 2 cm) Isotelus (Trilobite) Gull River Formation, Black River Group, Kingston, Ontario Ordovician Collected last spring - came across a construction site 2013 (1.5 cm x 1.7 cm) Platystrophia Ponderosa (Brachiopod) Ashlock Formation, Owingsville, Kentucky Ordovician Collected while on a rock climbing trip to Kentucky 2013 (3.5 cm x 2 cm) Neuropteris (Fossilized Fern) Excelsior, Pennsylvania Carboniferous Collected last year while on a road trip 2013 (11 cm x 7 cm) Ammonite Madagascar Bought at our club auction 2012 (7.4 cm x 5.7 cm) Dactylioceras (Ammonite) Yorkshire, England Jurassic Got for helping someone out last summer 2013 (5 cm x 4 cm) Essexella Asherae (Jelly Fish) Carbondale Formation, Pit 11, Francis Creek, Garner, Illinois Pennsylvanian Given to me by a generous member (4.2 cm x 6.1 cm) Isotelus (Trilobite) Gull River Formation, Black River Group, Kingston, Ontario Ordovician Collected last spring - came across a construction site 2013 (6.8 cm x 4.4 cm) Mucrospirifer (Brachiopod) Hamilton Group, Widder Formation, Hungry Hollow Devonian Collected this spring 2014 (Thank you to a member for keeping access) (4 cm x 1.2 cm) Flexicalymene Croensi (Trilobite) Power Concrete Quarry, Prince Edward County, Picton, Ontario Ordovician Collected on a club field trip 2011 (1.5 cm x 0.9 cm) Greenops (Trilobite) Hamilton Group, Widder Formation, Hungry Hollow Devonian Collected this spring 2014 (Thank you to a member for keeping access) (2.2 cm x 1.5 cm) THANK YOU for taking a look Corey Lablans

So, come down on the DPS trip to Brownwood they say. Make some new friends, find some cool stuff and eat some good food. Boy were they ever right! Met Mike, Paul, Nanette to name but a few; great bunch o' people. Can't wait to post my pics...my 1st Crinoids and my 1st ever trilobite! Stay tuned for the pics coming soon!

I have been obtaining parts and pieces for my Prep lab, So here is how it looks so far. Also some "throw away" pieces from Penn-Dixie I have been practicing on. I am starting to like the not perfect bugs, makes some interesting pieces. More pics later.

Hello, all fossil hunters! My name is Jeff, and I just wandered into this forum thru a google search. I live in Montague, NJ, 500 feet from the fabled "Trilobite Ridge". I have lived here since 1997 and have been collecting fossils here ever since. I will be posting a thread on the New Jersey page, and I will fully discuss this locality as well as other nearby fossil locations. I have first hand knowledge of these sites and can "clear the air" when it comes to alot of speculation and misinformation about these sites and what can be found here. See you on the NJ page! Jeff

For those of you who have dreamed about Middle and Upper Cambrian trilobites in western Utah, this is the publication that will open the door to exploring. The Utah Geological and Mineralogical Survey has printed many well done booklets and books on Millard County, Utah. The intent was to draw in Petroleum Geologists to explore the general areas, but also provide a wealth of information to those interested in Paleontology and Cambrian Stratigraphy. To the west side you can even be directed to Triassic Ammonites, with Pennsylvanian and later outcrops also in the vicinity. The camping possibilities are everywhere. Some box canyons are wonderful... but trying to find a flat spot can be challenging. When I say flat... everything is either up hill... or down hill. You have the Topaz Mountains to the north, Dugway Geodes (good luck finding one...) and Pioche, Nevada mining areas further to the west. Excellent cheeseburgers in Pioche, by the way. The area is... wide open and lacks facilities. So gas up, water up, block ICE and get groceries in Delta. It might be 45 miles to this area... you can check it on the road map... but you cannot miss it. But... finding the right road(s) can be tricky as they split and take a different course quickly. My recommendation... look for the 100 foot power lines strung over the flat country and once you intersect them near shale outcrops... you have arrived. To the north is the U Dig site which is marked along the way as well, and cuts off to the right from some popular Middle Cambrian exposures. Geology of the Canyon, House and Confusion Ranges, Millard County, Utah by F. W. Christiansen & others, 1951.

In 1970 I found an outstanding fossil location about 2 or 3 miles north of Oldenburg on the one road going through town. You stay to the left (west) and when you find the creek following the paved road on the west side... you are there. There is a turnoff that the farm's owners uses to take his tractor to the field and cross the creek. It is flowing all year round. The erosion along the stream bank has unlimited numbers of weathered out fossiliferous shale-limestone slabs with partial Isotelus and Flexicalymenes. The true treasures were in the creek bed shales when split, large Isotelus gigus were found in good numbers. Absolutely perfectly preserved and split well when wet. I would lay them out in the shade to dry out and the shell would not fracture and break off. They were all laying flat. The Flexicalymene meeki were rolled and flat. From pea size to that of a nickel in the shale and washed into gravel beds on bends in the creek. I told a person about my find when leaving Indianapolis while stationed there for a couple months. They came back, or someone they obviously knew and paid the farmer $500 to "quarry the location" out. The farm house is about a mile north and a turn to the east. I could not find the name of the farmer, who would be deceased by now, but his nephew was the next of kin and is probably working the farm today. New homes were being built in the area as well along the east side of the road. Inquire to the current owner of the field and you will then have the right person to ask. Since I FOUND THIS LOCATION I am offering this to anyone interested. But, please respect the property rights of the owner and if there is a current fossil collector leasing a part of the creek bed. I am sure there are lots of specimens to be discovered in this brushy slow moving creek. After 44 years the memory is very clear to me. I did not realize I had discovered a unique spot in an area that would not have been discovered by any method but by accident. I was at the Tucson Rock Show last February and saw a 12 inch or so Isotelus mounted on the wall with "inquire as to price" and a person interested. It said "Oldenburg, Indiana" and he was the person who had leased this patch of ground. He sold it while I was there. Once you can GPS the elevation of the strata, there could be other sites available to work. I just remember this farmer riding his big tractor down the road to see what I was finding that day. I gave him a very large Quartz Crystal many years later when I took my wife to see this spot... to discover it had been bull dozed out. You cannot get them all, I say. Good luck. Check with the current owner and be prepared to find all the slabs you could ever carry washing out of the creek bank and maybe... there are some trilobites missed in the tailings. I am sorry I have no photographs, but might have some color slides that can be digitized if there is much interest. You might have heard of Waldron, Indiana and the Waldron Shale. This location did not have any crinoids, but sure had all of the partial trilobites and scattered brachiopod shells you could ever expect.

I was planning to attend the Museum of the Earth's outing to Jamesville Quarry and knew that gas would be the primary expense for the three and a half hour trip each way. So, I decided to make the most of it and head up there two days early, camp, and visit some very productive Middle Devonian sites my girlfriend, Valerie and I explored last May. 11:30 Thursday morning I arrived at Deep Springs Road quarry near Lebanon in Madison County. It is an excellent exposure of the Windom Shale and was my favorite site on my last visit to the area. A wide variety of well preserved fossil invertebrates are profuse in the relatively soft shale where they can usually be extracted without too much difficulty. Many preserved in calcite, can be removed entirely from the rock. Within the first fifteen minutes I uncovered a small Greenops trilobite cephalon. Several minutes later, I found a complete Phacops rana enrolled. The very top of its cephalon shattered when I removed it from the rock, but otherwise it was perfect. Here's a picture: Almost as exciting was the wide assortment of excellent bivalve fossils I found. This is a Grammysia: Brachiopods were also abundant. This is Athyris spiriferoids: Also found other partial trilobites, crinoid stems, gastropods, and a tiny goniatite. I was going to spend a few hours there and then head over to a nearby exposure of the upper Ludlowville Formation, but I ended up spended the whole day at Deep Springs Road. Friday morning I drove twenty minutes to Pompey Center and a famous roadcut along Route 20 where the Skaneateles Formation is well exposed. Within minutes I found a nice large Cornulites, a bivalve: There were other bivalves as well. This is Modiomorpha: One of my goals was to find a large Spyroceras, a straight-shelled nautiloid. Last May we collected a number of fragments. Friday I was hoping for a more complete one. Wasn't to happen. This is one of the fragments I collected: Also found a number of fragments of Michelinoceras, another straight-shelled nautiloid. The surprise of the morning was a two and a quarter inch goniatite found lying free on top of the roadcut: It was nearly an hour drive east to the tiny hamlet of North Brookfield through stunning farm country. Nearby is a sandstone quarry exposing the Skaneateles Formation which is famous for its abundance of Dipleura dekayi, a huge burrowing trilobite. Valerie and I only spent a short while there last May. Still I was able to find three Dipleura cephalons, a pygidium, also an enormous bivalve, brachiopods, and cephalopods. The first rock I split open on Friday revealed a small, but complete Dipleura cephalon, better than any of the ones I found on my last trip. A few minutes later, I split another sandstone slab and I immediately focused on a bivalve in the center, but then my eyes drifted down to something unusual in the corner. There was the thorax and pygidium of a young Dipleura. When I turned the slab on its side I saw the cephalon still attached to the body, pointing downwards. Even though it was young, it is at least three times the size of the adult Phacops I found the previous day: Later I found a number of pygidiums and some bivalves, including one very large Leioptera. Saturday morning, the Museum of the Earth group was planning to congregate at 11:00 so that gave almost an hour an half to return to Pompey Center. I decided to focus on the lower portion of the roadcut which is shale where last May Valerie found a perfect Paleozygopleura, a lovely corkscrew-shaped gastropod. I was hoping to find one myself. After a while of digging in the crumbly shale, I found a small complete Greenops trilobite. Unfortunately the fragile body was stuck in the imprint and much of it crumbled when i removed it. However the imprint is perfect: Later, I found my own Paleozygopleura, though not as good as the one Valerie found: I joined the Museum of the Earth group at Jamesville Quarry. That excursion is very well documented by Marley's Ghost so I need not repeat anything. I did find a number of teeth of Onychodus sigmoides a rhipidistian fish as well as other small unidentified fish parts. In the Nedrow member of the Onondaga Limestone I found excellent examples of Favosites, a tabulate coral. I brought a number of pieces back. They really show the structure well: Well, that's about it. It's been hectic the past few days organizing, sorting, and cleaning my specimens as well as getting back on track with all the personal and professonal matters I neglected while I was away three days. All in all it feels good to be back home.

On our last visit to penn-dixie we were in the process of setting up my prep lab and we brought back a couple of 5 gallon buckets of slate to be used as practice pieces. These had some signs of trilobites and other fossils present so I could practice excavating and air abrading without worrying about destroying a "keeper" specimen. When I started on this piece the only thing showing was the spine of two prone trilobites as I started removing matrix I found more trilobites. Now this practice piece has become a display piece. My only question is on two of the prone trilobites is a mix of glabella, phygidium and thorax pieces--should I remove them or just clean as well as possible?

A Quick Trip to Deer Lake Nan and I spent half a day at Deer Lake which is still beautifully exposed by the highway construction with lots of rock facings, rubble piles and exposed walls, also large rocks and boulders. There is a lot of iron content in the shale below the "Tully limestone" strata which is near the top and just below the limestone there are Dipleura trilobites although we have found mostly body parts and segments. I also noticed that a lot of the assemblages include shells and other creatures were already dead when they were fossilized. Many of the shells in large assemblages are different types of brachiopods/pelecypods with holes in the shells suggesting they died and accumulated like shells do today at ocean shorelines, then were fossilized. Some clusters where all or most of the species are the same with no deterioration or predation suggest that they died together at the same time. Students and fossil hounds have been scouring this area but there is a lot more to find and more being revealed as the construction continues. Nan and I have had pretty good luck this year with construction sites - most notably of course the Wattieza tree stumps we discovered. We do have some questions about some of our Deer Lake finds - comments welcome: 1. Trilobites We only found 2 trilobites this trip - this one is curled under at the bottom which is shown in these views: 2. Crinoids These are some interesting crinoids: 3. Pleurodictyum Coral Patterns - (Not Clam Mold Patterns) I thought these strange patterns were in the mold of a clam - there are tons of clam fossils at Deer Lake, some fairly large. These patterns were in a mold but apparently this is from a coral. 4. Spaghetti Shaped Fossils And finally - here are some "spaghetti strands" Nan was wondering about - not sure what these are: We found a LOT more fossils, including some assemblages that will make some nice displays. We were looking for larger pieces for display and found one large shell covered rock that is almost 2 feet long.

My son (12) and I are going back to my home state of Wisconsin for a trip this week. Can anyone point us to a few spots that do not need permission to collect, or provide the names/numbers/places of the good places? We will be in the Madison area for several days, and then north to near Phillips (side trips okay). Nik wants to be a paleotologist and the fossils here in California are few and far between relative to WI. Your help would be greatly appreciated. I want to continue his interest in fossils, but it is hard to peak their interest if you can't find anything!

TRILOBITES, TRILOBITES... Nan and I recently spent a half day at a Devonian shale site in central New York. Previously we found mostly shell fossils but on this trip Nan was exploring some rubble piles at the lower end of the site and found a couple of trilobites. She decided to look in the flat ground immediately below the rubble pile and found another trilobite in the formation, so I joined her and we began excavating and what we found is included here. We would appreciate help with identification. Our "fracking" technique worked well here. What we call "fracking" involves trying to chisel out the largest possible sheets of shale - we use the same rock hammer and chisel as everyone else, but we try to find formations that 1) yield a few cool fossils that tell us there are probably more in that layer, and 2) we use that information to extract the largest possible pieces of shale without fragmenting it, and 3) we examine the surface of each sheet then crack the sheets open which often reveals the best finds. Extracting large sheets of shale (approximately 1 to 2 feet or larger if possible), we can examine more surface area. For example, it's a lot more efficient to extract 100 large sheets than to chop out 500 small pieces, especially if you're cracking open every sheet or rock which is what we do. This technique is especially difficult if the shale is crumbly such as the shale we explored in July at Lake Cayuga. At Cayuga, we also spent a lot of extra time chiseling larger pieces (see our recent trilobite post on this). We find that the best fossils - especially trilobites - are embedded in the shale and are revealed when the pieces are split in half. While it's easy to find soft pieces that were eroded by water, and you can pull these apart with your hands, those easy pieces tend to have fuzzier trilos because water can reach and erode them. Our biggest surprises and best finds come from cracking excavating formations and cracking rock. Anyway, this was our "technique" and as you can see it paid off with some trilobites in an area where we have only found one or two before. Last year we found a half dozen trilobite species but didn't find formations that had lots of trilos. This year we did more research, focused our attention on what and where we found these creatures, and it paid off. We've only been able to get away for a couple of day trips this year but we're gaining experience and our finds reflect this, I think. We will keep sharing our finds and experiences on the Forum and appreciate any and all comments. Here are trilos from our recent trip. A Trivia Note - For those of you who might be wondering - yes, we found these trilobites on the same trip where we discovered the our Devonian fossil tree site. This site is about a half mile from the tree site. We spent one day working on the tree site and I just finished cleaning,cataloguing and photographing the fossil trees (Wattieza) from that trip. We collected 10 separate free fossils and if we add these to the 3 we found on our first trip we have a total of 13 Wattieza stump fossils, which are all very young shoots. We also found a different species - a very rare Devonian plant - but I haven't processed or taken photos of this yet except for the in situ photos posted on the Fossil Forum "tree thread": http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/38855-orthocone-cephalopod-or-ancient-devonian-tree-tully-ny/. I'll add the identifications in green as our trilobite experts weigh in on these... . TRILOBITE 1 - ELDREDGEOPS RANA - a larger trilobite, well articulated TRILOBITE 2 - GREENOPS - small trilobite with "legs" TRILOBITE - ELDREDGEOPS - several trilobites of the same species TRILOBITE HEADS (Cranidia) - staring back at us from 385 million years ago! UNKNOWN FOSSIL with Trilobite - Anyone know what this might be - are those "legs" hanging down or are they pieces of a bivalve shell? CEPHALOPODS found near the Trilobites I'm including these because they are kind of cool - assume these are cephalopods, one shows the shell and soft tissue with the impression next to it - and the other two seem to show the soft tissue.

Lake Cayuga Trilobites I am not very good at trilobite ID - would appreciate some assistance identifying these specimens that Nan and I collected at Lake Cayuga (Portland Point). We called this "trilobite city" and as you can see we did OK. Appreciate any help our friends and trilo experts can offer - thanks!!! Trilo 1A Trilo 2A Trilo 3A Trilo 4A, 4B and 4C Trilo 5A Trilo 6A Note: although the pygidium and cranidium are different colors, they are a short distance apart on the same piece of shale. The bottom part is rust colored and the head portion is shale colored but I believe they are parts of the same fossil. Trilo 7A Trilo 8A Trilo 9A Trilobits These are bits and pieces of trilos that broke off or popped out during extraction - some cranidium structures, eyes, etc. Trilobite "Group Portrait" This is a "group portrait" of some of our favorite specimens from the Lake Cayuga trip.

Trilobite City - Trip Report - Lake Cayuga, NY Nan and I wanted to combine fossils and fishing at Lake Cayuga, one of the finger lakes and one of our favorite places in New York but we didn't know if there were any fossils there. A little Google research revealed that there are a dozen gorges (we hiked at one) and several very good fossil sites. Our goal was to find a site where we could collect mostly trilobites. I called in advance the Portland Point Quarry which is where Cornell University classes hunt trilobites, and there are some cool trip reports online - however, the quarry staff said they do not allow collecting, for insurance purposes. However, they referred me to a salt mine down the road which graciously invited us to collect at a shale pit/slope where collecting is allowed. The upper levels are chained off and restricted but it's ok to collect at ground level. At first we thought this would restrict our finds but quickly found that this is "trilobite city" and there are quite a few trilos to find. The photo below shows Nan at the site. The first trilobites we found were visible in the substrate - you can see me pointing to one specimen. The substrate is extremely crumbly and this is one of those sites you hear about all the time where the trilos break into pieces when you try to extract them. The crumbly nature of the substrate allowed the pieces to be removed mostly by hand although to extract larger pieces to preserve trilobites intact required some careful hammer and chisel work. We found trilos in a specific zone where we used some geological clues to identify areas that included trilobites. In general, we found that a lower layer contained very small trilobites and later we discovered that a slightly higher layer had larger trilobites - not sure if these are babies and adults, or two different species. Here are some of our finds: The third image shows bits and pieces that we call "trilobits" - mostly cranidium structures, eyes, etc. that popped out of the substrate during collection. Here are a few closeups of individual specimens: These and other images are posted on the Fossil ID section and I'll add the species names later. This trip was thoroughly enjoyable. The concentration of trilobites made this an extremely worthwhile visit. The company landowner was gracious and welcoming. We found more trilobites on this trip than any other site visit. We also spent several hours in the Paleontological Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, NY - the Pre-Cambrian, Cambrian, Devonian and Carboniferous fossils - our primary interest - were eye-opening and some of them were stunning and everything was labeled, with accompanying videos and fact sheets. The fossil assemblages were especially striking. We hiked along a scenic gorge at Taughannock Falls (fossil hunting is not allowed in the gorge) and visited Ithaca Falls where we saw (but did not collect) some trace fossils. We would like to find more sites in the area and do more exploring. Many of the local people said "there are lots of fossils around here" and given the gorges and deep cuts in the landscape, this doesn't surprise us. Take a look at this photo I took of Taughannock Gorge - imagine the fossils lurking in those cliff walls! Based on this trip we would like to find more fossil sites to visit in the Lake Cayuga area and are open to any ideas anyone would like to offer for our next trip, later this summer. Oh...last but not least...just for fun - I mentioned that we made this a "fossil and fishing" trip...we did spend a couple of days just fishing. Here's a small bass I caught (we also caught larger bass). The second photo shows me fighting a 10 pound Northern Pike which you can see in the bottom right corner if you look closely - the pike bit the line and broke off but Nan was able to capture this picture of me fighting the fish.