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Before the construction of the Fore River Shipyard in Braintree and Quincy, a bit of the Braintree Argillite was dumped in Quincy. I have rediscovered the site of the spoil piles which are briefly mentioned in a paper about the MA trilobites. I got a few minutes of collecting before the rain got too heavy and I had to leave. The trilobites are found in a fine grained, weakly bedded light argillite that oxidises and forms an orange coating when weathered. I found some larger Paradoxides fragments in a darker argillite with a slightly larger grain size. This argillite weathers first to a blotchy dark grey, then orange spots of what look like limonite form on the surface. Trilobites are also found in an almost chert-like massive argillite that contain dark things which look like trilobite shell but are some sort of mineral. All contain vugs of calcite and pyrite. The finds. Paradoxides harlani left genal and small glabella. Left pleura, And a poorly preserved cranidium on the back. An even more poorly preserved cranidium. Believe it or not, even more badly preserved. Very partial imprint. Still more badly preserved. Large cranidium taken under dramatic lighting. A very effaced bunch of thoracic segments. Negative but still with some shell. Taken under dramatic lighting. And last, a very unusually rectangular cranidium, with a ”Agraulos” quadrangularis on the left of it. Notice the very robust occipital spine on the unidentified. Any ideas? Thanks to @piranha for the papers.

Hi there - over the weekend I stumbled upon an area where some of the Cambrian aged Argillite from the old Hayward Creek Quarry in Braintree , Massachusetts was supposedly dumped. I found little bits of fossils which was promising, but I split one rock which had a larger mystery object in it. Does anyone have any idea what this could be? It kind of looks like part of a trilobite cephalon/glabella with what could be an eye. But that could be my eyes playing tricks on me with hopes of finding remnants of the famous, now elusive Braintree trilobites (in particular paradoxides harlini). It doesn't help that this rock didn't split evenly with details of the fossil still embedded within, or between the two halves. Photographed wet as a FYI.