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This time I settled down to make a copy of my very best Crussoliceras crusoliense ammonite from the Early Kimmeridgian at the ditch in the Upper Danube Valley. It's ø is 16cm. and it has a small Glochiceras sp. tagging along at the mouth aperture.

Man was it hot today! Would you believe it? 30°C on the 9th of May! I did a lot of sweating, but even though it was somewhat exhausting after 7 hours of digging, I did have some fun too. I cleaned out this area during the first few hours. And came up with at least a few things. I then decided to move to another spot. And promptly found the best one to this point. The fossiliferous area in the hypselocylum zone which I am working consists of two ca. 20cm. thick concretionary limestone beds separated by about 20cm. of friable soft marl. The fossils in the marl, which are numerous, are mostly flatly pressed and usually fall to bits. The ones in the limestone beds are strongly cemented in and there is a lot of ammonite brekzie and an awful lot of sponge material within. So I spend a lot of time whacking away at them once they are extricated, which necessitates a lot of energy, since they are extremely hard. They don't always come out complete, so there's some glueing to be done at home, but every once in a while I get a lucky split as above. The up side of this is that the fossils from the concretions are very well preserved, once you manage to get them out intact. Here's my booty at the end of the day. Tomorrow I should be getting down to some preparation.

Hi everyone, I recently checked out a spot in Danube, NY for trilobites. I made sure to take a ton of shale home for further examination, and I split a piece and found this. This is the best picture I could get at the moment, hopefully it is sufficient. It does not come off after running under some water.

I spent the afternoon today exploring the ditches in the Upper Danube Valley and found something in all 3 of them. Spent most of my time at the regular ditch by the side of the road in the end where I've been slowly excavating the Kimmeridgian hypselocylum zone every couple of months or so for the last few years. I took a couple of photos of the work in progress and also one of my finds. I'll post them here again once they're prepped.

Tomorrow my wife and I shall be driving off to Regensburg where we are planning to spend the week exploring the Danube river valley between said city and Passau. We embarked from the source of the river 9 years ago and spent the next few months following it up as far as Kelheim and then other things took priority. Now we've decided to continue the venture. One of these years we might even make it to the Black Sea. Anyway, I might just check in here the odd time if I happen to find a useable computor somewhere. Otherwise don't worry about me. I'll be doing just fine. I probably won't be doing much in the way of fossil hunting, since most of the bedrock in the area is metamorphic, although I have heard about a sand and gravel pit where it might be possible to find some petrified wood. See ya later.