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This past weekend I had to cancel a collecting trip due to ominous weather, so I instead made an impromptu trip to northern Kentucky to do some Ordovician collecting for a couple days. I really love this area and would spend a week down there if I could. This trip I decided to focus on the Kope and Fairview formations, two of the older formations in the greater Cincinnati area. The first day was mostly driving and not much collecting due to rain. But I did briefly stop at a spot where I found a pocket of Ectenocrinus crinoids on my last trip. I checked to see if any more had weathered out and found a few small calyxes. I also collected a neat trace fossil and a small brachiopod plate (Zygospira modesta maybe?).

A couple weeks ago during a collecting trip down to the Cincinnati area, I spent half a day collecting at the big roadcut near Maysville, KY. It's really hard to describe just how big this roadcut is. Pictures don't do it justice, but here's one anyways. For reference, the pine trees are probably 3 meters tall or so. I spent all my time collecting in the Fairview Formation. In the picture above, the contact between the Fairview and the underlying Kope Formation occurs near the first bench. The contact with the overlying Bellevue Limestone is just above the third bench. It really helps to study literature on this site before visiting, it's very overwhelming and it's harder to have success without knowing what to look for. I didn't collect too much but was happy with my finds. Plectorthis fissicosta A variety of bryozoans, including the blade-shaped Escharopora falciformis towards the bottom The dumbbell-shaped burrow Diplocraterion The rare bryozoan Graptodictya perelegans The most exciting find was the rare trilobite Ceraurus milleranus. Unfortunately it's weathered and I'm not confident that much more is hiding under the matrix, but I'll probably have it prepped at some point to be sure. To the upper left is a Ceraurus hypostome, not sure if it's from this individual or not. In the future I'd like to dedicate a whole day to this site. I've visited twice so far and still barely explored any of it. If you ever have the chance, definitely check it out.

I found this strange specimen in the Upper Ordovician Fairview Formation outside of Maysville, KY. The thing attached to the donut looks like it could be a crinoid holdfast, but if so I can't recall having seen a similar one from the Cincinnatian. But what might the donut be? A large trace fossil? A strange sedimentary structure? I really have no idea, I've never seen anything similar before.

I'm trying not to overload you guys with requests, but I have been spending hours upon hours on the internet and in books trying to figure this stuff out. I just want to know that it all lines up with Ordovician and Kope or Fairview so I know what I have. I am in Northern Kentucky and we are finding this stuff in our backyard. At first, all I was saying was that I was finding coral and shells, but it seems that there are different varieties, and depending on where we look, we found different shapes and sizes. So, have a gander and let me know what you think... I have different angles of some of them in my photobucket album. http://photobucket.com/doodlebugger