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I discovered this board while looking for a place to take my 5 year old fossil hunting. We're in Northern Utah about 2 hours away from Kemmerer, WY and were looking at visiting one of the commercial fossil dig sites on Memorial Day. To be honest, my son (and wife) are avid watchers of Coyote Peterson and are in love with his fossil expedition to the Dakotas(?). I think we'll have fun digging through the rocks and having some introduction will be helpful. But I'm open to any suggestions on cheaper/simpler ways to go fossil hunting that will also be rewarding for new comers. Thanks in advance. Love the posts I've read so far. -Nate R

I just got back from a week-long trip that included a stop to dig Green River fish at the American Fossil Quarry outside of Kemmerer, Wyoming. That was a successful venture and I will post a separate entry showing some of my finds once I get them unpacked. While I was there, I stopped in at the nearby Fossil Butte National Monument. In the visitor center, one of the rangers was doing a demo of prepping a Green River fish (a Diplomystus from the 18" layer they got from one of the commercial quarries). I didn't take any photos but I did ask a lot of questions. Before I share his answers, you might want to take a look at this video from the Fossil Butte National Monument website. It shows how they prep the fish using an air scribe and air abrasive. But be warned that what I learned isn't exactly the same as what is shown in the video here: https://www.nps.gov/media/video/view.htm?id=9BD712EE-1DD8-B71B-0B88EC525E86D328 The setup I saw was the same as in the video. It looked like a home-made blast cabinet with a sheet of acrylic plastic on top, held on by blue painters tape. It was connected to a good dust collector. The microscope, as in the video, looked like a Leica-Wild M8 stereomicroscope with a video camera on top and an offset binocular viewing head. This is a top-of-the-line unit that probably cost somewhere between $7,000 to $10,000 (sadly, this model microscope is no longer manufactured, but you can pick them up on the used market if you have enough money). The microscope seemed to be fixed in the center of the blast cabinet, you move the specimen around under it. I didn't learn the make of the air scribe tool he was using, he said it was a specially modified one with a large rubber sheath that reduced the vibration transmitted to his hands. For the air abrasive, they had two Crystal Mark Swam Blasters model EV-2. One of them, set off to the side and not being used, was labeled "Dolomite." I asked him what abrasive he was using and he said iron powder. I was surprised because I thought that would be much too hard on these fossils, but as I watched on the screen it did a great job of removing the matrix without damaging the fossil. I probed some more and he said that while the machine could be set to go up to 80 psi, he had it set to 13.3 psi. There is also a setting for powder flow that can be set between 1 and 10. He had it set to 6, and when he is doing delicate work on the fins, turns it down to 2 or 3. He also said the nozzle was specially modified to be smaller in diameter. I was pretty impressed with the quality of his work and am inspired to make my own blast cabinet similar to theirs (but without the high-priced microscope). I thought everyone might like to know what works for this facility even though it's different from what is usually recommended here on this forum.