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Hi All! I'm new here, I found this blog while researching a little find of mine. I posted the pictures below. I found this cute little guy while beach glass picking at walnut beach on Lake Erie. As soon as I saw it I was pretty sure it was a fossil but I have no idea what. Thats why I'm here! I want to know what it is that I found. I appreciate any help from you guys! Thanks!!!

I am new to fossil hunting and I am looking forward to learning about fossils in Southern Ontario area.

Found this little brachiopod on the shore of Lake Erie, near Buffalo. Measures 21mm long. Is this a Mucrospirifer species? Photo was created by focus-stacking 4 images for each side. Thanks! Zach

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What is this?

So last weekend I decided to take a trip up to the Buffalo Area with plans to head into Canada and collect. Well, the day I was to drive into the Great White North I realized I'd forgotten my passport (Dang CRS disease!). Soooo.... I changed up my schedule a bit which gave me the opportunity to spend a full day at Penn Dixie, explore a new site that I'd only been told about and spend a day with forum member Mikeymig. I drove up Thursday and spent the afternoon playing on the lake Erie shoreline at 18 Mile Creek. Along the cliffs I found some falls of the higher up strata above the Tichenor limestone and Windom shale. It was Upper Devonian material from (presumably) the Sonyea Formation (Cashaqua Shale), the black Middlesex Shale of the Genesee Formation with the gray West River Shale and the Genundewa and North Evans Limestones. Thanks to Karl Wilson's site for detailing the formations above the Moscow. Normally I only encounter these formations when traipsing upstream in 18 Mile Creek but I was able to access them by walking a couple miles south along the shore line (a bit easier walk than trying to navigate the creek itself). A portion of a carbonized tree that I think is in the Middlesex Shale. Goniatites from either then Genundewa Ls. or the Cashaqua shales. I'm fairly confident that these are Goniatites and not gastropods because of the following that I read in the "Geology and Paleontology of Eighteen Mile Creek", by A.W.Grabau, Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences, Pg. 7,8 I added the italics to the relevant portion of the text. Friday morning I awoke and realized that I'd left my Passport at home. After some frantic e-mailing to Malcolmt and Northernsharks, who were expecting me at sites this weekend, I decided to spend the day at Penn Dixie. Carmine (Xonenine) had mentioned that the club had recently excavated the trilobite beds a little more and I wanted to try my luck again. They had indeed dug the drainage trench deeper and removed some of the overlying layers on top of the "Smoke Creek Trilobite Bed" that is the big attraction for collectors. One of the beds the removed is a brachiopod rich layer and I had some fun splitting up rock from there looking for large inflated Spinatrypa and Pseudoatrypa. Much of the newly exposed Trilobite layers were off limits due to a special event the club was hosting on Saturday, a "Dig with the Experts" where one could come in and dig with experienced club members. Many members were in the excavation area pulling up blocks of the layer to be put into piles for the next day. The idea was to make it a little easier for amateur collectors to get access to the layer without requiring heavy tools and crowding the work pit. They had another area where similar rock had been dug last fall and allowed to weather some so I took a crack and looking in that material for some Trilobites and I did have some success: Continued in next post....

Hello everyone! My name is Scott Jankowski, 23yo, and I live in Fairview Park, OH. I stumbled on this forum when I was researching Ohio geology (what can I say, I like rocks~) and really liked it! I am an outdoorsy type of guy and fossiling has become one of my newer hobbies. I like weather and water, and anything that walks, crawls, swims, squirms, wriggles, digs and flies on, over and under this amazing world we live in. I am also an avid Go player, and always interested in meeting new people (especially people who are interested in as many (odd??) things as I am!) I'm hoping to learn a lot, and make new friends. If there is anyone near the Cleveland area, I'd love to chat! Nice to meet you all, Scott http://senseis.xmp.net/?ScottJankowski