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Today I took a trip to a new outcrop of the Leighton Formation! My main interest in this new outcrop is to find the source of my original material. The first outcrop I visited actually turned out to be an erratic. When I first visited there in February the ground was completely frozen. I found a large piece of shale sticking out of the ground, which I proceeded to split, but the rock itself did not come out. This rock yielded about 50 pounds of material on the first trip. When I returned in June I excavated around the supposed outcrop, and found that it was in a fact an erratic rock. I also found three other large pieces that were also from the Leighton Formation. Since my first site turned out to be a dud, I am now trying to find new sites. This is the first of three possibly accessible sites to visit. I am mainly looking for the presence of thelodont scales - specifically, those that belong to the species Phlebolepis elegans. I am also looking for a few species that I don't have in my collection yet or I require for research: the tentaculite species T. elongatus, the trilobite species Acastae zerinae, two species in the genus Actinopteria, the undescribed Calymene species that has been mentioned in earlier posts, and eurypterid fragments. Today was an absolutely beautiful day to do it. It was cool and overcast in the morning, but then cleared up towards the end of the trip - perfect collecting conditions. Here are some pictures of the walk (in chronological order). Once at the outcrop, the Leighton shale member was quite obvious. It was one excellent outcrop, although I didn't find all the species I was looking for. I might have found thelodont scales, but I will not know for certain until I examine the material closely. The fauna of this formation was similar to that in the erratics I found, with a few marked differences. One is the abundance of the brachiopod species Chonetes bastini, it was the by far most common brachiopod. Also, the characteristic Salopina brachiopod fauna was barely represented in this outcrop - I might have got two specimens of them. Camarotoeichia leightoni was more common, but still relatively scarce compared to the C. bastini. Only the tentaculite species T. elongatus was in the outcrop, the other species of Tentaculite (which I have not identified), was completely absent. The bivalve species Modiolopsis leightoni was amazingly prolific. On to the geology of the site. Almost the entire outcrop was of made of a highly fractured gray shale that split extremely easily. In this slate, there were occasional pockets of a type of siltstone. The siltstone pockets usually contained a large amount of gastropods of the genus Australonema, with possible fish fragments. There were extremely fossiliferous layers every 5 - 10 centimeters. In between these layers there were still some fossils, but generally there were less molluscs or ostracods. Most of the C. bastini brachiopods were in between the fossiliferous layers. I only collected from one of the outcrops that was there, two others were situated to the left and right of this one. They had the same general geology and fauna - at least, according to my rather quick check. Below are a few pictures of the outcrop I collected at: the first is from the front of it, and the second is from behind it. Here are a few insitu photos of some of the fossils. The first is of what I guess is an A. zerinae trilobite cephalon, prep will reveal if it actually is. The second is of one of the highly fossiliferous layers I was talking about - notice the enormous profusion of ostracods, with a few brachiopods and mollusks. On the way back there were a few red shale pieces I took a look at. I think they are from the Hersey Formation, probably brought in by the tidal current. The first picture shows one of the rocks, and the second is of a brachiopod external mold peeking out. I hope to update this thread with further pictures of the fossils collected. To be continued.... Thanks for reading!