There is a small road cut exposure I like to frequent in the Plattsburg fm. where the Hickory Creek shale is excavated at a relatively shallow angle.
The whole formation it extremely fossiliferous, but specimens with great preservation require diligent and persistent searching.
But, to the subject of this post, an interesting means of finding those great fossils is in timing a good rain with a day or two of drying and wind erosion.
The shale is very loose and it seems that what happens is fossils (and of course 'just rocks') of certain weights and sizes hold their ground while the shale erodes away underneath them.
I've affectionately, though probably not originally, coined them as being pedestaled.
Here are a few recent examples:
Orodus(?), Cladodont fragment, and Horn Coral