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Hello! This was our first trip where we went looking for Devonian fossils in Upstate New York. Being our first time we were not sure about how accessible the location would be. A big thanks to @Fossildude19 and @Jeffrey P for guiding us and without their reassurance we might not have made the trip. We left early and it took us about 4 hours to drive to the location at the Kingston 9W roadcut to mostly surface collect fossils. We reached around 11am and got to work pretty quickly. We collected for about 2.5 hours and decided to stop after the traffic got too heavy. The location was great. There were fossils everywhere one could set their eyes upon. It was unbelievable. We walked around for a while just admiring the great preservation of fossils. Felt like we were on the ocean floor minus the water of course. It was awesome would definitely recommend checking it out but would recommend going early in the day or during weekdays as lesser traffic will let you explore more freely. We found several fossils but mostly Brachiopods which were pretty abundant. The fossils which had fallen out of the matrix were pretty delicate. The preservation in the limestone was great. The finds are as follows. Some pictures of the fossils on the surface which were cool to admire but near to impossible to extract. Mostly Tentaculites and a gastropod hiding Brachiopod heaven Very abundant fossils in every layer. Here are the things we were able to bring with us. A Spiriferid Brachiopod which is buried in many smaller brachiopods and its cross-section. Another Spiriferid brachiopod. A tentaculite imprint along with its fellow brachs. My first Trilo-bit Mostly Brachiopods and tentaculites from here on. A bryozoan of some kind Also need help identifying this one. Here are some of my finds from the trip. I have a lot more pictures which I will put in my gallery. So check that out if you want to see mostly hash plates full of brachiopods which I am planning to extract some brachiopods from hopefully. I might also not because it is too much work and I am not equipped with the equipment to remove them safely. Also what am I supposed to do with all these not so small can't be stored in a box fossils? I can't bring myself to throw them out because they are so pretty. How do you people deal with it? Should I allocate a corner of my basement to rock piles from my fossil hunting adventures? Hope you all enjoyed my post. -Vee

Well, it's been a bit since my last real trip report. I haven't been out much this year, ( only 3 times so far this year) but I have had fun, and met some cool people. My first trip out was to DSR. Having just moved house, I did not collect much. Then, my second trip out during early July to Western NY. was a bit short, and not super productive. This past weekend, I decided to take a break from yard work and house decorating, and took a two hour trip to a road cut near Saugerties, NY. This site exposes the Glenerie Limestone, which is Lower Devonian in age. It's part of the Tri-states group. This site is usually quite productive after a good rain, as it washes away debris, and allows you to find silicified fossils that have fallen from the matrix. The site is well known for brachiopods, and gastropods. I believe there are over 110 different species that have been catalogued from the site. After a nice drive up, I arrived at the site at around 8:45 am. I got right too it. There is about a quarter of a mile of roadcut exposed here. I spent my time, carefully looking over the ground, the exposed rocks, and the crevices of the road cut. I was not disappointed. I set my sights on a few different items - Gastropods - I love how they are preserved here, and can't ever get enough of them. Must collect gastropods! Brachiopods, - While numerous here, they are fragile, and my aim was to come home with a few different species, but whole or intact with both valves. Trilobites - This site is not super well known for it's trilobites, but I seem to be able to find them, even though they are partials, for the most part. I have never found a complete trilobite here, but have found a cephalon, and some pygidiums. These were on my list for this day. Corals, bryozoans, crinoids, pelecypods, and cephalopods -are not well known from here, so I was hoping to keep my eyes open to find any available, just for the challenge of it. After 3.5 hours of looking through about 1/2 of the available road cut, I decided to leave, having met most of my goals for the trip. The usual suspects were found in decent quantities. I am not super knowledgeable about the species here, but there are strophomenid, athyrid, and spiriferid brachiopods, platycerid gastropods, rare crinoid bits, tentaculites, ... and a few different species of trilobites. Most all are only pygidiums. Without further ado, ... here are the spoils ... Gastropods: Platystoma ventricosa? A few Platyceras spirale -

Hello everyone, I recently got to visit the Glenerie Limestone for the second time to collect some fossils, I have identified the majority of my finds from the day except for one strange fossil I still do not understand. This appears to be a small brachiopod shell, it has a semicircular shape, and what appears to be a hinge-line on one side of it, the underside is pretty flat, but on the top, there is some other strange organism attached, it appears similar to the calyx of a coral, but these are quite rare at the site, I have no idea what this could be, maybe it isn't even a brachiopod that the structure is attached to. I will add some photos of the object below, I'm currently not at home but when I do get the chance I'll also try to take some from the ventral and lateral views as well as any additional photos that may be helpful. Thank you for looking, Misha

Hello everyone, it's been a while since I've been a while since I've been out to collect fossils but yesterday I finally got to enjoy some time collecting and had some interesting finds I thought I'd share. Yesterday morning I got to meet up with @Jeffrey P who showed me his vast and beautiful collection of fossils before we went to collect two locations nearby in Eastern NY. The first location we visited was the Glenerie Limestone, a very interesting location due to the diversity of organisms found there and the unique preservation which results in many silicified shells a number of which are completely out of matrix. This was my second time collecting at this location and as it had just been snowing and everything melted, there was a lot of nice freshly washed out material to pick through. By far the most abundant fossils here are brachiopods and of those, the most common is probably Leptocoelia flabellites, I collected a few of these and some appear on the larger matrix pieces with other fossils but they're really common so only a few were kept: Meristella sp. are also pretty abundant, I picked up a few that I thought had nicer preservation, or were complete as those are not as common at this site These are the shells of two spiriferid, I collected a number of these last time, the most common ones are Acrospirifer sp. and Howella sp. I believe but I do not know how to differentiate between the two This piece of matrix had some particularly nice spiriferids, one was pretty big for the site and another on the side of the piece has really nice preservation of some of the finse structure on the outside of the shell. I also found a Rensselaeria sp. Terebtatulid brachiopod, my second from the location, this one has more of it preserved although it is quite distorted and with little of the shell material but I still kept it as I like these Devonian Terebtatulids and they are not as common. Here's a tiny complete brachiopods I picked up, not sure about the ID yet, the detail preserved on such a small shell is actually pretty nice but the camera doesn't show it that well. Two of the brachiopods found appear to be inarticulate brachiopods, although I'm not sure if it's possible to put an ID to either of them, the first is preserved as an impression, I did look at some of the internal anatomy of lower Devonian inarticulate brachiopods and this does look a lot like Craniops sp. but I don't know if I could call it that without further evidence The other has some shell material but it's small and not completely exposed so I am not sure if it can be identified or even if it is an inarticulate brachiopod And some miscellaneous brachiopods I haven't yet Identified: Here's another item that confused me, it appears to be a brachiopod from the overall shape, as it is flat on one side and is in the shape of a semicircle, but if it is a brachiopod it has some kind of unusual epibiont on it with an unusual structure unlike anything else I've seen, does anyone know what this may be? Other than brachiopods, gastropods are also fairly abundant at the site, last time I was here I found a couple but nothing too special. This time, I don't know if it was the freshly washed out material, a better pattern recognition or just pure luck I found a lot, of different sizes and different quality. I was very happy to find these they're really interesting and I love the way they are preserved here, here is most of them: most of not all of them are Platystoma sp. I believe. And finally, I also found a coral, the first time I was at the site I found a tabulate coral which @Jeffrey P told me is the first he'd seen ever from this site, and this time I found a solitary rugose coral. Unfortunately it is cracked as it was laying on the surface, exposed to the elements but I was able to safely get it home and I'm currently trying to stabilize it with some glue, hopefully it will remain intact. I believe it might belong to the species Enterolasma strictum. After Glenerie we stopped at a site not far away which was in the Middle Devonian, lower Hamilton Group, part of the Marcellus Shale, also a very interesting site which was new to me, and we had some nice finds there too which I will post later once I get them photographed. Thanks for looking! Misha