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Hi everybody, there's one month i bought that little Phacops (Eldredgeops) rana and on the plate, there is another fossil. The sailor told me it was a kind of Hippurites, but on the card was written "solitary coral". I'm in the Hippurites' camp, the more knowleagable ones might have a different opinion.

I received this little guy in the mail today from someone who felt sorry for the poor critter. This one quite truthfully needed a little love and care. Seems like someone in the field decided to dump about a gallon of glue on him. Apparently he was traded for sharks teeth or something like that. Not sure why anyone would trade a perfectly good arthropod for a tooth of all things. I guess it could have been worse, could have been for a brach... All kidding aside, the owner wanted this guy to be given back a little of its glory and splendor .......as you can see based on how it was received it needed a little help It was however quite obvious that this had a decent potential to be a good prone Penn Dixie trilo that was 39 mm in length and 24 mm wide. I was feeling a little bored and thought why not just get this one done and surprise the owner with something much faster than my normal slow turnaround. Besides this one was not going to be overly complex. The matrix was a known quantity and the phacopids are not that elaborate or delicate...... The first thing that was done was to trim off the excess matrix that was still around and under the bug with a Pferd MST31 air scribe. The goal being to get it into a more uniform place. Next step was to go through my piles of incomplete material from the same location (Penn Dixie) and find a piece of matrix that has a space available on it where this bug could take up residence. A piece was found that had a nice cluster of incomplete eldredgeops rana. Paired up with this bug I thought it might make an interesting piece. Here is the bug placed on that matrix after a pocket was created for the bug to spend the rest of eternity in. The matrix removed from the pocket was ground up and mixed with some Welbond Pro which dries quickly and is perfectly clear when dry. For those who need to know the mixture was about 60% pulverized matrix and 40% Welbond. Total time spent on the piece about 30 minutes at this point Here is the bug after 1 hour of prepping under a scope at about 10x magnification. Prepped with 40 micron dolomite with a .018 nozzle and using a COMCO air abrasion unit at 30 PSI. No airscribe was used once the bug was on the matrix. Here is the bug after a final 1/2 hour of prepping. Some minor restoration of field damage was performed with a two part sculpting product (Apoxie) and some mars black acrylic for coloration was used on perhaps 1% of the fossil. Not bad for perhaps three hours total investment. A piece that was pretty much a non displayable specimen can now be the centerpiece of a Penn Dixie collection PS.... don't always assume that when you purchase a plate of trilobites that that is the way they started out life. By the way this was done with the permission of the owner and they are not being tricked into thinking this is the way it started out.

Had a great time at the site today with @minnbuckeye, @ischua and special guest, @fossilcrazy. Things being what they are this season with lots of blank benches, we decided to go nuts on a section of the site that had yet to be worked. I had a great day on Thursday prospecting a new exposure of the Smokes Creek trilobite bed, found many impressive bugs. Figured today would be the perfect day to go nuts on it. A decent number of bugs were found for the day considering the relatively small square footage we covered. Many sentences were started with the words, "If @Kanewere here..." I'm afraid I did not take as many pictures as I should've. In fact, I took only one. I know that Mike #1, (minnbuckeye) was running around with a camera for a while, so I bet there were more. I hope that everyone had a good time today. I have to apologize to @fossilcrazy, as I inadvertently didn't get a chance to say, "Goodbye!" It was great that John got to meet some more forum members, and special thanks go out to him for generously helping us with his Stihl saw and freeing some very stubborn fossils from the even-more stubborn limestone! Looking forward to doing it again soon, guys! (L to R, @minnbuckeye and @ischua)

Visitor brought this up yesterday. First we thought it was a cephalopod, but after uncovering more of it we're not sure. Any thoughts would be appreciated! Thanks in advance!

I just finished up a prep for @Fossil-Hound of some E. rana trilobites from Penn Dixie. It was a lot of fun and they were cool to prep. I got to really put my Micro Jack to work! Here are a few pics of a before and after.

Today a visitor found what marks the third Pseudodechenella rowi found at Penn Dixie this season. It's a gorgeous example to boot, only missing a chunk of the lateral border on the cephalon and a bit of the genal spine. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't very jealous that I haven't been one of the three people to have found one. What's more impressive is that this guy came out of the piles we've been going over since May and it took this long to find!

A visitor brought this guy to my attention, and I don't know if it's just because it's an internal mold or if it's actually something different. But I figured I would put it out to the room. My gut tells me it's just a Bellacartwrightia whitely that's been flaked off and is therefore missing any type of pygidial spines, but the body is awfully round. My opinion is based off of the visible casts of the glabellar furrows and genal spines, but rather than Greenops, I went Bellacartwrightia based on the rounded shape of the pygidium rather than triangular. These pictures are all I have to go on as the specimen I believe is now somewhere in Georgia.

Interesting how something you read now can cause you to go back and have a look at something you put aside long ago because you did not think it was all that good or all that special. Last week Devonian Digger made a post "Trilobite in Need" This post got my interest because I did not realize any type of Dechenella was found at Penn Dixie. It got me to thinking that I should check out a box I had that contained what I believed to be a number of less than perfect greenops from Penn Dixie. I had put these away over the years as only being worth prepping on a rainy day and after I am caught up. I am way too far behind in my prepping for myself and other people to even think about prepping what I know is not going to be complete or at least better than my current display piece of that species / locality. My current best greenops is about 95% complete but a little distorted. A quick sort through them and this trilobite jumped out at me...... I had originally thought it was a damaged juvenile Greenops and was not likely going to be worth the effort that it would take to put it back together and then prep down from the top. You see the trilobite was split between two pieces of matrix and the front of the glabella was damaged and its genal spine was missing. I had found this at Penn Dixie in the summer of 2015. Here it is as I had put it away two years ago Note that I had originally trimmed the top piece in the field to reduce the carry back to the car weight. Those of you that know me realize that I take my saw pretty much everywhere. The good old boy scout in me "Always Be Prepared" So this morning, I got out my dremel tool with a diamond cut off blade and trimmed the top half of the matrix down to a manageable size. When you do a top down prep you want to remove as much of the upper matrix as possible before gluing the parts back together. The more matrix you leave the longer it is going to take to get down to the trilobite again. It is actually quite worrisome when you take an exposed trilobite and cover it all back up in the hope that the end product will be better than what you started with. Here is the trimmed piece of top matrix back in place. Seeing that the two parts had been separated for about two years they fit quite well. I used a thin non gap filling cyanoacrylate to do the bonding . Which I clamped for a few hours. Note that I mark the boundaries of the bug with a black Sharpie. Usually I put an "H" or "T" to let me know the orientation but I could still see part of the bug so this was not necessary. Next comes the boring part of scribing down to the approximate area of the actual trilobite . This was accomplished with a CP 9361 until I got close and then a German Pferd MST 31 with a fine stylus to get closer. The Pferd has a very fine stylus and a very high cycle rate (60,000). The scribing process took about 10 minutes After about 30 minutes of air abrasion here is where we are in the process As you can see the air abrasion of the bug is now complete. COMCO unit using 15 PSI .015 nozzle and 40 micron dolomite under 20x magnification. I am now at the point of deciding how much if any restoration I will do to this bug. It is cute and a species obviously that I did not have from Penn Dixie (or at least know that I had). It would probably benefit from some restoration So what is it. I am leaning towards it being a Pseudodechenella rowi. The dimensions of the bug are 14.7 mm long 8.7 mm wide at pleura 11.8 mm wide at tip of genal spines. Not being familiar with other specimens I suspect that this is a juvenille as the other examples I have found are twice this size. I am sure that Scott or Gerry will likely jump in to give me the correct identification. All in all not bad for something that until this morning was sitting in a shoebox wrapped in tin foil.

Hi everyone! Yesterday, Viola and I traveled across the border to join in on the fun for the "Dig with the Experts" program at Penn Dixie in New York State. It was sunny and hot, but we had a fantastic time collecting a bunch of Devonian fossils! Enjoy the pictures! Monica Picture #1: Viola showing off a chunk of rock with a rugose coral in it - we didn't keep this piece since it's was pretty big, and we opted to keep only the loose horn corals that we found. Picture #2: Viola showing off a pyritized brachiopod in another chunk of rock - so pretty! Picture #3: Viola trying her hand at using the rock hammer. Picture #4: Viola found a friend to hammer rocks with! Picture #5: The non-trilobite fossils that I collected and kept. I really like the orthoconic nautiloid in the upper left-hand corner of the picture - it was completely hidden within a rock that I split so it was a very nice surprise! Picture #6: The trilobites that I found and kept, including an enrolled little guy that popped out of the side of a rock that I was hammering - he was very cooperative. PS - I'll post pictures of the fossils that Viola decided to keep as soon as she washes them - stay tuned for that...

A couple weeks ago, I made a trip to Penn Dixie for the,"dig with the experts" event and had a blast! Found lots of great stuff, too numerous to post. Here is one of my favorites finds, a complete Eldredgeops rana with what looks to be a cephalopod(?). On the other side is/was a pyritized worm tube coming out of the bugs eye. Unfortunately, half the tube flew off while prepping. .

Hi Everyone, This season I'm planning to do at least one fossil hunting trip outside of my usual stomping grounds in the Massachusetts area. I looked at a couple of trip options and have decided on taking a couple days off of work to drive up to Penn Dixie in upstate NY. It's roughly an 8 hour drive from Massachusetts to Hamburg, NY. Friday/Monday would be my travel days (with some stops along the way), leaving me Saturday and Sunday to actually do some digging at Penn Dixie. Many of the forums members here seem to frequent Penn Dixie and for good reason! I have yet to visit the quarry, but it looks like a great spot to dig for Devonian fossils and certainly seems popular. I'm primarily interested in digging for trilobites and with a little luck will hopefully find some Phacops and Greenops trilobites of my own. I was hoping to see if you guys had any tips so that I can make the most of my two days up there. Where do the trilobites like to hide?! Right now I'm targeting the end of June for the trip (Tentatively the weekend of June 24/25). My summer is pretty jam packed so if this date doesn't work I might be looking at taking the trip up in late August/early September. If any TFF members will be at Penn Dixie on June 24/25 I'd love to say hi and split some shale with you . Additionally, if anyone has any suggested tools that aren't on my packing list or papers worth reading any/all suggestions are welcome! Resources. https://penndixie.org/our-geology/ https://penndixie.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/penn-dixie-field-trip-from-71st-nysga-1999.pdf Packing List: 3 lbs hand sledge Chisel end rock hammer Assorted cold chisels Pry bar Eyewear Work gloves Thanks as always!

So, the Director of the site (Penn Dixie), recently sent me a photo that was provided by a visitor to the site. This bug was collected from the Windom in May, and before you ask, this is unfortunately the only photo I have to go off of. From what I can see, I am thinking a Dechenella sp., but it has been requested that I try to find a little more info. I thought I would send it out to the bug experts on the forum. I realize that the lack of prep and the existence of only one photo may make this impossible, but I said I would try regardless. The pygidium would be useful, but is not visible. Thank you in advance!

In the past month I have had some really nice trilos pass through my workshop and this one will be no exception. Unfortunately , yet once again it is not mine to keep. It was found by Quarryman Dave on the forum here on Monday May 22, 2017 at Penn Dixie. Penn Dixie does obviously have the potential for you to find something more than the common eldgregeops that it is known for. Jason a forum member who works at Penn Dixie spent his afternoon off getting to know us crazy Canadians. Unfortunately he left shortly before this was found. This find turned a relatively unproductive day into actually a pretty good one. Unfortunately for us we excavated an area that had particularly ugly smoke creek matrix that really did not want to split or break out ......... even with 3 strong guys , multiple pry bars and the diamond rock saw. We probably left 10 good blocks for the next group foolish enough to try to muscle them out. Between Dave and myself, I think we found 3 complete prone eldregeops and 6 or 7 enrolled ones all in matrix. We generally give anything that is not in matrix or 100% to the kids that are always at this fossil park. If you have never been , plan to get there some day, it is worth it and they are all good people that run it. On Monday when we were there they had about 300 grade 6 students on a field trip and we were kept busy handing out goodies to them and answering their question "What is this" As for this greenops under consideration, its not quite as rare as the bellacartwrightia that is up for consideration for the May Fossil of the Month but it is rare enough that I have never found a complete one myself. I have a couple that are like 90% complete. This one although a bit twisted looks to be 98% complete. It is in a quite typical 2/3 enrolled position with the genal spines flying out to the sides. It has some minor damage on the pygidium , the very tip of one of the genal spines is missing and it has 3 broken pygidial spines. I will likely repair all of those defects as this will be a display piece and is unlikely to ever be sold. It was found as just a pygidium (tail) poking through the matrix. They always break in the same place for a molt or incomplete so I would always recommend taking home any greenops pygidium that sneaks under the matrix before the start of the pygidium. Perhaps one in 100 of the pygidium's will continue into something very very nice. You can see here (lol) that this one will be a real beauty ....... not really, just kidding but the best specimens are always pretty much completely buried. At that point I had about 1/2 hour invested in the prep. Here are some pictures at about 3 hours with probably another 3 to go. The eyes on this one are amazing with some pyritization on one of them that makes it real interesting. I will make this somewhat into a flying trilo and will try to preserve the pyritized worm burrow that you can see. Stay tuned for more pictures as I make progress on this bug.

Posted this without telling Jason .... so hopefully he is cool with me posting. Jason went on a trip to Penn Dixie with a group from the forum here over Easter and found some fossils that Jason thought might be worth prepping. I was invited to attend, but there was no getting away from the wife and family over Easter. That was just a non starter. Anyway for some reason or other he realized that some of the fossils he found were actually quite nice and I guess he probably heard from some of the people on the trip that I might be able to do something with them for him. Well after a flurry of PM's, he decided to risk sending some off, to some old geezer that he didn't know from a hole in the wall, way up in Canada.... lol. So he sent me a few to have a look at and after 4 days with Fedex they arrived safely yesterday... Big note to anyone out there ...... always use regular USPS to send fossils to Canada it is the least hassle and the least expensive way to do it. Jason learned a bit of a lesson by using Fedex. Based on a quick look he is going to have a few nice ones in what he sent me, including one potentially large complete and stunning greenops. It has the potential to be one of the better greenops that I have seen come out of Penn Dixie. As with all the really good ones from there, other than part of the pygidium poking out of the matrix it is buried. A bit of a shame the matrix broke right at the edge of the greenops but I guess if it hadn't he would never have seen it. As a result the very tip of one of the pygidial spines is broken of. I could fix that up but not sure if I will , will wait to see final look of the fossil. Using a scope I have already exposed enough to know that a significant amount of the greenops is there including little spines that are generally missing. If you find something like his greenops ........ do not try to do anything with it yourself .... don't even think about it. I have seen far to many spectacular specimens destroyed by someone who just couldn't wait. They just had to pick away to see what was under there. Please have someone experienced who knows what they are doing and who has the right equipment look at it. Fossils like this are rare and fragile, touch it wrong and you have destroyed it. Unfortunately for Jason two other greenops he thought might be good that he sent me are just pygidiums. To have found 3 complete greenops at Penn Dixie in one day is absolutely unheard of and that is even knowing the exact layer in which they are found. Anyway, grabbed one of the fossils at random, eldredgeops rana and here is a quick prep sequence. Prepped using ARO, Pferd and other airscribes and Comco air abrasion unit set at 30 PSI 40 micron dolomite under a Nikon scope. Used a Comco .018 purple high precision nozzle until near the very end when I switched to a .010. Here is a bad picture of the fossil before starting Here it is 15 minutes into prep Here it is 30 mins into prep

We finally got a chance to make it to Penn Dixie this year. Met up with Jay and had a good time. I made a short video of some of our adventures. I'll be posting a bit more fossil pictures. The brother found several roller trilobites out of the matrix in full condition.

I just spent the past few days digging up some neat Devonian-era fossils from the Penn Dixie Hamburg, New York site and have two Greenops and 10 Eldredgeops that need prepped. Would anyone out there be willing to prepare these fossils for either a fee or for some of the spoils? I have a lot of high quality Eldredgeops, cephalopods, bryozoans, and crinoids that I could give up in exchange for the fossil preparations. I also have a bunch of shark teeth from Calvert Cliffs along with some neat shells (Turitella and Ecphora). Send me a personal message if you're up to the task or respond if you have any referrals.

I've already posted a picture of this one in the fossil trips section, so my apologies for the duplication. I'm seeking confirmation that this is indeed a Bellacartwrightia whiteleyi. He's a bit beat up, missing eyes and a pygidium (or it may be hidden beneath the matrix), but what leads me to this conditional assumption is the (1) raised spines on the axial lobe, and (2) the longer and somewhat broader genal spines than what one finds on a Greenops. I just want to get the label on this one and put any uncertainty to bed. My thanks for ID assistance!

So, I had a Greenops boothi that was missing the the glabella and the entire left portions of the cephalon. @ischua and I dug this fella up at Penn Dixie in the fall. I decided to finally have a go at him to see how much could be salvaged. Here's the before: A little more work: A little more: And, finally: For size:

I'm excited to share that I have officially joined the staff at the renowned Penn Dixie site. I've managed to turn my hobby, which has been greatly furthered by knowledge gained from the supportive and generous members of TFF, into a job! I am now an educator at the site and will be travelling to regional schools, museums and events to share the wonders of the site with the general public in addition to working at the site during the spring, summer, and fall! So a giant "thank you!" to all the TFF members who have helped me along in my journey thus far! I look forward to seeing many of you this year at the site and chatting with you all online! -Jay

Cold weather has taken vacation here and Fall is stretching well into snow season. @DevonianDigger and I put new tools to the test and Penn Dixie delivered as usual. I think we moved about a ton of rock The Pile!

So, in my previous post, "Day One In The New Workshop", I had posted a pic of a plate that I had hoped would be an Eldredgeops rana mass mortality plate. I decided to do some work on it to see if there were any more than the two hiding in the matrix. Apparently the rest of the trilobites opted for the blue pill. Turns out there was just the two, one enrolled, one prone, and neither 100% complete. There was also a nice little piece of what would appear to be Streptelasma ungula coral. I have been asked several times to "blog" about my prep work as I go. In an attempt to abide, I am going to try and share as I go with this piece and others! So, after some initial prep, it looked a little better. Once I determined that these little fellas were not with friends, I used my Dremel engraver to rough out and shape the surrounding matrix. I did, at one point, accidentally pop the lentil-sized roller off of the matrix. Thankfully, I had the foresight to hold down the actual fossils with my thumb as I was working around them, thus denying him the opportunity to experience flight. In the above picture you can see that I started to smooth out the rough cuts surrounding them. I did this with my secret weapon, the tattoo machine with a 7RL needle. As you can see in the final picture from the day (above), I started to prep out the coral and continued to contour around the "bases" of the two bugs. You can also see that the roller has a squished head, and that there is a small piece missing from the right eye of the prone. (As I mentioned earlier, neither of the two were in perfect shape to begin with.) In my next post for this one, I will show the surrounding matrix contoured out and hopefully more detail on the buglets. This is proving to be a tricky prep as they are tiny! (See below) Next time, I will try to get more "step-by-step" pictures to walk through the entire process!

Just spent the first morning in the new workshop playing with some bugs. Thought I would share day 1 progress. Eldredgeops rana after first prep session. Greenops boothi after some basic prep. Missing the cranidium and left librigena unfortunately. Tiny little Eldredgeops rana, with another little cephalon in association. Thinking this one has the potential to be a nice multi. Usually when I find these tiny little fellas this close together it's a mass mortality.

While moving into my new workshop I came across some cool pieces from my collection that I'm not sure I had ever photographed. My camera flash is broken, so I just took these using a cell phone. There are a few oddities that I'm not sure of their IDs, and a few that are just cool pieces. Appears to be a partial Actinopteria decussata. Not a common find at the site. Looks like a nautiloid, perhaps a Orthoceras or Spyroceras, but has a really weird surface texture to it. Nice long section of crinoid stem. This was very tough to stabilize, it was practically jumping out of the matrix piece by piece. A big honkin' Eldredgeops rana that's partially enrolled. Still prepping him out. Unfortunately he's missing a chunk of the left librigina. You can also see the spines of a well-preserved Spinatrypa spinosa in the bottom of the frame. I don't know what this is. It's concave, and I think it's the interior of a Spyroceras, but I can't be sure it's such an odd segment to try and classify from.

This is my first whole prep of a complete trilobite. I had to remove a lot of matrix to get this one clear. It needs a good blasting to clean out the detail....I think I did okay Please let me know what I can improve upon