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In a nod to Ralph’s entertaining post, I thought that I would start a thread that I can continue to add on to over the upcoming months. With the Pit Eleven collecting season coming to a close, I decided to venture out one more time before the season ends on September 30th. Pit Eleven is a difficult site to collect due to the heavy overgrowth (lots of thorny plants), uneven terrain and did I mention the bugs. Late Summer/early Fall is especially tricky because unlike the Spring, the vegetation is in full growth obscuring many of the areas that can produce early in the year. The one upside is that the lake water level is a bit lower so I decided to explore a few more out of the way areas that I do not search very often. It paid off in a big way. In just a few hours, I was able to collect 514 concretions! Many have nice shapes and I might even have a Tully or two. While it is likely that at least half of them will be “duds” I have a decent chance of having something rarer pop open. Since we will be heading into the Winter months soon, I thought it might be fun and informative to share the results of my freeze/thaw cycles with the forum. I will try to update this post with each cycle (probably around once a week) posting pictures of any interesting finds. I will also keep a record of all plants and animals found in the 514 concretions. In my experience, most of the better quality fossils will usually split open within the first 20 cycles. I am currently soaking the concretions for a few days and will buy them in my chest freezer early next week. I did find a few concretions that had already split open that I am not including in this count. Two were the common Essexella, one Aviculopecten, one coprolite and a few small plant fragments. I also found an interesting artifact. A section of rail line (approximately 30”) from the old mine carts. Here are a few pictures of the concretions. Enjoy!

A new paper redescribing the common Pit Eleven Jellyfish as an anemone. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/spp2.1479