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I went on a bit of an unusual fossil hunt this morning--in my office closet. I'm getting things packed up for a move next month to Gainesville, FL. We're moving up there from South Florida because I've had my fill of hurricanes (and year-round yardwork). In Gainesville I'll be able to volunteer more with the FLMNH. So I'm slowly repositioning the contents of my house into a growing stack of moving boxes. I got to the bottom corner of my office closet today and found a box that had some childhood memories in them. No favorite stuffed animals, no catcher's mitt and baseball, no cheap trophies for athletic prowess demonstrated. Nope, this was MY childhood and it was slightly (or more so) more eccentric than portrayed in Leave it to Beaver. My childhood contained as many science books as comics or Mad magazines. I had access to my dad's workshop and knew my way around a soldering iron building kits from Heathkit (a reference that will mean little to those of a younger generation). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathkit The box I found in my closet contained my first microscope--a simple little slide scope with a pair of AA batteries in the base for backlighting. It also had part of my childhood rock collection--some pyrite, a piece of green quartzite, an agate, and a heavy chunk of specular hematite (given to me my by 3rd grade teacher who knew I was a science geek). The best "discovery" was my nascent fossil collection. It had my first fossil book (copyright 1962): There were plastic bags filled with little scraps of poor quality fossils. I was living in Chicago at the time so my fossil horizon contained items mostly from the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian. My 3rd grade teacher must have had a summer home up in the upper peninsula of Michigan (the likely source of the chunk of specularite) and she also gave me my first mystery fossil. It's a partial negative cast and I never could quite figure out what it was. I pressed clay into it as a kid to view its positive form and often suspected some form of trilobite. Could never make out any eyes on the end and looking at it now I suspect the "head end" may be some sort of pygidium. Maybe someone here may be able to hazard a guess. Several years ago Tammy and I visited the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in D.C. and of course spent an inordinate amount of time in the paleontology section. When I saw a nice example of a complete (and highly enigmatic) Recepticulites my mind went back to this piece that I found nearly 45 years ago. Most of the fossils that I collected myself were found wherever I had access to either beaches (like Lake Michigan) which had tumbled cobbles containing fossils or from a campground I remember a couple hours west of Chicago that used large rip-rap limestone boulders as erosion control where a road crossed over a large lake. So, in addition to bringing marshmallows for flambéing in the campfire in the evenings, and a fishing pole in attempt to see what types of fishes were hiding beneath the surface of the lake, I also brought a hammer and stone chisel--that's normal, right? I'd clamber around on the rocks looking for evidence of some poor quality fossil poking out here and there. I'd spend much more time than it was really worth freeing gastropod steinkerns, barnacles, crinoid stem segments, and other representative fossils of the time. I was always quite happy when I found find something that was included in my fossil guide book. Fossil books were few and far between in museum book shops and this was long before the ubiquity of the internet and longer before @Cris had the idea for TFF. I'll unpack this box again when we reach Gainesville and look back on my humble beginnings collecting fossils. I may organize some of these into a showbox display and hang it in my office in the new house. Back in the day I told (mostly adults) that I wanted to be a paleontologist when they asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. Not hearing the expected answer of teacher, fireman, or astronaut (this was the era of the space race), the questioner would stare blankly at me till my grandfather or my parents would explain that it is someone who "digs up fossils". It took me a few decades but I've finally been able to travel around and "dig up fossils" if only on a serious avocational level. You'll see some indications that I was trying to be a serious collector back then. I had numbered several of my finds when I had made a potential identification. I had a notebook (long since vanished) where I recorded the collecting information and (probably) identification for my finds. The little adhesive numbered tags were cut from strips of numbered tape used to identify both ends of cables when building racks of switches and relays (back in the day before semiconductors). I have my first specimens of a rugose horn coral, a faint brachiopod, a crinoid segment, and my first worn partial trilobite. I remember some of these fossils and some I've long since forgotten about but the one that was the most surprising to see while picking through my old collection was a reasonable example of a Mazon Creek fern frond. While this is a well known fossil locality here on the forum (and beyond), I was surprised by this as Mazon Creek and its fossil lagerstätte had escaped my awareness till about a decade ago. Tammy and I were visiting the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago with our nieces and we happened upon the great exhibit they have there on Mazon Creek. That was the first time I was conscious of the fact that there was a great place to collect fossils relatively close to where I grew up but that fate and the relative lack of information back in the day had hidden it from me. Had I known about Mazon Creek back in the day and been able to amass a more impressive fossil collection as a kid I might not have chosen computers for a career. Actually, computer programming came natural to me like walking or breathing so computers were likely baked into my fortune cookie of fate and interest in fossils would rekindle later in life as it has. I still have no recollection of how this Mazon Creek concretion came into my possession. I can only assume that I received it as a gift from some adult trying to fan the flames of a passion for fossils. With the possibility of a long-term time-delay fuse this effort seems to have worked. Think about that next time you gift some fossils to a kid who shows interest. Cheers. -Ken P.S.: Tammy thinks I should choose one of these as a last minute entry for the FOTM contest since I (re)found them this month.

Today I went on a dual club field trip (Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois and Rock River Valley Gem and Mineral Society) to an Ordovician aged quarry in Roscoe, Illinois. It was a hot day for fossil hunting, but a cool breeze kept things refreshing. There were over 20 people on the trip and everyone was finding fossils of some sort. Some pictures of the quarry.

This is my first trip report on the forum, an attempt to organize my finds and hopefully get some help with identification. The quarry was located near Rockford, Illinois, Ordovician period. Recepticulites, in the field. Not sure what this impression is. Any ideas? An assortment of brachiopods and gastropods in beautiful bone-white chert. Not sure what this is...sorry for the blurriness, my phone doesn't have the best camera. Gastropod and recepticulites chunk Top and bottom halves of recepticulites. Not sure what these tentacles are... Bryozoans perhaps? Here they are under the microscope. They appear golden only because I naively used a brass brush to clean them (oops!)... a nice effect nonetheless.. Thanks for looking!