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Nancy and I revisited St. Clair (the large depression south of Burma Road) on Aug. 4. Only two other collecting teams were there - some young people who were excavating and found a lot of nice pieces, and a middle aged couple. The bear and her cub were not in sight - probably cooling off in a stream somewhere. It was 91 degrees and higher in the pit but afternoon clouds and a strong breeze made the weather comfortable. We continue to improve our excavation techniques, which are nothing fancy - just a rock hammer and chisels, but we work to extract larger (1 to 2 feet) sheets intact, which we fragment into large thin pieces. Techniques we've seen other people use include "mining" fossils in large pits, and carving out large round slabs. Some people are excavating under trees which is not cool - we hard that's what got the site closed to fossil collectors several years ago. This was a successful trip. We only spent half a day there, but met our goals. Last trip, I brought back a 2 ft. long section covered with orange and yellow fern fossils. This trip I was able to secure most of the other half of that section which is equally impressive (see photo below), plus we collected some white fossils in large (9 inches to 1 foot or longer) sections suitable for display on a shelf or on the wall. I worked to get some sections that are thin and light enough to frame but getting larger pieces intact is an art. My impression is that a lot of people seem to be using hammers and just hammering away at the substrate. This produces piles of tiny fragments and partial fossils which are discarded. This also explains why there are so many small pieces scattered everywhere. We sorted through the throwaways in the pits - if you look closely and know what to look for you can find some scarce specimens that include sections of bark from Calamites, Siggularia as well as bright white, orange and yellow ferns, groups of fossils that are a bit harder to find such as Annularia, etc. A general observation - there is a LOT of shale to excavate and explore, including many pits started by other collectors. Some look hard to extract but are easier than they look, but it requires a hammer and chisel and some careful cutting around the periphery to get out larger pieces - and often you have to remove some overburden that covers the fossil layers. Some pieces look smooth or round but some strategic hits with a chisel will segment them into small manageable sheets that sometimes come out larger than expected. It takes more time but you get more intact fossils. Also, many times I'll pull out a large sheet of shale thinking it looks totally empty or with only a few fossils visible, and will chisel it into increasingly smaller sheets with no results, then when I chisel open the very last layer, I'm rewarded with a really nice dense fossil mix. Nancy continues to use her keen eye to find unusual shapes and patterns - some of which are included in the Fossil ID section. She mentioned finding a "feathery" fern that she discarded because it looked too fuzzy - and later going through a fern book we saw that this was a feathery fern called Odontopteris. Which just goes to show that it pays to bring home stuff that looks interesting. I also found two very large neuropteris leaves - about 9 to 12 inches - but they didn't survive the segmenting process. We keep forgetting that many large fossil trees had very large leaves but they are hard to find the way most people work on smaller pieces. We don't want to move up to commercial-size excavations which defeats the purpose of this being a hobby, but we do want to keep working with our hammers and chisels to remove display size pieces. Didn't have much time to shoot photos but a few images are included here. Number 4 shows an Alethopteris and Annularia on the same fossil, which is a nice mix. The next images show "display pieces" from our trip, and a yellow fern. You can see more in our post in the Fossil ID section.

These fossils are from our second visit to St. Clair (Aug 4) - several are fossils we haven't seen before so we appreciate help with IDs. Special thanks to Fossildude19 for the excellent starting points. Note: some of the images are out of order when you look at the photos below, because I am renaming and reposting them as they are being identified: 1 - Pecopteris Squamosa - This is small and the leaves are very close together and parallel - based on Lesquereux - amazing that some of the best fern identification sources are from 1879! 2 - Calamites Stem Fragment - A thin Calamites branch. 3 - Unidentified Plant - Nancy calls this a "flower" - of course it isn't, but it seems to be a different shape from others we collected at St. Clair. 4 - Alethopteris and Annularia - Included this because it makes for a nice artistic layout. 5a-5b - Asterophyllites equisetiformis - This interesting pattern appears over a large area several meters square in one part of the St. Clair site, and covers the surface of a very large flat boulder in one area of the site. (source: 6 - Siggilaria - This is our second Siggilaria trunk impression. Some of the trunk and branch fossils (Calamites, Siggilaria) are very exotic and interesting to collect. 7a-7c - Trigonocarpus (Seeds of the Alethopteris Fern) - The same shape appears in three different samples collected on our two trips and according to our friends on the site and reference materials, they appear to be Trigonocarpus seeds, which is very exciting because we keep reading about seed ferns but these are our first fossil seeds. One reference describes Trigonocarpus as the seeds of Alethopteris (which is the most common fern found at St. Clair) - other sources give these the nickname "fossil pecans" because of their physical resemblance. 8a-8b and 9a - Cyclopteris - Fan Shaped Leaves - Some of the reference books show round fan shaped versions of some common ferns but this looks like something separate so we're going with Cyclopteris. We'll try to find a separate, more articulated sample on a future trip. 10 - Unidentified Fern. 11 - Assume this is Sphenopteris. 12 - Assume this is Neuropteris - Where Neuropteris sometimes has rounded leaves (??) 13 - Sphenophyllum - Including just for fun. I'll update the names in this list as the IDs are confirmed. One of our goals continues to be, finding scarce specimens we haven't come across yet, as well as articulated fossils, designs and larger pieces for display. As you can see, we're already making great headway identifying these. Thanks to everyone who helped us ID our finds in the past 2 months, and especially for helping with these...we're really surprised how many different species there are at this single site, all very close together.

We are now working to identify our samples from St. Clair - finding it a bit tricky to identify these: Sample 6sm - Alethopteris (?): Thought this might be Alethopteris but it looks a bit different. Sample 7sm and 7a sm (closeup) - Sphenopteris: Not very fern-like - Missourian (see below) suggested this looks like Sphenopteris and after checking online this matches Sphenopteris so I think this confirms it. We are really pleasantly surprised how many different plant species we collected in one half day outing. - so far, we're identified - neuropteris, alethopteris, annularia/calamites, sphenophyllum, and Siggilaria. We'll post a gallery/guide to the fossils we found and the names to help others identify their ferns, sometime in the next week or two... Sample 8sm - Annularia Leaf: Looks like an Annularia leaf in 3D.

Here are the first fossil ID mysteries from our recent half day trip to St. Clair. We will post what we did in the trip report section when we have time. In the meantime, these are some things that popped out at us that we'd like to ID... First Sample: St. Clair Fern Sample - Closeup - Pennsylvanian. This is part of a large piece almost 2 feet long that we excavated from an obscure location. I managed to carry out (that was grueling but well worth it) - the jumble of bright orange fern leaves makes an amazing impression. We believe this is neuropteris. Plant Samples 1a to 4c: Sphenophyllum - small leaves are reminiscent of clover - not "fern-like" - very distinctive. Sample 5b is just to show that we did find one that was golden yellow in color. Unidentified Sample 1a and 1b: These look like the tops of grass but too soon geologically for that. Any ideas? Unidentified Sample 2a: Is this the trunk of Sigillaria? Unidentified Sample 3a: What are these lines? Any ideas? We also collected different types of ferns in our samples - white, yellow, orange - very cool which is what St. Clair is known for. Will post some of these in our trip report. We looked in some bark samples for insects - thinking maybe something bored into the bark. No luck there. Surprised that more insects don't come out of the Pennsylvanian sites. Should be some insects mixed with all these ferns or in the trees, don't you think? Also, we were wondering what caused so many plants to survive as fossils so well preserved and intact, all flat, not much decomposition or rotting, etc. Maybe a massive collapse of a cliff or mudslide?

I read on the forum here last week about the possibility of a landfill operation going in at St. Clair at or near the white fern fossil site. I decided it was time for me to make a trip from my home in the Harrisburg PA suburbs and head north on I-81 to St. Clair on Saturday. I had never been to St. Clair for the fern fossils. I got off 81 at the St. Clair/Rt 61 exit and drove down the mountain to St. Clair. I found the street that I needed to turn on that would take me to the mining company property. Burma Rd goes up the mountain there and then I started looking for the parking area at the trail. I found it on the 2nd try and pulled in. There was a man and his wife who were getting their backpacking equipment out of their SUV when I pulled in. I asked them if I had the right place for the fern fossils and he said yes. We got to talking and one of us mentioned Fossil Forum and realized we were all members here. He is Hitekmastr and his wife Nancy. They finished getting their gear together and were ready to hike on the trail back to the mine. As they left I started to get my gear together, made sure I had all my tools, my water bottles and other stuff that I would need. I was now ready for my hike. I started hiking on the trail, made my left turn on the other trail to start the 750 yard hike to the mine. I was excited to be there and couldn't wait to see the fern fossils for myself. When I got back to the mine I caught up with Hytecmastr & Nancy & she had already found a small fern fossil by her feet. They decided to go off in one direction and I started hiking down the gully and up the other side. I hiked quite a distance and decided to stop and start looking. I found some on the surface & they weren't really good. I decided to go back to where I came in and look around there since several seams come to the surface there. I found a spot to dig and started digging. I was finding good ferns. Most of the ferns that you will see were from my spot here. It was hot & humid on Saturday, and I'm digging & thinking why am I doing this on such a hot day? I think we all ask that question of ourselves at times. I found quite a few very nice ferns, and I found some plates that were all white. Interesting. I was there for about 2 hours and then decided I had enough for my collection. The sky was starting to cloud up a bit and I didn't want to get stuck back there in a storm. So I packed up my stuff and started hiking back up the trail. I was about half way up this trail when I heard a noise. I stopped to listen and heard it again. It sounded like a bear cub. It's a sound I've heard before. I looked in the direction it was coming from but didn't see anything. The bushes and trees are really dense along the one side of the trail. I saw a huge rhododendron starting to shake about 20 ft away. The bear was still making noises. I thought if that is a bear cub then that means momma is nearby. I started hiking really fast up the trail and kept looking back but I didn't see anything. I don't want any close encounters! I made it back to my car and took a break and drank some more water. It was hot! I put my gear in the car and started heading back down to St. Clair. I stopped to get something to munch on and then started back on my way home. I had a successful trip and I was happy. I got some ferns!!Here I am at the mine.Here's my digging spot.