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Hello. Was wondering if anyone could connect me with information on how to gain access to Wilson clay pit in Coleman county, Texas. I am unable to find any info online. Thank you in advance

Yesterday, I embarked on my second journey with the Austin Paleo Society to a famous spot: The Wilson Clay Pit. It's the site of a former clay quarry that was used for the production of bricks. Though it is in private hands, the land owners are very kind and allow fossil hunters to collect a diverse range of Pennsylvanian fossils on their property. One of prize finds from the pit is the highly-coveted Petalodus tooth. Some of y'all may remember me wishing to find one on my last trip to the Brownwood area, only to realize we weren't at the right sites to find them. Well, if there was a place to collect beautiful Petalodus teeth, it would be the Wilson Clay Pit. With that in mind, I excitedly set out on a starry night drive. When I arrived, the sun had just beaten me to Brownwood. Temperatures in Central Texas dropped off recently, so we were looking at a frigid day just above freezing. Everyone was covered head to toe in heavy duty winter wear. Nevertheless, optimism was high, so I didn't hear much complaining! When we got to the site, I was blown away by its dramatic terrain. All of the previous quarry work had created huge artificial mounds of gravel and slabs filled with a variety of vibrant colors. In my opinion, it didn't have the beauty of a natural landscape, rather, the inner fossil-hunter in me was simply in awe of the virtually limitless acreage of huntable ground. Exposed randomly throughout was the Harpersville Formation and Saddle Creek Limestone. After @erose gave us a brief introduction to the site, we all disappeared our own ways into the vast, maze-like property. Notice how there's no one else in the pictures? The pit is huge. If it weren't for the greenery, you might think it's Mars. Most people headed off to one side of the entrance or went straight to the back. I was drawn more to the opposing side where there was a huge mound to climb. My goal was to find a spot that hadn't been touched by previous hunters (some mentioned that the Houston club may have been there recently already), so I was trying to get to places a bit more tedious to reach. Crawling up the gravelly incline, I wiped out within the first ten minutes. Luckily, when I turned around, everyone was already gone . From there, things started off a bit slow. I was scanning the ground, picking up anything mildly interesting since it was all new to me. It took a thousand crinoid stems before my eyes locked onto the bright white color of what could be the "porcelain" appearance of enamel. Nope, just bird poop. This cycle repeated five times before I finally found my first undeniable chip of Petalodus! Lots of Petalodus chunks to be had. These are only the ones I decided to keep! I took this to be a sign that virgin ground was finally reached and immediately got to being more thorough in my search. Pretty soon, the tiny teeth bits became more common than the bird poop and my intensity increased accordingly. After a solid 15 minutes of following the cookie crumbs, I was met with a sight that stole my breath. Before me lay a stone with a giant Petalodus perfectly prepped by natural weathering. It was a hundred times better than what I had expected coming into the day. I quickly snapped a photo and got to carefully packaging it in my backpack. Already, my trip was made. An awesome Petalodus specimen. The tooth is about 45 mm across and 54 mm from top to bottom. The day was still young, so I got back up and went to searching. I think my eyes were only attuned to sharky things as those were what I was picking up the most. My bias towards white objects paid off even more as I accumulated a small collection of Deltodus fragments. I like that their white color contrasts nicely with the black Deltodus I found in my last PSoA trip. Halfway through the day, I looped back around to the entrance where I decided it would be best to drop off my prize find, in case I wiped out again later. Because of my vertebrate success from earlier, I set myself to make some invertebrate finds and give balance to my collecting. I found that the purple layer was invertebrate rich and had heard of the possibility for crinoid calyxes, trilobites, conularids, and more. Climbing up and sliding down the purple slopes was blast. There was often something new to reward the effort and my pockets were quickly heavy with brachiopods, crinoid material, and horn corals. This is not edited. The stuff really is this purple. Unfortunately, I wasn't making any out of this world finds on the invertebrate side, so I instead continued my search while also hiking around the entire perimeter of the pit. The eastern border extended pretty far. As I traveled that way, I noticed more and more chert covering the ground. Some had mentioned arrowheads being found on that side of the property, but I didn't see much worked material. As I circled around, I decided to say screw it with the inverts and go back to searching for teeth. I began inspecting rocks of similar appearance to the ones in which I had found teeth before and made a breakthrough. I couldn't believe it when I spotted the crowns of two decently sized Petalodus poking out of two separate boulders. Unfortunately, the limestone was very tough and I knew that getting them out without shattering them would be nearly impossible. My time would be better spent looking for more accessible ones; if there were two that could be found just like that, then surely there were many more nearby. After showing the teeth to Brian, another PSoA member, we both went on a quest to find a perfect specimen that could pop out. As I travelled up the adjacent mound, I did find a decently sized Petalodus, though most of the crown was missing from weathering. It came out in one piece, but I decided to give it away. Not so long after, I followed up with a beautiful smaller tooth that was entirely burnt orange. In my excitement, I forgot to take an in situ pic and immediately began planning a method of attack. Of course, such an awesome find just had to be buried under a thorn bush. Brian was a great help, pulling away the thorny branches so I could get in and make some swings with the hammer and chisel. It took some work, but the durable limestone eventually gave way and the chunk with the tooth came out. After gathering myself, I noticed that some of the root had splintered off. I did manage to locate one piece of it, but the rest was nowhere to be found. Can't win em all, but still happy with it nonetheless. Another beautiful Petalodus. This one is 37 mm wide and 33 mm tall. By then the sun was setting. Most of the group had already gone home, so it was just me, Brian, and Melvin atop the mound. We had some nice discussion, but I think we were all a bit worn out from a day's worth of running around this fossil hunter's paradise. The weather, too, had gotten tired of strangling us with cold, and a final gentle breeze flowed passed the hilltop. God rays poked out from the Westerly clouds to illuminate the distant expanse of greenery I hadn't noticed until then. The moment was nice. After saying our goodbyes, I was a little dejected seeing that I would soon no longer live in Austin and would thus miss out on a lot of future club activities. PSoA has got a really great community, and I'm glad I was there to experience a bit of it firsthand. Luckily, they do have a lot of trips far away from Austin, so I'm sure we will meet again for a future adventure, someday, once they travel close by my neighborhood. Until then, here are some pics of my finds from my latest PSoA field trip: Petalodus ohioensis? teeth Bryozoans, horn corals, and fusunilids Archaeocidarid plate, crinoid arm (Delocrinus) and stem, and a couple of oddities (perhaps conularid or Poterioceras cephalopod fragments?) Straparollus? gastropod and some gastropod from the order Bellerophontida Whole lot of brachiopods. I think bottom center is Meekella. Is that rare? I only found one. Big purple bivalve Shark family photo Thanks for reading!

Good Evening, Everyone, A few years ago I had a question about this fossil being a coprolite. I would like to, again, thank everyone willing to help ID these things. Coprolites are outside of my wheelhouse, so hearing from others with more experience is very helpful! I have a new question. I'm attempting to catalog all of my fossils, and I've found a few that are curious. I was thinking that it might be interesting to get some other opinions. The first is below... Is it possible that this is a suggestive geological deception, or could it be possible that this is a coprolite from some unknown marine dwelling critter? It looks as though it was soft at some point in its history, with one end pointed and one end "smooshed". It was unlike anything else I have sound at the site, so I am understandably curious... Continued below...

Hi all, I recently made a trip out to Wilson Clay Pit in Brownwood, Texas with my local paleo society. I've found several recognizable things, and a few I need some help identifying. I apologize in advance to @erose who gave me an idea on one bivalve that I failed to write down, and thereafter promptly forgot! I think the tooth is Petalodus sp., just need confirmation. I'd love a genus for the clams, and I have no idea at all what the small plate-shaped fossil is. Thanks!

My beautiful wife scheduled a three night stay at a cabin in a Thousand Trails campground near Lake Texoma. We were to arrive on Sunday and check out on Wednesday. So, I figured that, since I hadn't been fossil hunting in months, I would schedule a trip to central Texas to follow the Texoma trip. I set up a rendezvous point in Fairfield, Texas to meet my dad on that Wednesday, and head off toward Brownwood and Cisco, Texas. I figured that the fossil hunt would begin then. But that's not quite how things played out... My two oldest daughters and I met my wife and youngest daughter in Salado, Texas on Saturday, October 14th. They had left the previous morning to spend a day with my mother-in-law in Waco and Salado. We spent Saturday night in Salado and then parted ways with my mother-in-law on Sunday morning and headed toward Lake Texoma. As we drove through Waco, my wife asked if we wanted to take a detour. She had never been to Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose, Texas, and she thought the girls would enjoy seeing the dinosaur tracks in the Paluxy River. I got really excited. I hadn't been there since I was a kid, and at that time, the river was high and the tracks were not visible. So we adjusted our GPS to take us to Glen Rose. We pulled in and stopped off to get a map of the park. We then drove straight to the spot where Roland T. Bird made his first discovery. It was amazing. The water was low and gave us a clear view of the trackways in the river. Above you can see both the sauropod and theropod tracks, They are a little obscured by mud, but they are still very visible. We left the R.T. Bird site and went to another place called the Ballroom Track Site, where so many tracks go in so many directions, it was like the theropods were dancing. It was in slightly deeper water, but it was still beautiful! The rippling water was crystal clear and the girls couldn't help but get into the water, even as a cool front brought chilly winds down the river valley. My wife loved it. She told me that Dinosaur Valley State Park was our next camping destination. Before we left, we stopped off by the iconic Tyrannosaurus Rex and Apatosaurus models built for the 1964-65 World's Fair in New York. They were permanently installed at Dinosaur Valley in 1970 at the park's dedication. We left Dinosaur Valley and drove the rest of the way to our cabin at Lake Texoma, arriving just after dark. We settled in and tried to decide what we wanted to do the next day. It was Monday, and we figured there had to be something for the girls to do nearby. We quickly discovered that our options were limited. It had turned too cold for the pool at the campgrounds. The putt-putt at the campground was okay, but the girls quickly tired of it. And most of the other recreational equipment was not well kept, or available. So, we decided to leave the campground to find something for the girls to do. I had mentioned that I would like to check out the Permian site at Waurika, Oklahoma. It was only two hours away, and this was the closest I had ever been to the site. My wife was a bit miffed by the lack of things for the girls to do, so she said "Let's go." I jumped at the chance. I had done no research on the site, other than what I had read about it on TFF. I wish I had consulted the TFF experts before we left, because I had no idea of the best places to look. We focused mainly on the sandy floor and reddish rocks, and found nothing. When we returned to the cabin, I asked where we should have looked. Jesuslover340 informed me that the gray colored exposures were the places to find the best material. So, we came away empty handed, with only one major discovery. My wife wouldn't let me take it home, though... Continued in next post...

On my last visit to the Wilson Clay Pit in central Texas I stumbled across this curious piece. It is approximately 6 cm long and 1.5 cm wide. The surface is irregular and rounded. Near one end, an object about 5 millimeters in length, that looks like a brachiopod or pelecypod is attached. The object looks partially buried in the surface of the piece. The piece is below. The scale is in centimeters. Below is a close-up of the attached object... I can see three possibilities. Its geological (matrix) with an attached bivalve (if it is a bivalve). Its an infilled burrow of a bivalve. Or, most enticingly, its a coprolite of a rather large aquatic animal. The Wilson Clay Pit is a well known Paleozoic shark tooth site. I have tried to look up shark coprolites from the Paleozoic, but they seem to have a more regular shape. The 'bivalve' on the side is unlike any of the shells from the locality that I'm familiar with. Could it be undigested remains of something else? Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.

I found this at the Wilson Clay Pit in Brown County, TX. It is Pennsylvanian. I really don't have any idea as to what it could be. Any ideas out there? The hash marks are 1mm.

I found this at the Wilson Clay Pit in July of 2015. I'm not sure what it is. Its quite small, approximately 8 millimeters. It doesn't have the look of a crinoid stem or brachials. Is it from a crinoid? Is it possibly a echinoid spine of some type? It is from the Harpersville Formation, Late Pennsylvanian, Virgilian Stage (288 to 286 MYA). The specimen is below. The scale is in centimeters. Any help is appreciated, as always...

On one of our last trips to the Wilson Clay Pit, I found this. I have been unable to identify it with my current resources. It looks like some type of bivalve, but I can't find anything with the same ornamentation. It appears to have spines, most of which have been broken off. The specimen is below. The scale is in centimeters. Hopefully someone can help me identify it. Thanks in advance!!

On our last excursion to the Wilson Clay Pit, I stumbled across this curious specimen. It was mostly covered in matrix and I spent some time cleaning it up. The piece has a curious shape. It has a "V" shape, with one side curved and covered with striations. The other side of the "V" is straight and flat. The two sides of the "V" are connected with a flat plane of material, reminiscent of a scapula. The complete specimen is below. The scale is in centimeters... Below is a close-up of the striated, curved part... The other side of the "V" has a rectangular cross section (at least the part that is exposed--see lines)... The exposed ends of the curved piece are shown below... I know that the Wilson Clay Pit is well known for various Paleozoic sharks. Do these "bones" appear to be shark-like, or are they, perhaps, some type of large boney fish? We've had some luck with discovering shark cartilage at the site in the past. But this seems to have a different texture. I'm also going to send Dr. Maisey some photos to see if he can help identify it. In my last correspondence with him he welcomed the chance to view any other specimens I might come across. Any help that the great folks on TFF might give will be greatly appreciated!!

We visited the Wilson Clay Pit in Coleman County, Texas last April. My dad stumbled across this little guy, which, according to the Color Guide of Pennsylvanian Fossils of North Texas (McKinzie and McLeod) is Pronechinus sp., a rare carboniferous echinoid known only from the Wilson Clay Pit and Diyarbakir Province in Turkey. Here is a link to the specimen found in Turkey. Notice the same double pores on the ambulacral plates as seen in the specimen we found. Scale is in centimeters...

My dad found this unusual specimen at the Wilson Clay Pit. Neither of us have any idea of what it could be. Could it be some type shark cartilage? I have no experience with Paleozoic shark cartilage. The scale is in centimenters... Thanks for any help you can offer... As a side note, here is something else my dad found about a year ago at the Wilson Clay Pit. I thought it was drool-worthy...