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Hey everyone, This past weekend I was out in Buffalo, NY for my bachelor weekend. My brother planned a fun fishing/hiking/fossil weekend at an air b&b on Lake Erie in wanakah. We had the house from May 30th to June 3rd. Buffalo is like my Mecca. I need to go there at least once a year and get back to my roots where I first starting being fossil crazy. I did some form of fossil hunting every day. I came out to buffalo early and stayed late to get extra time in! One major highlight from the weekend would be 3 pygidiums and a cephalon w/ 3 body segments of the rare pseudodechenella rowi trilobite!!! I also found some top notch big brachs!!! Heres general list of what I did. Thursday 5/30 -type locality of wanakah shale (lake shore) -smokes creek, Buffalo (wanakah shale) Friday 5/31 -fished bear lake. Caught 7 bass -Hamburg beach surface collecting Saturday 6/1 -Penn Dixie Sunday 6/2 -18 mile creek highland on the lake (big bust, water levels) smokes creek, buffalo (revisit wanakah, hiked all the way to windom shale) Monday 6/3 -Smokes creek, West Seneca (wanakah shale) -Francis rd, Bethany Ny railroad cut (big bust, now posted trespassing). Went on the way home. -purchased a few Eurypterids from a friend in Rochester. -Got back to Utica New York 8pm. I can’t show every single thing I found cause I took a lot of material with me. I did however find a lot of amazing stuff!! I’ll break up the findings by each day. I’ll mention locality and if it’s from the wanakah or windom shale. I’ll show the best stuff (still lots!!) and spare everyone the extras haha..... Bear with me. I’ll be uploading pictures in chunks throughout the day. Thats everything. Looking at each column from left to right. 1. Wanakah shale type locality 5/30. 2. Smokes creek (wanakah) 5/30 3. Hamburg beach 5/21 4. Penn Dixie 6/01 5. 18 mile creek (lake shore), smokes creek (wanakah, windom) 6/02 6. Smokes creek, West Seneca (wanakah), Francis rd, Bethany (2 small specimens). Ill upload the highlights and extra details later today. Stay tuned!

Came across something interesting today while excavating the Bay View Coral bed at the site. First thought was a hypostome from a Dipleura dekayi. It is not. There are symmetrical sutures in it, which are pretty interesting. Wondering if anyone has some literature on Devonian fishes from the Hamilton. The only thing I can think of is placoderm. It's about 1mm thick and 4-5cm across. Sorry for the poor photo, I took it in situ with my phone.

Hello, all! I'm working on an article presently about the existence of glass sponges in the Hamilton Group in New York state. The publications that I have found, most notably, The Great Glass-Sponge Colonies of the Devonian; Their Origin, Rise, and Disappearance, (Clarke, 1920)1 dispute their existence in the Hamilton group altogether. Recently, an example of an indet. Hexactinellida was presented to me from the site, and mention has been made of several others over the past 20 years having been found. I am wondering if anyone here in their vast array of experiences has encountered similar examples at the Penn Dixie site. If so, would you be willing to share photos and your information about where they were found? Thank you in advance! -J 1John M. Clarke, The Great Glass-Sponge Colonies of the Devonian; Their Origin, Rise, and Disappearance, 28 The Journal of Geology, 25-37 (1920)

I wanted to enter this one into the IVFOM, but I technically collected it the last day of March, and I didn't take a picture of it before I started prepping it, so that's out. But I will try to chronicle the prep on here. It’s a decent-sized Bellacartwrightia whiteleyi that I pulled from the Windom shale just above the Bay View Coral bed at the site.

Hello, all! So I am cleaning out my workshop to make room for a lot of new material coming in and to prepare for the upcoming season. I have wayyyyyy too much Penn Dixie material. I have, at this point, committed all of my complete bugs away. But I still have quite literally, TONS, of other material. What I am offering is Edlredgeops rana partials, this includes entire prepped bugs that are missing cephalons, stand alone cephalons, pygidiums, large but broken cephalons, half bugs, etc. (Please note, I am not offering any of these as complete. There is the real chance that some of the unprepped material COULD be complete, but I am not offering them as such. I also have Greenops pygidiums and partials, beat up examples with broken cephalons, etc. I also have a few Bellacartwrightia pygidiums laying around, and perhaps a few broken and partials of them as well. I also have massive quantities of hash plates from the Bay View coral layer, brachipods (Mucrospirifer, Pseudoatrypa, Rhipidomella, Spinatrypa), Spyroceras cephalopod partials, rugose and tablulate corals, clams, and other random bits. I am interested in trading for similar material from other locales. I am not expecting anyone to offer up prime specimens for any of this material, but I would love anyone else's throw-aways that include vertebrate material, plants, small fish, and the like. I am also considering minerals and gems. (Again, throw-aways are all I'm looking for, quantity beats quality on this one.) I will cover shipping domestically in the US, but can't really afford to ship out a ton of international packages this month. (I will still do international, we just might have to work something out.) If anyone is interested, please message me! I want this stuff gone as quickly as possible, it's getting to the point where I can't walk in my workshop anymore! If you let me know what you're interested in I will take photos of some examples, but it would take me a full weekend at least to photograph everything that I have available. This is perfect for anyone wanting to practice prepping as the Windom shale that most of these bits are in is relatively easy to work and there are lots of attractive pieces that will look very nice prepped, just aren't worth the time and effort for me at this point. Cheers!

Deb and I came back from three half-days at the Penn Dixie site with an ok mix of finds despite some weather and site challenges. This is usually an ideal time for us to get out and collect as Monday was our Thanksgiving, and my university has implemented a new Fall Reading Break. However, not everything went according to plan! This trip report will mostly be in situ pictures (when we had time to take them, or it was not too rainy to risk it), and a few preliminary shots of what was found. So, story mode first... Day 1 We arrived around 1 pm and left before sunset. The site itself is vastly different from when we were on the big TFF dig back in April. After the Digging with the Experts, a lot of overburden seemed to have been dumped on areas we had been working. About 5 or more feet of the stuff, actually. Usually one will find a spot where a bench has been started, and that becomes the starting point for expansion. Not so much this time around as it more meant starting a bench from scratch at the right spot where the trilobite layer is. I found an entry point about a foot and half wide and we got to work moving about a foot or more of overburden. I then starting carving out slabs and placing them on the piles of debris we were scooping up (I'm glad I did as Day 2 will make clear). There was a slightly higher proportion of Greenops bits at this spot as I suspected from the general area we had covered last year. Pictured here are some slabs. The first one with my rock hammer dangling was resting on a very smooth inclined layer that ran about 4-5 feet wide and about 3 feet deep. The bottom half of that slab is about a foot and the top tapered part is only about a few inches. The one I pulled out the next day was a real monster at about 2.5x larger and about 400 lbs, and it took a heck of a lot of energy and several tries to wrestle it into an upright position. My back was pretty sore after that! The other slab pictured has some promise as there are some trilobite parts showing. Ultimately, I was in search of a trilobite party, and the stuff at the base of the inclined layer seemed to hold a bit of promise for a multi-plate. (cont)

I went to visit my family south of Rochester, NY a couple of weeks ago. They own property which includes a creek emptying into Canandaigua Lake. Here are some pics and finds. There are public sites very close with similar fauna, including Green's Landing, and Barnes' Gully/Onanda Park. Eldredgeops Rana strophomenid Amboecoelia umbonata strophemenid brachiopod (not concava--its a flat one)

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.

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.

Well as of late I don't seem to be prepping many for me, although I have had some stunning fossils pass by my workshop in the last few months I know these are common as dirt. I found this little gem (dimension 27.17 mm x 17.26 mm) on Monday May 22 at Penn Dixie. So I took time this morning while working on a stunning greenops for someone else to quickly have a go at this little beauty for myself. I will post something on the greenops prep in a bit. It is going to be a nice one. A trilobite does not have to be rare to be beautiful. As far as I can recall the phacops rana ( I know that is not the correct name but it probably was when I found my first one) was the first complete trilobite I ever found, so they will always have a special place for me. The mind gets fuzzy with old age as the senility begins to creep in. This one was from Penn Dixie and took a whopping 12 minutes to prep. Other than the tip of the cephalon (head) everything was buried. Buried trilos always have the best potential to be pristine. Came out pretty nice for a quickie. Was prepped on a Comco air abrasion unit with no airscribing, using 40 micron dolomite at 25 PSI with a .030 and .015 inch nozzle under a Olympus scope at 10x magnification. No restoration, no gluing, no coatings.

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

@ischua and I did another late fall dig today at Penn Dixie, and we came across this little bit of nonsense. Notice the little white hair-like bits that are sticking out of it. (It's about 5" long and a little less than an inch wide.) We were thinking it's plant matter of some type, but I have no clue. Never seen anything like it before.

Not sure about this one. When I've been finding super fragile hash I've been bringing it home and soaking it in my specialized concoction. It's been really cool to see what types of micro fossils are hiding in the matrix. This last time I found something curious that I have yet to see. I'm hoping someone here can take one look at it and say, 'boom, that's a ________.' It's ~1cm long and has a very neat hexagonal base. It was associated with a mass of crinoids and brachiopods. (Entire yield can be seen drying in the 2nd photo.)

Hello everyone! I was hoping to make arrangements for the members of the group to have one more group outing at the site before the winter hits and we're all snowed into hibernation for the year. I don't have a date in mind yet, but would like to open it up to the group to see if, a.) there is anyone interested; and b.) what dates would be of interested to people. I believe the rate would be $5/person for the day. DM me with any questions or suggestions!