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Last month my dad and I took a four-day weekend trip to Western New York to visit some new fossil sites and to collect in the famous Beecher's Trilobite Beds. We had only once before been out to Western New York to collect fossils - a visit to Penn Dixie Fossil Park - so this time around we wanted to try out some different places that we had never collected in before. The trip was a lot of fun and I enjoyed putting my research skills to work in finding new places to visit. I greatly expanded my collection of Silurian and Devonian fossils and found quite a few things on my fossil bucket list. I am excited to hopefully make another trip out there soon and fortunately still have my list of potential stops to make. Thursday On Thursday we woke early and made the 6.5 hour drive towards Western New York. In preparing for the trip I spoke with @fossilcrazy who was kind enough to invite my dad and me to collect from some of the spoils piles on his property from the various fossil collecting trips he has made. I was really excited to explore his pile of Linton Coal as I have very few fish in my collection and even fewer Pennsylvanian marine fossils - one of the consequences of living near Eastern Pennsylvania is that you end up visiting a lot of Late Pennsylvanian Llewellyn Formation plant sites. @fossilcrazy is an amazing fossil collector and an even more incredible member of the fossil collecting community. I cannot say enough about his generosity and hospitality. We were all hoping that my dad and I could find an amphibian or complete fish fossil, but no luck. We found a few isolated Orthacanthus teeth and head spines and some isolated coelacanth scales and bones. Fortunately @fossilcrazy kindly gifted me some representative pieces to add to my collection. These fossils are from the Middle Pennsylvanian Upper Freeport Coal from Linton, Ohio. I highly recommend checking out some of the posts @fossilcrazy has made about his finds from the Linton Coal. They are amazing! Rhabdoderma elegans Here are some close-ups of this beautiful coelacanth head and tail Haplolepis sp. Orthocanthus compressus Teeth and Head Spine Conchostracans Death Plate After visiting with @fossilcrazy we made our way into Buffalo to visit Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House. My dad is an architect and he really wanted to see the newly restored interior of the house. It is really a quite stunning home.

These are some trilobites I’ve done over the past month. Been cranking them out!!

Hi All, I'm new here and honestly have only a small working knowledge of Geology and fossils but I'm interested in learning. I live in and interesting area I think, Western New York. Lockport, NY to be specific and along the upper portion of the Niagara Escarpment, I have to be at least 3/4 of the way up the rise of the escarpment, I can see to Lake Ontario from my property. In this area around me, stone wall used to be a big thing and they run through the woods for miles sometimes, build back in the 1800s after the Erie Canal and marked property lines and I assume was also a good way of clearing the rock from the fields. These rocks around me that are a softer more layered rock are just loaded with fossils but mostly small shells and what looks like some small crinoid type pieces. I have been studying up and trying to research what rock I predominantly here and I think I've narrowed it down. I would just like some input on what you believe this predominant rock type is, what these shells would be, age, and what else you think could be found in these rocks if I spent significantly more time breaking open lol. I will attach an imagine of approx. where these rocks are (blue dot circled in red) and the corresponding layer that this would be. If I've narrowed this down accurately, this would be the Lower Silurian (Sik) and possibly be "Irondiquoit Limestone, Rockway Dolostone, Hickory Corners Limestone, Neahga Shale, Kodak Sandstone" I will then try to add some pictures of this stone/rock type and the shells i found and cleaned some in vinegar. really appreciate your input and knowledge on what rock this really is, what the fossils are and age range so I can research what else might be able to be found in these rocks.

This may be a silly question, but how do I know if something is actually a fossil or just a weird shaped rock? Also, if anyone knows - how do these weird shaped rocks form in the slate/shale if they aren't fossils? Not looking for an ID (yet!), just trying to figure out how all the weirdly shaped rocks came to be! I went hiking with my mom in our backyard because she found what we believe to be nautiloid fragments (link to ID thread) and we wanted to see if we could get more. Well we found lots of oddly shaped rocks, but are unsure if they are actually anything. If it helps, we are in a creek in Groveland, Livingston County, New York. A geologist friend said that creek bed looks like shale slate. The only thing we pulled out that I have pictures of right now is a long wormy looking one. One picture of it in the rock and three after we got it out. I haven't been able to take any pictures with size reference sorry I don't have it with me right now, but from memory I'd estimate it's at least ~12-15 cm (5-6 inches). Thanks!

It's taken me a while to post this, but my boyfriend and I took another trip to Penn Dixie on the Fourth of July! For those who have been to Penn Dixie I'm sure you know it's impossible even for a total newbie to leave empty handed. I didn't get anything super amazing like some of the full trilos th at I've seen other people post, but I did get what I went in hoping to find - gastropods!!! I THOUGHT that I found 2 - the large one and the good spiral one. But when I started washing the mud off them last night I discovered two others on the other side of some chunks that we had kept for their trilo fragments! They aren't perfect, but I'm so happy because all I've wanted to find since I started going to Penn Dixie was a snail It has a little bit to do with my love for David Attenborough shows and learning that we are currently in the Golden Age of the Snail which makes me unreasonably happy. I'll try to get some more pictures tonight of everything we found to help illustrate how many fossils you can leave Penn Dixie with - even when your boyfriend is making you be more selective and says you can't keep everything! I took a picture right after I found the third gastropod (the smaller not spirally one - I know the name is in the Penn Dixie guidebook but I can't think of it right now) Realized I jumped the gun by taking a picture of the three when I found this guy! He's definitely not as great as the other spirally one, but I might try to extract him better at some point! Not even the best trilobite pieces we found, but the only ones I have pictures of at the moment!

Hey everyone!! So I posted last week (sorry had the wrong link there for a minute!) - but my mom found some interesting things in our creek and it was suggested they might be nautiloid fragments! So obviously we went back to look for more. We found a ton of rocks that are similar. I think a lot of what we found might just be concretions but here are a few that seemed interesting to me and I'd love another opinion on! They all have some sort of hole/dimple which I'm not sure is something that occurs in concretions? If it helps - they were all found in the creek bed in Groveland, Livingston County, NY and a geologist friend said she believes the rock on the creek bed appears to be shale slate. I'm at work without a ruler right now, so I had to use the Mary Anning post card I have on my desk for scale haha. It is 6 inches (15.24 cm). I promise I'll get a ruler soon if I'm gonna keep asking for help!! Thanks in advance!!

Can anyone tell me more about this specimen?