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Since we’ve had a pretty succesful fossiltrip in Southern Germany last year, visiting the Wutach area again for a few days seemed a more than logical choice since we would be passing Germany on our way back up from Italy to Holland for our summer holidays. Sadly a few days before we arrived it became apparant that the weather predictions were very bad. Allthough the first two days were mostly dry, these daily rain showers were just enough to make everything wet and muddy and thus very slippery which isn’t helpfull in these mountains….. Against all odds we still managed to find some nice fossils. Here’s an impression….. Mud everwhere.....

I hadn't visited one of my favorite Callovian sites in the Wutach Valley since last November, so since the temps have been moving up and above 30°C. over the last few days, I figured that the muddy slopes there were probably dry enough by now for me to have a go at it again. No worries about sunstroke either, since the site is in the shady woods. I spent about 5 hours at the exposure and managed to come up with a few good finds. Here are some photos of the extrication procedure. It's pretty slow going here, since marly overburden first needs to be removed and the fossiliferous iron-rich sandstone horizon is quite hard and compact, but it usually splits as wished if you work at it properly. And you are almost alway guaranteed a few good finds. Here's what I ended up with by the end of the dig. I'll post more later once I get down to prepping.

I was in the Wutach area again. A couple of weeks ago I posted a report about my adventures in the Aubach, and today I decided to scramble up the Krottenbach in the hopes of finding some Jurassic fossils. This creek isn't quite as wild as the Aubach, so I managed within 5 hours to move upstream to the point I was hoping to reach, despite the odd tree dam blocking the way. There were 2 huge landslides which inundated the area about 60 years ago and brought down a lot of detritus from the Middle Jurassic in the cliffs on both sides of the valley, so even though that was a long time ago, there's always a chance of finding something in the creek or tucked into its slopes. It being spring, I was also able to enjoy the budding natural scenery. Of course the froggies were also busy. And it looks like someone got stuck in the mud a dog's age ago. The area is also well-known for its huge septarians. I left it there for posterity. Oh yes! I also managed to find a few fossils. Now I'm curious to see how they turn out.

Some of you may be wondering what and where the Aubach is, so first I'll explain (Of course @Everhardus already knows what I'm talking about, since he recently inspired me here to make the trip). The Aubach is a creek in the Wutach area whose undercut slopes expose in sections the entire Early Jurassic from the Hettangian to the Toarcian with even the Aalenian stage of the Middle Jurassic at the top. This is one of the very first exposures studied by the pioneering German Paleontologists and Geologists such as Quenstedt. Geology students from all over southern Germany visit this site to learn on hand about the stratigraphy from their professors. The last time I was here, which was quite a few years ago, I bumped into a group from the University of Tuebingen. I didn't think to get a photo of the classic exposure before it was too late, but here are a couple of typical ones a bit farther upstream. My plan was to duck down to the classical exposure and then work my way upstream to the waterfall at the top. I wasn't expecting to find much, since this creek has been picked over by countless collectors over a stretch of almost 200 years, but new stuff comes down each year , so you never know. I was just in the mood for a nice adventure with no great expectations. I didn't quite make it as far as I wanted to, but more about that later. I was however in for a big surprise when I arrived at the parking spot above the creek. I was just about to don my knapsack as I glanced down the hill and saw a bunch of fossils scattered about. Some other collector had obviously disposed of a few things which didn't aspire to his high standards. They weren't perfect, but some of them were worth having a closer look, so I dumped them into a bag and put them in the trunk. Off to a good start! Here's a photo I took of them once I got home. I then clambered down the slope to the creek and spent some time at the classical exposure breaking stone. Not to much avail, though. There were a lot of imprints and the odd piece of a living chamber lying about. Here's a typical looking one which didn't contain much. I then moved on upstream some more, taking my time and studying the rocks closely. There had been another collector there before me recently according to the fresh bootprints I kept seeing, so I decided to go other ways than his prints were showing. Good thing I did! There it was. Just lying in the stream under a fallen-down tree. A good size at ø 20 cm. Lucky me! That really made my day! Although the day was far from over for me, so off I went again. The going got slower as I moved on upstream, since it was getting narrower and an increasing number of slipped down trees were hindering my progression. I managed to get through this lot. But then just around the corner I was confronted with this. And it didn't look like it was going to improve farther on. I had found a few other tidbits along the creek, so, since I had already been underway for almost 6 hours, I clambered up the slope to the footpath which winds its way along above the creek with the intention of continuing on along it up to the waterfall at the end. After about a 20-minute hike, however, I realized that I had not come along nearly as far as I thought I had, so, since dusk was setting in, I turned around and headed back to the car. I must admit that I was pretty tuckered out at my journey's end, but it was well worth it, as well as the Doner Kebab which I picked up in Blumberg. Here's the ammonite and the few other things I found in a photo I took once I got back home.

The weather has been so accomodating lately, that I figured that the snow should be gone by now from the slopes of the Wutach area in southwest Germany. I'd been thinking about a particular spot in the Middle Jurassic Callovian and decided to spend some time there. Sure enough, the snow was long gone, so I could scramble down the slope to the site. There are a few other local collectors who visit this site fairly regularly, but it was obvious that no one else had been there yet so early in the season. So I first made a quick inspection tour and found a few blocks which had weathered out over the last months. Here are the ammonites that came out of them. Then I got down to some serious work on the exposure. After a while, I noticed this. I was hoping for a large Macrocephalites, but unfortunately it turned out to be just the outer whorls. The inner ones were completely weathered away. However, as luck would have it, a few smaller ones nearby popped out. Another large one showed up a little later. It's not easy to see. Just to the left of the point of the hammer. Once again, it was just a partial, but there was a good Macrocephalites right next to it. It broke in two, but I was able to salvage the pieces and shall repair it once I get down to the prep work. I spent about 5 hours working the exposure and then decided to call it a day. Here's a photo of the harvest. Now it's time to get under the shower.

I just couldn't resist revisiting the Callovian site again which I recently reported about here. I was figuring on removing some more overburden to get back in at the productive layer. To this purpose I brought along my heavy pickaxe this time. That saved a lot of wear and tear on the wrist, although my elbows were beginning to ache a bit later on in the day, but that was no worse than playing a couple of sets of tennis As usual, my first finds were little stuff. But then the hope-for big one appeared. It also wasn't quite complete in the end, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to restore the missing parts once I get down to it. I had already begun to hear thunder in the distance as I began working on this and it was starting to get closer. So at this point I figured that my collecting day was soon to come to an end and started packing things away. But as luck would have it, it was just a bunch of noise and nary a drop of rain fell for the rest of the day. I managed to dig out another large ammonite which looked quite promising even after I had removed most of the overburden.

I guess as you get older, you get a little more crazy. I had sworn to slow down a bit, particularly after my exhausting hike down the mountain recently, so I'd been visiting easy-to-work sites like the ditch and the shark tooth exposure the last few weeks. But then my colleague told me that he'd opened up another section at the Callovian site in the Wutach Valley and that I should have a look at it. Maybe you can make some good finds. Well, why not? So off I went today. At this site you have to remove a lot of overburden to get at the good horizons and then you're whacking away at a hard concretionary sandy limestone in search of fossils. I use a pick hammer and club hammer for those purposes, which makes for a bit of wear and tear on the old tendons. The first 3 hours were not all that productive for my liking. Here's what my efforts had produced up to that point. But then I finally stumbled on something interesting and quite large to boot. The photos above were taken after about an hour of overburden removal. I needed yet another hour to remove the rest, which was absolutely necessary, since the ammonite was resting in the middle of an extremely hard concretionary lager and the chances of breakage were high. I was also already pretty sure at this point that the outer whorls would not survive the treatment, since they appeared to be unstable. Here's how things looked towards the end. You can see where the outer whorls have broken off and after I was able to pry out the inner whorls, I could see that the outer whorls didn't continue around to the back, since those parts were already eroded away. So that wasn't too bad after all and the inner whorls appear to be well-preserved as you may be able to discern below. ø is 16cm. So after this action, my heart was happy, but my wrist was aching like crazy and my legs were about to collapse because of crouching and bending the whole time. So I took a break, emptied my water bottle, and packed the things up for the return trek to the car, which in this case is happily only about 500 meters. I stopped in for roast beef with onions and french fries on the way home, so that pepped me up a bit I've also just discovered that Kytta ointment is good for aching wrists.

My customer/friend, let's just call him X. for now, brought me another large ammonite which he had recently pryed up for prep. He got this one out in 3 pieces, 2 of which he glued back together. The ammonite itself has a diameter of 30cm. Here's what I was faced with to begin with (Well almost. I took the pics after I had started in with the stylus.) The 1st pic shows them side by side, the 2nd in original position and the 3rd the reverse side. S. first had the wish that I remove it completely from the matrix, but I wasn't so sure about the chances of success there. For one thing, there were a lot of cavities in the phragmocone, and due to the hardness of the matrix, there was a good chance of breakage under way. There was also a heckuva lot of matrix above and below the fossil, so I knew that this was going to take a loooong time, even with the strong jack stylus. I decided to get started with the larger block and set aside the smaller one for the time being. After a few hours of plugging away with the air pen, it also became obvious that there was no proper separating layer between matrix and fossil, which made for even more time consumption and finesse. Here's how both sides looked at that point. I then decided that it was time to swap over to the air abrader, since I wasn't quite certain how the lay of the land was. There were a lot of oysters and tube worms clinging to the shell which made it difficult in some places to make a judgement as to where the ammonite shell actually started. As you can see in the next two photos, I continued on with the stylus after the abrading was done. 2nd pic in next post.

I recieved a large (32cm. in diameter) ammonite on commission recently which turned out to be rather complicated to prepare. It's a Fissilobiceras sp. from the ovale zone in the Early Bajocian from the Wutach valley. Most of it was imbedded in matrix, so it wasn't possible to judge at first in what kind of condition the inner whorls were and it was too fragile to just have a quick go at it with hammer and chisel in order to find out, so I had to take the slower route peeling off layer after layer with the stylus. Here's how both sides looked to begin with. After a good number of hours work with the stylus it became obvious for one thing, that the whorls were beginning to dip deeply down radically on their way to the center and there was less and less separation layer to the steinkern available until it practically completely disappeared, so I figured I'd have to stop at this point with the pen work. I also inadvertently dug out a bit too much due to the deformation. On the positive side, however, the inner whorls turned out to be intact. So I changed over to the abrader to remove the remaining thin matrix layer to get a proper view of the lay of things and to help decide how to continue. The circles and arrows on the last 2 photos were used during the exchange between the owner and myself in order to decide how I should proceed with the work, since these ammonites are not easy to find, particularly at this size, and so we decided in the end to make a matrix display out of it. I then removed the rest of the matrix from above the living chamber until its end and abraded that as well. The last step was to fill the gaps with Apoxie modelling compound and to round things off a bit. Once that was hardened, I balanced the colors with waterpaint and then applied a coat of Rember beeswax finish and the job was done. One interesting thing about this piece is that the border between phragmocone and somewhat flattened living chamber is easy to differentiate. The living chamber would certainly have been larger, but that was all I was able to save, and the whorls at the bottom were practically nonexistent, so I figure I got the best out of this one that I could.

Marcel @Everhardus and his wife Josette are spending their holidays in the area right now. I had agreed to show them around and so we spent the day together visiting a couple of sites in the Wutach area. Here they are enjoying keeping their balance on a slope at the Scheffheu. I was happy that they were able to make a few nice finds and Marcel emailed me today to tell me that they'd had more success at the Callovian site. I unfortunately didn't make any more photos, but maybe they can post something here if he checks in. Meanwhile, I can at least show you the ammonites from the south of France which Marcel graciously gifted me as a thank you and which I managed to get prepped today. They are from the iron-rich Late Toarcian aalensis zone and all belong to the genus Pleydellia sp.

I have a very proficient and capable customer (actually he's become more of a friend and colleague with time) when it comes to seeking and finding good fossils, and he struck again last week, bringing me quite a large ammonite with a diameter of ca. 40cm. for preparation. He sent me a photo of it which he took during the extraction procedure. The matrix was pretty tough, so he ended up having to extricate it in several pieces, most of which he glued back together before he brought it to me. I did some stylus work on it to begin with and then we were faced with the decision of whether we should retain the last piece at the end of the living chamber. Either like this: Or like this: We finally decided on the second alternative, since the first would have meant a little too much additional modelling work, so we chucked the piece. We also decided to stick to working on just the one side for two reasons, the first being that it was chock-a-block with oysters and concretions, and the second being that he would have had to pay for a lot more hours of work which probably wouldn't have made all that much difference in the end. Here's a photo of the other side. I then spent a good number of hours with the air abrader on it, alternating back to the fine stylus when necessary in order to remove larger chunks of matrix once I was sure of their position. The abrading was slow going due to the hardness of the matrix, but it was worth having the necessary patience for it as can be seen below. There is a huge tube worm on it and the transition from phragmocone to living chamber can be distinctly seen. The shell is somewhat dented in places, particularly by the inner whorls, but I find that doesn't necessarily detract from the whole picture. I then filled in the gaps with my trusty Apoxie sculpt, painted it and applied the beeswax finish. I also cleaned up the back side a bit. The whole procedure took roughly 10 hours. Here's the final result. Fissilobiceras ovale. 40cm. ovale zone Wedelsandstein Formation Early Bajocian Middle Jurassic From the Wutach area.