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April 10, 2021 1-4 pm Spring Valley, Minnesota Eagle Bluff Environmental Education Center organized hunt Led by Bev Sandlin, Bluffcountryfossils.net Whispering Winds, Spring Valley, MN Galena Formation Ordovician fossils What FUN!!! And what Great Finds! This hunt was organized by Eagle Bluff Environmental Education Center in Lanesboro, MN. I am doing hunts for them every 2nd Saturday of the month through this season and any private hunts they book as well. We had about 20 participants and it was a whirlwind hunt they all were enjoying as I left them still hunting the 3rd site at 4 pm! We started at my place, Whispering Winds, Spring Valley, MN with the fossil gardens to acclimate their eyes to what fossils they are looking for and a bit about the Ordovician time period. This is the river bank hunt portion of site 1. The cliff face is great for showing the difference between the Stewartville and Prosser members of the Galena Formation. I wish I had pics of all the fossils we found on this hunt! But I have a few and this cephalopod is one found along the creek bank. We hunted by the spring, the abandoned quarry and then the "Cave Man" cave. Taking pictures in the cave. Y And what finds! You will have to forgive my photos as these were all taken in the field on a very cool, 40 degree F, spring day. One of the BEST 3D graptolites I have ever seen! Without a microscope, I can't tell if this is a "print" of crinoids or bryzoans, but it is spectacular! And fragile, and of course these all went home with the collectors. :-D Any of you know what this is??? And DRUM ROLL, I am so envious of this find, a THALEOPS TRILOBITE that appears whole! And this guy is large! Perhaps 2 inches or better across! Dad, an experienced hunter from over south of La Crosse, Caleb's old territory, found this and the trilo is pictured with his son. What a PRIZE!!! We moved on to site 2 with lots collected there including this nice gastropod. Gotta love the enthusiasm of the kids! :-D And onto site 3 where I left them all happily breaking rock! I did invite anyone back over to my home if they needed IDs. I went home exhausted, as I just had surgery the week before and my last covid vaccination which put me down for two days that week, but so happy to see so many smiles under the masks! Thank you TFF for making this possible! Without all of the oh so patient TFF members teaching me about fossils, I would not be able to share the joy of fossil hunting with others! KUDOs TFF!!! Oh, FYI, I know my fossil blog is down, but can't seem to figure out how to get it back up on hostgator. The gal who did it has since died and I'm not techy, but working on it. Anyone with suggestions, please PM me. :-D

Here is a sweet treat and family fossil activity! Make your own trilobite, Maclurites, gastropods, whatever and eat them! This recipe is a basic sweet roll dough that is beyond easy! It works like play dough and you can bake it and eat it! I made a trilobite and my two regular cinnamon rolls look similar to Maclurites sp. This is also wonderful because you bake them in tinfoil, just tent it over them for about 45 minutes, open tent to brown, and pull out when done - no mess! Plus you can pull off the dough and make one a day for a week! Baked and ready to put on plates and drizzle with some confectioners sugar frosting - confectioners sugar, a bit of vanilla and a bit of milk and stir to a paste or drizzle. Or you can use cake frosting and cake decorating supplies if you like. Inside of the trilo, yes I know it is out of focus but you can see how I rolled it. :-) I truly magnificent pecan roll Maclurites sp. !! LOL :-D Just add some dark corn syrup to the extra brown sugar and butter you put onto the tinfoil under the dough, along with pecans of course, flip out of the tinfoil onto the plate - YUM! Warning, for whatever reason the dough swells even bigger with pecan rolls so make a smaller roll! This is a recipe that should be shared! The only way you can fail at this is to kill the yeast with too hot of water. This is what I make my Airbnb guests and yes I give them the recipe! It's a hit at Whispering Winds! Enjoy! :-D

It all started with Raggedy Man coming over from Wisconsin to fossil hunt SE Minnesota Bluff Country on Labor Day weekend camping out by the trout stream in my yard. He was after the other parts of the rare trilobite he had found here on his last hunting trip. And he FOUND a large part of it! I will leave it to him to post the picture. :-) The next day Fossilized6s showed up to hunt and we had a blast hitting various sites, I got tired and they went out until dark. I am posting some of the highlights of the trip, the full trip and lots more pictures are here: http://www.bluffcountryfossils.net/blog/labor-day-2016-with-tff-friends/ I had salmon, rebaked potatoes, and garden beans on the grill for them when they got back as Charlie had set up his tent also. The next day PapaDave joined us! R-L: Raggedy Man, PapaDave, and Fossilized6s comparing notes and where to go. After pouring through some of Sloan's book (THE BEST for Minnesota) we decided to head out and hunt some sites off of my new Forestville Fossil Hunting sites map and see the famous Rifle Hill Quarry. All three of these guys were focused on trilobite hunting, so I set them up with the most likely trilobite sites. Rifle Hill Quarry is famous in the fossil literature from the 1800s, so we just had to see that. My thinking is that in the 1800s they were excavating through the shale layers at the top of the quarry which is very fossiliferous, not so much today. We over-viewed a couple of sites and then hit 3 sites, and that is when Charlie came up with a trilobite! "Finding this makes the trip worthwhile!" he said. :-) Then we went to a site where I had found a trilobite last time Raggedy Man was here and had given it to him. PapaDave found this beauty! Old Bev was getting tired by then, so I convinced them to go to the premiere gastropod quarry in Minnesota - my personal favorite. I wish I had some pics of the finds, maybe they will post them in replies, but Raggedy Man came up with a nice big Maclurites sp. (an index fossil for the Ordovician) and PapaDave came up with some beautiful cephs and gastropods. Here are several of PapaDave's finds from that hunt: Cephalopod Continued...

Raggedy Man came over to Bluff Country to hunt Ordovician fossils for two and a half days and on the final half day we went out together. He had already found several trilobites and of course many other fossils, but this is about our hunt together. This will take several replies and I will put "Continued" and "The End" into them. :-) It was a hot and humid morning in southeaster Minnesota and I decided to take him to a new spot I had found in the shade. I believe it to be Decorah Shale that both cascades off the hillside and is the base of this hill. Within 10 minutes he had found what we then believed was a large trilobite, but with some cleaning it turned out to be a cephalopod. But in reviewing past posts, it looks awfully similar to this one!!! http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/41548-possible-new-species-of-cephalopod/?hl=%2Bold+%2Bdead+%2Bthings About 5 minutes later, I picked up a rock with fossils in it that I had seen a lot around here and perhaps Paul knew what they were - TRILOBITE! I am really poor at spotting trilobites! I throw these away all the time because I didn't know what they were and just can't see the trilo in it, but he could! Turns out to be an Anataphurus sp. trilo. Very small, I just gave it to him as I am want to do when I take people out hunting. :-) After about an hour at this site and some munching on wild raspberries we laid out our finds on his truck tailgate and compared notes. This isn't all, but most of what we collected at site 1. Onto to site 2 where I wanted to show him a rock face behind a prolific quarry that in spring or fall could be hunted and was probably virgin rock. The weeds were too tall for us to face going into it this morning, but the dry wash drew us up to looking for more fossils and so much more! Part of my love of fossil hunting is being out in nature. I saw these deer tracks and imagined the trace fossils of dinosaur tracks left millions of years ago. Continued...