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I've been working at this site on and off for several years and decided it was time for another visit. A colleague of mine joined me in my efforts a year or so ago and he's been working diligently at it ever since. He recently informed me that he had opened up an exposure one zone higher up (koenigi) above the one we have generally been working at (herveyi) and had freed up what seems to be a promising row of blocks, judging by the finds he was making. So I figured it was time to have a look. Sure enough, after a couple of hours of hammering and prying, I managed to extricate a good sized Macrocephalites and several Choffatias which were amongst the ever present shell breccia in these turbidites. There was what appeared to be a nice surprise after I removed the next block. I was nevertheless a little wary, since the preservation at this level isn't always optimal, but the only way to find out is to get down to it, right? After about a quarter of an hour, I could see that the outer whorls were pretty rotten and in no condition to be saved. But I figured I might as well remove the overburden and at least try to save the inner whorls. This took about another hour. As you can already see, there are cracks running every whichway through it. No good sign. And once I had extracted it, it became obvious that it wasn't worth saving, particularly since the innermost whorls were nonexistent. Normally if they were there I would have tried to glue it all back together, but like I said, it just wasn't worth it to me. Well, that's the luck of the draw, isn't it? You'll never know until you've tried. I decided then and there that I'd leave that row of blocks for another day and began to hack down through the soft marl below to the row of blocks in the herveyi zone where I managed to dig out a few nice little ones. I found a few more later on, but didn't think to photograph them, since darkness was beginning to set in and I was starting to think about the can of Red Bull waiting for me in the car. Despite the disappointing giant ammo, I must say that this was one of the more successful digs I've done recently. I'll start posting more here once prep is under way.
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