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Here is a short trip to keep those of us still in quarantine entertained. I collected this before our quarantine started. Something I have wanted for a while ever since seeing one but was not able to collect was in my trip through Utah's Paleozoic (link here: ) is a trace fossil called Skolithos. For those without much experience with trace fossils, Skolithos is a vertical tubelike burrow in sand on a sandy high-energy beach. The little critters would have to dig relatively deep vertical burrows so that they weren't washed away the next time a storm rolled through. A common name for this particular trace fossil is “piperock” because the number burrows could get dense enough in one area that the rock looks a bundle of straws. Just like a lot of trace fossils, it is not certain what made these burrows but it is known that it probably went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous as there are not any specimens after the dinosaurs’ doomsday. My particular specimen is made of calcareous sandstone that has been slightly metamorphosed into a quartzite. It is most likely from the Lower Permian of the Oquirrh Group based on the location and the nearby rock formation it appeared to have fallen out of but I found it in a gravel pile from the shoreline of Lake Bonneville so the exact stratigraphy is unknown.

While @UtahFossilHunter was out for a quick bike ride yesterday, he stumbled across a wash that's been cut by a road. The upper part of the wash above the road is on private land that we do not have permission to be on yet. We had looked at the downstream part of the wash area for fossils before but had not found anything. After some melting of snow and construction, that happened over the last couple days some rocks had been pushed downstream. We decided to look at this wash once again and found these! This is a significant find because it is within 5 miles of my home. Our usual spot is 50 miles from my home so this is great news.