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UPDATED WITH PICTURES FROM THE SHOW For those of you in or near the Western Suburbs of Chicago this weekend, you should try and stop by the Kane County Fairgrounds located at 525 S. Randall Road in St. Charles, Illinois. The 43rd Chicagoland Gem, Mineral And Fossil Show will take place on Saturday (10a-6p) and Sunday (10a-5p). This is a really great and large show and I am sure you would find something that would interest you. For pics from last years show check out a post of mine from 5-26-18 titled CGMA (Chicago Gem–Mineral Association) 42nd Annual Show. If you can’t make it, I will most likely be posting pictures of the show later Saturday evening.

As a Carroll county, Maryland resident, I know quite well the relative boringness of its geology. It is sandwiched between Frederick county and south PA, which boasts amazing ichnofossils, Montgomery county with some recent marine fossils along the Potomac, Howard which at its edge has dinosaur bones, and Baltimore county, whose stunning minerals are widely known. But here in Carroll county we live among seas of schist. A few small formations with limited fossil potential lay dotted thinly about, but most fossils have been destroyed by the formation of Parrs ridge. Yes, Carroll county seems to be getting jealous of its lack of fossils and seems to be making its own. In the my backyard, which is quite wet and floods during storms, I decided to dig a hole. This was just because I felt like digging a hole. Anyway, after sifting through the muddy sediment, I came up with the usual schist and quartz. But among this I found some carbonized wood, possibly charcoal, about three down. The land upon which my backyard sits was once a farm, and the trees there now are from the fifties onwards, and I assume most trees would have been cleared for land use. So this soft charcoal must be quite old. i think my house is about a hundred years old, built maybe late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds so I estimate this wood to be a bit before that. The anaerobic conditions seem to have preserved it well. If I left it there I and fast forwarded a few million years, there is a possibility of having a fossil. The pond near me has some soft mud sediment from leaves that often bubbles methane, I bet that it preserves most of the dead crayfish and such that inhabit it. The third picture is also from the hole, a piece of slate I think. This is uncommon In my backyard which is mostly schist and diabase. The third was found in a stream here, it is a white, grainy rock that seems to be banded in some way (Quartzite?) with large mica crystals on it (Muscovite?) such large crystals (small by most standards) are also rare, not entirely sure how it got there. The other two are from the hole. Quartz with some green phyllite or schist on it. Does any one know what makes it green? I believe it to be Marburg schist btw.