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In May of 2020, my boyfriend David and I drove up to Utah to go look for septarian nodules. I should preface this by saying that David has the most amazing "beginner's luck" of anyone I have ever known. Not only did we find a beautiful "normal" septarian nodule, David found a spot where apparently a large marine reptile of some sort died, and was later encased in septarian. We have since learned that this is basically the find of a lifetime! The beauty of these specimens never fails to amaze me. The large free form was cut and polished for us by Joe's Rock Shop. The matched pair was cut at Joe's, then polished by me. The largest piece is what it looks like in the rough.

I made a trip to bison creek yesterday. Not it’s real name, but where I found the bison. So it seems an apt name. I packed my backpack and hip waders in my trunk and headed out. I got a half mile down the road and realized I’d forgotten to bring a change of pants. I told myself “I’m running late. I’ve got my hip waders to cover my pants. I’ll be fine. I only had 2.5 hours to explore, splash around the creek and play with any new fossils or rocks I might find of interest. I needed to leave by 3:00 so I could go to a send off party for a friend who is going to go minister to the Lakota tribe in South Dakota for 2 years and hopefully establish a thriving Celebrate Recovery group there. Anyway, as I was putting on my waders I could see sunlight passing through in a few places. I guess they weren’t made for kneeling and digging and excavating fossils. I got my gear and headed down to the creek. It was bright and sunny and in the low 50s. Great weather for hunting. I stopped by the bison dig on my way downstream. The last cavity I had dug the articulated leg out of had collapsed in on itself. We had rain one day last week so I’m sure that helped it along. I thought I’d dig through some of the old collapsed dirt where I’d found bones before. I found one more vert. Hard to tell, but there is bone there. I moved on down the creek. There aren’t many obvious fossils in the creek, but there are lots of cool rocks, concretions and minerals. If you know me I’m fascinated with concretion. Here is a view of the creek. Notice the layers on the right. The gray extends 3-4 feet up into the bank. Then the Pleistocene layer begins. There is s small tan layer. I think the Pleistocene begins above that. Here is a cool looking septarian concretion. I call these turtle rocks. They’re aren’t turtles, but that’s what they reminded me of. It has strong mineral veins of brown, most likely aragonite running through it. The other side. I like the richness of color. It’s probably just iron stain, but I like it. Most septarians around these parts are a dull gray. I walked a little further and came to this part of the creek with a high bank. This area seems to be a geological irregularity of some kind. This may be one of those instances where it lies in unconformity or something like that. I know for sure the dark gray is Eagle Ford Group, Arcadia Park Formation I believe. The light layer above it up to the next gray layer is either Austin Chalk or Eagle Ford. It could be a layer of Austin Chalk, which becomes more dominant to the east. The Austin Chalk overlays the Eagle Ford. Then above the tan a thin layer of gray where it is Pleistocene. The tan layer thins out to the right and disappears altogether a few feet to the right of the pic. There is a big chunk of light gray shale that had fallen from the bank. Concretions are scattered along inside the bank. Some quite large, very cool and pretty. There are frequent avalanches and here you see evidence of that on the left. There is a concretion in the creek probably from the avalanche. I think I’d be just as happy sitting curiously breaking open the concretions and studying them. They’re just fascinating! Of course then I’d want to take them all home. The creek bed is a slippery shale. I think this is so cool looking! The cavities are filled with a druzy type calcite with some aragonite too. I’m not use to seeing small little ones like that. The ones I find near Dallas are huge and not druzy. The size of these overall though are huge. Here is s close up of part of it. I didn’t attempt to take any of it. I couldn’t carry it, but it sure is pretty. Also, this is s high avalanche risk area. It concerns me more than the NSR in terms ov avalanche risk. In this area there are lots of minerals oozing out in places. It colors in the shale. I have been told there is fish fossil material in this creek. I haven’t found the exposure yet though. This piece on the bottom right looked fishy to me. There are other parts that looked like it had scales and also the pattern of fish scales was scattered across the piece at the top center. I’m not sure what it is. It is in fine delicate shale though. There was this white gelatinous substance that looked to be oozing out of the rocks in places. Very weird looking. I don’t recall seeing such a thing before. The bank is streaked with minerals that have been in solution and flowed down. Some looks like sulfur yellow. Some orange and white. There are also fine calcite and possibly gypsum crystals in the layers. Some like fine needles. They may be some other mineral too. Anyone know what the white stuff is? It was oozing out of a long vein across the creek. There was another area where the rock and water were stained orange from what looked like iron leaching out. This septarian is over 5 feet long. I moved on down the creek. There was a large gravel bar just down the creek filled with septarian nodules both whole and fragments. This one isn’t too pretty, but I think it has potential. Maybe a weak acid wash would brighten it up. It looked predominantly aragonite. You don’t see many like that this big. I kept moving. On my left was a sand bar where the Pleistocene layer was at the surface. I spotted an odd looking thing that looked a bit like an exposed root. I went to check it out. Woohoo! A bone or a fragment of one. I put down my pack and pulled out my chisel to remove the dirt around it. Bones can be fragile. I could just pull it out, but I risk breaking and losing some of it. So I always dig around bones or fossils to free them up before pulling them out. It kind of looks like the distal end of a humerus, but I’m not sure from what. The epicondyles are broken off the other side and it’s pretty worn. Ill post more later. I’m not half done yet.