Rickard Hill Road 5/20/20

[Nautiloid]

Today I was able to get out to the outcrop along Rickard Hill in Schoharie, New York. I didn’t find a ton of interesting things because I was looking in a more crystalline layer of the Kalkberg formation that had less abundant fossils. I found a handful of nice orthid, spiriferid, and atrypid brachiopods and one fenestellid bryozoan. Next time I go I’m going to try and get into a different, more fossiliferous layer because the crystalline rock is hard to break and when it does it breaks randomly, often damaging the fossils. 

[Kane]

Neat finds, but perhaps use a ruler or tape measure for scale, and something less distracting as background.  

[Nautiloid]

2 minutes ago, Kane said:

 

Neat finds, but perhaps use a ruler or tape measure for scale, and something less distracting as background.  

 

Haha thanks. For some reason I always forget to put something next to the fossils for scale. 

[Kane]

All good!

That material can be brutally hard, for sure, making separation along clean bedding planes a remote luxury! I know that all too well in equivalent strata up here. 

If you haven't seen it already, a paper by Becker et. al. on the trilobites of the Schoharie RHf erratics -- Not likely your hunting grounds, but indicative of what is possible in your material. The trilobites are almost invariably fragmentary, but no less sensational when found.  

 

https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/ag/article/view/25361/29993

[Nautiloid]

I’ve read a little bit about the trilobites of the Schoharie RHf erratics and it looks like there’s some pretty awesome stuff. I’ll have to see if I can find a place to go to get into that material. 

[erose]

You said you were collecting in the "crystaline layers".  Do you mean just the harder layers in the upper exposure or were you down the hill further where it is only hard stuff?  The reason I ask is many moons ago when I would collect there I spent a little time trying to collect the Coeyman Formation which is the hard dark stuff below the Kalkberg.  There were fossils but not many loose fossils. 

 

That site alone represents a good chunk of my NYS Devonian collection.

[Nautiloid]

@erose

I think I was collecting in the harder layers of the upper exposure. I’ve collected in the Coeymans before and the rock looks different from the rock I was collecting in last weekend. 

[Jeffrey P]

Rickard Hill Road was one of the very first fossil sites I collected from. I've never found too much good material there. The site is very accessible and popular, visited by college classes, clubs, etc., and tends to be picked over. Without the classes and clubs I figured the site might be more productive this year. May be worth exploring further. Congratulations on your finds. Yes, unweathered limestone from the Kalkberg Formation is very tough. By the way, just over the hill is the Schoharie Quarry. The New York Paleontological Society visits there yearly in the spring, though this year the visit was delayed until October. That is the most extensive exposure of the Kalkberg I've encountered and has the most fossils. It would be well worth doing given the small fee for membership that the club charges. 

[Jeffrey P]

On 5/21/2020 at 9:21 AM, Nautiloid said:

I’ve read a little bit about the trilobites of the Schoharie RHf erratics and it looks like there’s some pretty awesome stuff. I’ll have to see if I can find a place to go to get into that material. 

I've had the good fortune to see that Schoharie Formation erratic material first hand. The trilobites were very cool, but the nautiloids OMG!!! All different sizes and shapes. Add in rostroconches, brachiopods, etc., super impressive material. One of the best faunas I've ever observed. Of course I went hunting for my own Schoharie Formation erratics at a park in New New Jersey but failed to find any. FYI, Schoharie Formation bedrock which I've seen in the Helderberg Plateau is among the toughest sedimentary rock I've ever encountered. Good luck trying to get anything out of that. Good luck in your searches over all. 

[Nautiloid]

 

17 minutes ago, Jeffrey P said:

The New York Paleontological Society visits there yearly in the spring, though this year the visit was delayed until October. That is the most extensive exposure of the Kalkberg I've encountered and has the most fossils. It would be well worth doing given the small fee for membership that the club charges. 

This year I became a member of the NYPS so hopefully I’ll get a chance to fossil hunt here later in the year. 

[erose]

So the NYPS for years visited the various Kalkberg sites along US20 north west of Schoharie. One day these geology students stopped to check us out near Leesville and showed us their stuff from Rickard Hill Rd where they had been earlier that day.  That next summer I went with a few other NYPS members to scout the site for club field trips. Holy moly! I went home with almost 20 different brachs and oodles of other stuff.  I wrote up the field guide (I was the NYPS field guide editor for many years) and the club obviously hasn't stopped going.  

 

I think all across the country we are seeing sites that were known to collectors and shared by word of mouth become shared ten-fold by word on the internet. There are definitely some sites here in Texas that have become too well known even as many of us try and keep them to ourselves or a rare few we trust.  But this site was apparently very well known to the various universities with geology departments well before NYPS got there in the 90's.

[Al Tahan]

I’ve wanted to get into some lower Devonian material. Just gotta find the time. Great stuff out your way