2020 Western New York Fossil Adventure

[historianmichael]

Last month my dad and I took a four-day weekend trip to Western New York to visit some new fossil sites and to collect in the famous Beecher's Trilobite Beds. We had only once before been out to Western New York to collect fossils - a visit to Penn Dixie Fossil Park - so this time around we wanted to try out some different places that we had never collected in before. The trip was a lot of fun and I enjoyed putting my research skills to work in finding new places to visit. I greatly expanded my collection of Silurian and Devonian fossils and found quite a few things on my fossil bucket list. I am excited to hopefully make another trip out there soon and fortunately still have my list of potential stops to make.

 

Thursday

On Thursday we woke early and made the 6.5 hour drive towards Western New York. In preparing for the trip I spoke with @fossilcrazy who was kind enough to invite my dad and me to collect from some of the spoils piles on his property from the various fossil collecting trips he has made. I was really excited to explore his pile of Linton Coal as I have very few fish in my collection and even fewer Pennsylvanian marine fossils - one of the consequences of living near Eastern Pennsylvania is that you end up visiting a lot of Late Pennsylvanian Llewellyn Formation plant sites. @fossilcrazy is an amazing fossil collector and an even more incredible member of the fossil collecting community. I cannot say enough about his generosity and hospitality. We were all hoping that my dad and I could find an amphibian or complete fish fossil, but no luck. We found a few isolated Orthacanthus teeth and head spines and some isolated coelacanth scales and bones. Fortunately @fossilcrazy kindly gifted me some representative pieces to add to my collection. These fossils are from the Middle Pennsylvanian Upper Freeport Coal from Linton, Ohio. I highly recommend checking out some of the posts @fossilcrazy has made about his finds from the Linton Coal. They are amazing!

 

Rhabdoderma elegans

  

 

Here are some close-ups of this beautiful coelacanth head and tail

  

 

Haplolepis sp.

  

 

Orthocanthus compressus Teeth and Head Spine

 

Conchostracans Death Plate

 

 

After visiting with @fossilcrazy we made our way into Buffalo to visit Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House. My dad is an architect and he really wanted to see the newly restored interior of the house. It is really a quite stunning home.

 

 

 

[Tidgy's Dad]

Very nice indeed. 

[Pagurus]

This looks like a wonderful fossil adventure! I can hardly wait to read more. Congratulations on your successful and enjoyable trip with your dad!

[historianmichael]

Friday

Friday was our big day to visit some new sites in Western New York. My goal was to visit four places throughout the day as we made our way back east. Our first stop was an exposure of the Middle Silurian Lewiston Member of the Rochester Shale outside Lockport. Thank you @BobC for sharing directions with me to this site. This site was one of the two sites that I really wanted to visit on Friday, and part of why we drove all the way to Western New York. After reading about crinoid and cystoid calyxes being found at this site, I knew that I wanted to try my luck at finding one for myself. Cystoids are on my fossil bucket list and echinoderms have become my favorite fossils to find and collect.

 

The site itself is an incredible sight. It is massive with tons of small fossils to be found loose among the soil, having weathered out of the surrounding rock. If you look closely enough you can find really cool bryozoan and crinoid pieces. I love this crinoid columnal as it is almost flower-like with its five points.

 

 

 

I was excited to find some trilobite pieces.

 

Calymene niagarensis

 

 

Dalmanites limulurus

 

Radnoria bretti

 

Here are some corals.

 

Favosites parasiticus

 

Enterolasma calculum

 

You can find tons of brachiopods, but here are a few of my favorites.

 

Leptaena rhomboidalis

 

Atrypa reticularis

 

Resserella elegantula

 

Camerotoechia sp.

 

Rhynchotreta americana

 

Dalejina hybrida

 

I even found a couple tiny gastropods. Here is one.

 

Naticonema niagarensis

 

As I mentioned early, a lot of the fossils weather out of the surrounding rock. When you examine the rock though you often find that they are full of life. The fossils themselves are really cool. Some are preserved with a red color. I have never seen that before. Here are a couple just full of bryozoa.  

 

Some even have isolated cystoid plates. I circled them in the photo.

 

The goal of the stop was to find my first cystoid and I am happy to report that I accomplished this goal! It is crushed, but it is still all there. I actually did not initially recognize what it was and let it fall out of my hand. Luckily I quick realized what it was and watched where it tumbled down the slope. After a few seconds of searching I retrieved it and washed it off to confirm what it was. If you look closely you can see the tiny pores that were the respiratory structures.

 

Caryocrinites ornatus 

    

[historianmichael]

From there we headed south towards Blasdell to collect some Middle Devonian trilobites from the Windom Shale Member of the Moscow Formation. With the help of @Fossildude19 my dad and I found a spot along Smoke Creek to jump in and do some digging. I hoped to spend some time at this site and to find one of the many complete trilobites I have seen come from this creek. Unfortunately we only came away with a few pieces.

 

It really is a beautiful spot though. Here is a photo of my dad breaking down some loose blocks that weathered out of the adjacent cliff. He found a few corals and brachiopods among these blocks.

 

Eldredgeops rana

 

Greenops boothi

 

 

After our stop along Smoke Creek I wanted to visit another site where I read you can find Middle Devonian echinoderms. Unfortunately you cannot plan for everything. Being that that Friday was a beautiful day and my dad is an architect, he really wanted to fit in a visit to Graycliff, the home Frank Lloyd Wright designed for the cliffs overlooking Lake Erie. Considering that I knew we were still going to collect fossils on Saturday and Sunday, I conceded. Graycliff is an amazing place though. I highly recommend it to anyone visiting the area. Graycliff was built from limestone quarried from the cliffs over Lake Erie. As such, many of the blocks are full of brachiopods and corals. It was fun teaching some of the volunteer docents there about the fossils. The house is truly a fossil house.

 

 

 

Our last stops on Friday were two outcrops in East Bethany. One was the well-known Francis Rd. rail cut and the other was another spot along the trail. These spots are part of the Ludlowville Formation, Middle Devonian in age - although they represent different members of the Ludlowville Formation. Like the first stop, fossils were everywhere.

 

It was a lot of fun filling a small bag with loose brachiopods and corals from the Francis Rd. site. 

 

Here are some of my favorite finds from the Francis Rd. site. My goal for this site was to find a Pleurodictyum coral. We ended up finding 5!

 

Stereolasma rectum

 

Eridophyllum archiaci

 

Pleurodictyum americanum

 

Holdfast of the crinoid Ancyrocrinus bulbosus

 

Columnal of the crinoid Gennaeocrinus sp. with its three blades

 

Devonochonetes coronatus

 

Athyris spiriferoides (including the one on the far right with a predatory boring)

 

 

[Darktooth]

Congratulations on a very successful trip. You appear to have done well.

[historianmichael]

After only 25 minutes of collecting we had already filled two small bags with fossils. It was time to move on to our second stop in East Bethany.

 

At this site the trail is literally made of rugose and tabulate corals. As you remove them from the ground, the hope is that they have not weathered too much or broken. This site was my dad's favorite as the fossils there are large and quite abundant.

 

My dad gets the credit for finding the largest fossil of the day, which was this piece of Favosites hamiltoniae that measures about 23cm in diameter and has trilobite pieces and a brachiopod on its underside.

  

 

We also found these other tabulate corals

 

Favosites placenta

 

Alveolites goldfussi

 

And these rugose corals

 

Heliophyllum halli

 

Heterophrentis simplex

 

Blothrophyllum sp.

 

Amplexiphyllum hamiltoniae

 

 

Another cool thing about this site was that once we got home and started cleaning off our finds, I discovered dozens of tiny epizoa on the corals. Here are some of my favosites.

 

Aulopora serpens

 

Aulopora tubaeformis

[historianmichael]

The tubeworm Spirorbis angulatus

 

Some crinoid holdfasts

 

The bryozoan Hederella filiformis

 

Another type of bryozoan Botryllopora socialis - I absolutely love the way that this bryozoan looks!

 

After cleaning all of my finds and dumping the water out of my bucket, I noticed some tiny circular flakes at the bottom of my bucket. Upon closer inspection, these flakes turned out to be tiny crinoid pieces. My parents called me crazy for wanting to keep them, but I think they are awesome. I especially like the pentagonal columnal and holdfast. I circled them in the photo.

 

 

Saturday

Early the next morning we met the owner of a quarry with access to some of the famous Beecher's Trilobite Beds. After a quick drive, we arrived at his quarry. Here is a photo of the exposure:

 

Many know of the Beecher's Trilobite Beds as home to pyritized Triarthrus eatoni trilobites with soft tissue preservation, but what I think is not well advertised are the dozens of other fauna that can be found in this exposure of the Late Ordovician Lorraine Group. While I was of course there to find some pyritized trilobites, I really enjoyed finding some of the other fossils. Here are a few:

 

Orthocone Nautiloid- I love how you can see the chambers of the nautiloid in this fossil. It is huge too, measuring 7cm!

 

Algal Frond

 

The quarry owner did not know much about the brachiopods there. My guess is that it is Zygospira modesta

 

An imprint of an orthid brachiopod. No clue on its identification. Unfortunately we lost the positive. The owner said that these are sometimes pyritized.

 

Geniculograptus sp.

 

Not all of the trilobites there are pyritized. I found these two non-pyritized Triarthrus eatoni

 

Now for the pyritized fossils...

 

One of the lesser appreciated pyritized fossils at this site are the tiny, rare ostracods. Before preparation, these fossils are just tiny bumps on the mudstone. But once prepared, these fossils often reveal both valves of their shells and their tiny appendages and antennae. This fossil is Luprisca incuba.

[historianmichael]

I was very lucky to find a good lot of trilobites. I decided to have some of the trilobites prepared from the dorsal view and others from the ventral view. I think they really turned out well. 

 

This one measures about 1cm and shows the ventral view with a little part of the eye visible

 

When exposing this double I accidentally nicked one of the trilobites and lost its legs. A little bummed but still a cool double plate!

 

This trilobite is exposed from the dorsal view and measures about 1.3 cm. It is really nicely pyritized and I love the two visible eyes!

 

This one measures only 1cm but is another good example of the ventral view with articulated legs and antennae

 

This is my favorite of the two double plates. It provides a nice view of the entire length of the trilobite and contains a weird unknown chicken foot-like fossil

 

The find of the day on Saturday though was this massive 2cm trilobite. There was a little debate on whether to prepare this trilobite from the dorsal or ventral view. I decided to have it done from the ventral side and I am so glad I did. This trilobite not only has eggs but also an unknown segmented worm that the quarry owner had not seen to date.

  

[historianmichael]

Sunday

After an absolutely astonishing day on Saturday, we made our way back to New Jersey on Sunday. On the way we decided to make one last stop. At the recommendation of the quarry owner we visited a well-known exposure of the Late Silurian Fiddlers Green Formation to hunt for some eurypterid fossils. The rock here was incredibly difficult to work with. I ended up finding all of my finds among the loose rubble. Despite that, I thought I still found some cool sea scorpion parts in only an hour of searching. All of my finds are Eurypterus remipes.

 

A swimming paddle 

 

A tiny walking leg

 

Some isolated tergites or protective plates

 

I was really excited to find these two telsons. The one on the left also has the pretelson and measures 5cm! 

  

 

 

That's it... I am sorry for the long post and the tons of photos. I hope you enjoyed them. It was truly a special trip. I cannot thank enough my fellow fossil collectors who made it possible through their recommendations. My research was only able to take me so far.   

 

 

[jeannie55]

What an amazing four-day adventure. I love  the kind of hunting where I look down and find all kinds of small fossils. Excellent trip and excellent writing about your trip. And the fossils are spectacular. 

[Huntonia]

1 hour ago, historianmichael said:

When exposing this double I accidentally nicked one of the trilobites and lost its legs. A little bummed but still a cool double plate!

Did you prep all of those trilos yourself? Very very impressive. That ostracod is amazing as well, I've never seen one with appendages before. 

[historianmichael]

44 minutes ago, Huntonia said:

Did you prep all of those trilos yourself? Very very impressive. That ostracod is amazing as well, I've never seen one with appendages before. 

Unfortunately not. I wish I had the skills to do that level of prep.

[Tidgy's Dad]

Don't apologize for the number of photos. 

I enjoyed every single one. 

What an amazing adventure you had, so many wonderful, breathtaking finds. 

Of particular interest to me was the Lower Rochester Shale section, as I am currently going through my collection of Much Wenlock Limestone fossils from the UK which are the same age. Nice to see the similarities and differences between the fauna at the two locations. 

Thank you for this wonderful thread.   

[Huntonia]

23 minutes ago, historianmichael said:

Unfortunately not. I wish I had the skills to do that level of prep.

Indeed, I've seen videos of triarthrus prep, it seems to me it is best done between 1 and 5 PSI with incredibly fine powder. It takes a good machine, extremely dry air and of course lots of skill and delicacy.

[Nautiloid]

2 hours ago, historianmichael said:

A tiny walking leg

I’m not certain but this might be a part of a Dolichopterus sp. walking leg? @Al Tahan might know

[traveltip1]

Amazing trip

[Misha]

Wow, some very nice fossils!

I especially love the brachiopods from that first location, they are gorgeous!

[Tidgy's Dad]

Oh, and that's not Spirorbis., it has been reassigned to the microconchid genus Palaeoconchus.

See https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234023286_Redescription_and_Neotype_Designation_of_the_Middle_Devonian_Microconchid_Tentaculita_Species_'Spirorbis'_Angulatus_Hall_1861

[historianmichael]

1 hour ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

Oh, and that's not Spirorbis., it has been reassigned to the microconchid genus Palaeoconchus.

See https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234023286_Redescription_and_Neotype_Designation_of_the_Middle_Devonian_Microconchid_Tentaculita_Species_'Spirorbis'_Angulatus_Hall_1861

Thank you. I will have to make that change in my collection.

[Nautiloid]

Amazing finds!! Looks like you had a very fun trip 

[Coco]

Hi,

 

6 hours ago, historianmichael said:

There was a little debate on whether to prepare this trilobite from the dorsal or ventral view.

If I understand correctly, all ventral views were intentionally prepared this way ? If so, it’s a very good idea ! I thought they were discovered in ventral view, which happens very rarely.

 

Coco

[Ludwigia]

7 hours ago, historianmichael said:

 

I am sorry for the long post and the tons of photos. I hope you enjoyed them. 

 

No need to apologize. Quite to the contrary! It was fascinating and informative to learn about all these sites. Thanks for the report!

[minnbuckeye]

11 hours ago, historianmichael said:

That's it... I am sorry for the long post and the tons of photos

I was sad to see I was at the end. Lovely trip!!!!!!!! 

 

 Mike

[historianmichael]

6 hours ago, Coco said:

Hi,

 

If I understand correctly, all ventral views were intentionally prepared this way ? If so, it’s a very good idea ! I thought they were discovered in ventral view, which happens very rarely.

 

Coco

My understanding is that these trilobites can be flipped over and prepared from the ventral view even if discovered in the dorsal view. I found only one trilobite there already in the ventral view.