How did you get in to fossils?

[Thecosmilia Trichitoma]

What led you into the fossil hobby? Jurassic Park, this forum, collecting a large number of "dinosaur eggs" and "baby t rex skulls", etc.? For me, it was a book by Peter Larson called "Bones Rock." It was very basic, but introduced scientific thinking to me at a young age, and was well written for small children (as well as giving some basic information on collecting fossils.) Even before that, when I was a wee 5 and 6 year old, I watched the entire BBC "walking with" series. It's still one of my favorites today, even if some of the information is a bit outdated.

[Thomas.Dodson]

I don't think there was one specific cause but I've always been interested in biology (especially zoology) and I collected my first fossil when I was 6. By the time I was 11 I kept a pretty meticulous database of my finds and localities. I spent a lot of time obtaining papers, reference materials, and books on various paleontology subjects at the time. It helped having supportive parents that were always willing to buy me books and occasionally drive me to sites, especially on trips. Speaking of trips, we traveled a lot and visited lots of museums so this probably influenced my interest somewhat. I've always felt that paleontology was the ultimate combination of biological sciences and treasure hunting which gave it a step up from studying modern biology (which I did as well). Getting a glimpse into the past and a broad history of life on the planet was also a plus.

 

I occasionally purchased fossils when I was young but even then I preferred my own collections to what I bought so that wasn't a big drive for my love of paleontology; more like a symptom. I haven't really bought a fossil in over a decade now. The last time was unique since I obtained a lot of high quality specimens for next to nothing at an estate sale auction, like a nice large set of grallator multi-track plates for dirt cheap.

[jeannie55]

I was about five or six and was playing on what we called a rock dump, which was really a hill made from the shale dug out of the coal mines. I found a fern in a piece of shale. I thought it was magic. I put it in my cigar box my grandfather gave me. Everyday I searched the rock dump and everyday I found leaves, ferns, and even a pecan all fossilized or petrified. My grandfather who was a coal miner added to my collection. My cigar box filled quickly so I started putting the fossils and rocks in boxes that slid neatly under my bed. I never stopped looking for fossils or unusual rocks. When I went away for college, I considered fossils my hobby and studied ancient literature, specializing in Latin and Greek texts that in the masters program I translated.  After my PhD in rhetoric and literacy, I continued my hobby, thinking one day I’ll retire and organize these fossils. Now I’m retired and continue to study but now it’s all about fossils. Probably more information than you needed but I’m on lockdown and my grandkids have been exposed to covid so other than my husband who sleeps a lot, I’m alone and my dogs, cats, and fish are not entertaining me enough. Heck, I cannot even go outside because my neighbor would come over and she is anti science and never practices mask wearing or social distancing. Best fossil I’ve ever found was a whale bone that I found on Shark Tooth Mt in California( I also fell ill with Valley Fever from hunting on the mountain without wearing a mask). I gave the bone to my friend who was a science teacher to use in her classroom. Later i found a dire wolf jaw and traded to another friend for shells and a plate of squid like creatures. I found a plop of fossilized poop so the poop has been my treasure of all treasures. Well, then there’s the shark poop and the fish poop and a bunch of other poop.  So that’s it!  

[Uncle Siphuncle]

For me:

 

1.  Nature outings with family as a kid in the mid 70s.

2.  Numerous Ordovician road cuts and creeks around Cincinnati, where I grew up.

3.  YMCA summer camp with fossil hunts in the creek on property as one of the activities.

4.  Cincinnati Museum of Natural History visits as a kid.

5.  Visits to the Old Tech building (Geology/Paleo Dept) at the University of Cincinnati back around 1980.

6.  A family trip to Venice, FL around 1980.

7.  Finding a complete Isotelus trilobite on my first family visit to Caesar Creek Emergency Spillway in 1980. 

 

I wrote to the State of FL 40 years ago and rec'd a bunch of state fossil publications in the mail.  I slobbered over the photos, and surmised that all the good fossils had already been found.  Boy, was that an inaccurate conclusion!  I now have a number of FL fossil buddies, and they make spectacular finds all the time.  I even found a meg and a decent 3 humper mastodon tooth there in recent years.  Never give up on viable sites, even if you think they are in the autumn of their productive cycle.

 

But in my pre internet travels, I now look back and cringe over opportunities lost, simply due to not having good info on my radar.  I interned in Florida for a year in 1990 and could have easily made regular runs to creeks and rivers on weekends.  I was even PADI certified.  But Noooo.  I was too busy lifting weights, hitting dance clubs and chasing girls. 

 

Soon after, I spent a good amount of time job hunting in Dallas after graduating with my Engineering degree.  1993.  North Sulphur River within easy reach, without throngs of humanity overrunning the place like ants.

 

O, the squandered opportunities of my misspent youth!

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[Creek - Don]

I spent most of my youth in Central Texas.  When I was 14, while playing in the creeks, found bivalves and ammonites, but no clue why they were there.  It wasn't until later when Internet came about I really got into fossil hunting.  I didn't realize there were so much fossils in Texas and in N. America.   Wished I started this hobby years ago, but still, I found tons of fossils just within few years.  Now I have tons.  

[Ludwigia]

I was always a nature lover from childhood on. My family went camping regularly and also my boy scout troop. Interesting rocks always caught my eye and I often took some home with me, but I didn't start seriously collecting them until around 1990 when I was already living in Germany. That was when my 8-year old son talked me into climbing up a mountain with him in search of minerals. I had no idea how to do it, but we got lucky and found a few. The success spurned us on and we spent the next couple of years together, first getting hold of literature and then scouring southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland and built up a nice collection. Then my son discovered Fussball and left me alone with my hobby. But that wasn't so bad, since I had gotten to know some other like-minded people. My maxim was always "find it yourself", and after a number of years I had pretty well exhausted most of the possibilities in my area. It was at that point that I also started picking up any fossils I discovered in the sites with sedimentary rocks and with time my interest in these things began to grow in proportion to my waning interest in mineral collecting. I suppose the turning point was when I joined the German fossil forum "Steinkern" in order to learn more and then shortly thereafter digging up a rare crocodile jaw in Middle Jurassic sediments, a discovery which opened up the door for me to professionals and serious research.

[FranzBernhard]

- Some hiking with the parents in the Koralpe area as a child - lots of glistening big micas on many trails, black tourmalines in white, coarse grained rocks, red garnets etc.

- Got interested in chemistry and exotic and rare element combinations as a young teenager (got metal specimens etc. from relatives, for example) - can´t remember what ignited this interest.

- Shifted to crystallized minerals with somewhat rare elements as an older teenager, parents made many day trips with me finding minerals (had never big interest in rock crystals, for example).

- Shifted back to massive mineral stuff around 1995 (ores, mineralizations (eg. lazulite), nearly exclusively day trips; only made one four-day trip to Salzburg for scheelite, lazulite etc. in 2002. Never made such a specific multi-day trip again).

- Had a real "coal" year in 2013 - its also some kind of mineralization / elemental enrichment.

- A professional ranger was somewhat interested in the fossils of his area and asked me more or less by chance in the year 2015 for it. This turned me to the fossils of this particular area and later to the fossils around Graz, resulting in Miocene explorations around St. Josef and Heimschuh (mainly 2015 and 2016), Campanian explorations around St. Bartholomä (2017-2019) and Kainach (2020). Good thing was, I was also somewhat "finished" with the ores and mineralizations around Graz.

 

People are much more interested in fossils than minerals or ores. So I am sharing some of my sites on my homepage. Don´t  know, how long I will stick to fossils. I had a small interest in fossils (visiting some sites around Graz and polishing some fossils) already more then 20 years ago, though.

 

I have bought some minerals only as an older teenager and a little later, I nearly always exclusively self collect. Well, TFF members have changed that a little bit...

 

Franz Bernhard

[Monica]

Wow - what great stories!!!

 

My story is somewhat like @Thomas.Dodson's except I didn't find my first fossil until I was a bit older.

 

My parents immigrated to Canada in the 1960s.  My mom was a stay-at-home mom and later on worked as a cook in an Italian restaurant.  My dad was a mechanic and later on a city bus driver.  Although neither had much formal education (they only went up to grade 5 while in Italy), my dad in particular is a very curious guy with a deep love of animals.  He used to religiously watch a show called "The Nature of Things" every week (I think it was on Thursday evenings), and I joined him for the event - it was our father-daughter time.  My weekly viewings of this program, followed by watching numerous nature programs on The Discovery Channel when it started, led me to also fall in love with animals, and directed me towards my BSc in Zoology in the late 1990s.

 

During my time at university, I collected my first fossils: a trilobite, horn coral, brachiopod, and gastropod-brachiopod plate during a trip up to Resolute, Nunavut, Canada (I was there for a university job - we were collecting samples of extant animals) and then an ammonite and a belemnite chunk from a trip to Queensland, Australia (I was there for a university field course - we were studying extant organisms but my professor had us search for fossils for one afternoon during the trip).  I stored these fossils in my bedroom closet at my parents' house and forgot about them for the next decade while I went to teach in Hong Kong and then came back to Canada to teach, get married, and have my kids.

 

My rediscovery of fossils happened my my daughter Viola was learning about dinosaurs in Senior Kindergarten, which naturally led to a discussion about dinosaur fossils.  I told her that I had found non-dinosaur fossils when I was younger and she of course wanted to see them, so I collected them from my parents' house, washed them off, and showed them to her.  She was so excited to see them!!!  She immediately asked if she could find her own fossils and that led me to search out local fossil-hunting sites (thanks TFF!). 

 

Although Viola's interest in fossils is waning (she's in grade 5 now), mine isn't!  2020 was actually quite an exciting year for me fossil-wise - in March I found an Acanthopyge contusa trilobite hypostome near Formosa, ON that I have since donated to the ROM and in September I found an endocone (it once belonged to the giant cephalopod Endoceras proteiforme) at Etobicoke Creek in Toronto, ON that I will be donating to the ROM in the new year.  I do prefer to find my own fossils but being a member here on TFF has made me drool over other people's finds and as a result I have acquired additional fossils through trades and purchases - mainly done here on TFF.  Because of this, my collection is quite nice (if I do say so myself!) and larger than I had imagined it would be!  I love my little fossil area in the basement - it holds such great memories for me.

[Rhiguita]

I started out as a kid growing up around New York City and visited the American Museum of Natural History whenever I could, and that kindled a love in dinosaurs alongside the early 2000s having a good amount of paleontology documentaries on TV, like the walking with series and planet dinosaur. I had a large interest in Natural history, but fossils were only one of the many topics I found interesting for a long time until I started college. One day I was collecting field samples in Pennsylvania when I was studying viruses when I noticed that the field I was collecting in was filled with fossils everywhere, and after that I got deeply invested in Paleontology and decided to focus as that as one of my main topics at college versus microbiology, and I have continued to love fossils as my favorite thing ever since.

[Caverat]

It was probably in 1950 or a bit later and I was 6 or 7 and living in southeast Missouri. We were renting an upstairs from my grandmother whose yard abutted a woods with an abandoned limestone quarry. My parents allowed me to explore the woods, so the quarry was of great interest. I saw what I thought was a snake in the weathered rock wall of the quarry. I couldn't collect it, but it intrigued me. Somewhat older, I began collecting minerals since I lived near the lead belt; but soon rediscovered my interest in fossils and was a geology major in college. Many years later I finally found a similar specimen to the original I'd seen as a child and added to my collection. Here's the Receptaculitid (Fisherites is not a popular name with me!) with a light blue grid of one inch for scale.

[NWARockhound]

I've always loved the outdoors, grew up camping and I'm a regular hiker.  Had a very casual interest in rocks until a friend started talking about what elements were in the local rocks and I thought it was fascinating; shortly thereafter I went to central Arkansas to mine for my first quartz crystals.  I moved to NM for a few years, and was really into minerals.  There's a lot of gorgeous things to find there!  I was casually into fossils, mostly petrified wood, but I didn't put any serious effort into finding fossils beyond regular trips to the local gorge.  Only recently have I learned about all the wonderful fossils I could've been looking for, sadly!  I moved back to AR, It's a 4hr drive to crystal mining and I don't live in a very mineralized area, but pretty much every local creek has fossils, so I got more into them.  Now I can combine my love of swimming with finding fossils!  Geological maps of the area are highly lacking, so I just check out every river/creek access I can, and go back for fossils or a good swimming hole.   Fell in love with the pyritized fossils in a local shale layer, and I haven't looked back!  There's also a ton of fossils in TX where my family is from, not so much minerals, so now I'm focused almost exclusively on fossils, although I do think back fondly on the many trips I took to the old fluorite mines and giant obsidian pieces NM had to offer, and I'm hoping to go to a public crystal mining area in January.

[jeannie55]

3 hours ago, NWARockhound said:

I've always loved the outdoors, grew up camping and I'm a regular hiker.  Had a very casual interest in rocks until a friend started talking about what elements were in the local rocks and I thought it was fascinating; shortly thereafter I went to central Arkansas to mine for my first quartz crystals.  I moved to NM for a few years, and was really into minerals.  There's a lot of gorgeous things to find there!  I was casually into fossils, mostly petrified wood, but I didn't put any serious effort into finding fossils beyond regular trips to the local gorge.  Only recently have I learned about all the wonderful fossils I could've been looking for, sadly!  I moved back to AR, It's a 4hr drive to crystal mining and I don't live in a very mineralized area, but pretty much every local creek has fossils, so I got more into them.  Now I can combine my love of swimming with finding fossils!  Geological maps of the area are highly lacking, so I just check out every river/creek access I can, and go back for fossils or a good swimming hole.   Fell in love with the pyritized fossils in a local shale layer, and I haven't looked back!  There's also a ton of fossils in TX where my family is from, not so much minerals, so now I'm focused almost exclusively on fossils, although I do think back fondly on the many trips I took to the old fluorite mines and giant obsidian pieces NM had to offer, and I'm hoping to go to a public crystal mining area in January.

There are a few caves near Hot Springs. From the parking area to the caves is about one and a half mile hike.  But, the rocks in that area are fossil rich. The area is part of state parks and Forrest so you can pick up and even dig for rocks and fossils. Last time I was there, I found a few good pieces of petrified wood and a large piece of coral partially crystallized. The name is something crystal caves. I’ll look for the name and send the info. Plus not far from the caves is a huge pile quartz a nd crystals that were dumped by the crystal mining folks. If you are spending all day, go to Magnet Cove. There’s a bridge there going over a small creek and it’s a nice place to hunt fossils, metals, and mineral.  I found Smokey crystals there. 

[jeannie55]

3 hours ago, NWARockhound said:

I've always loved the outdoors, grew up camping and I'm a regular hiker.  Had a very casual interest in rocks until a friend started talking about what elements were in the local rocks and I thought it was fascinating; shortly thereafter I went to central Arkansas to mine for my first quartz crystals.  I moved to NM for a few years, and was really into minerals.  There's a lot of gorgeous things to find there!  I was casually into fossils, mostly petrified wood, but I didn't put any serious effort into finding fossils beyond regular trips to the local gorge.  Only recently have I learned about all the wonderful fossils I could've been looking for, sadly!  I moved back to AR, It's a 4hr drive to crystal mining and I don't live in a very mineralized area, but pretty much every local creek has fossils, so I got more into them.  Now I can combine my love of swimming with finding fossils!  Geological maps of the area are highly lacking, so I just check out every river/creek access I can, and go back for fossils or a good swimming hole.   Fell in love with the pyritized fossils in a local shale layer, and I haven't looked back!  There's also a ton of fossils in TX where my family is from, not so much minerals, so now I'm focused almost exclusively on fossils, although I do think back fondly on the many trips I took to the old fluorite mines and giant obsidian pieces NM had to offer, and I'm hoping to go to a public crystal mining area in January.

The name is Crystal Vista. Very nice walk to the caves. There are videos of people who have gone there. I have trouble walking but the walk to the caves was fairly easy for me. 

[Notidanodon]

I allways loved nature, from an early age  I was lucky to go on holiday on beaches abroad quite a lot, especially around Europe and the Carribean, and here I collected shells and inadvertently my first fossils, fossil corals, though I only realised they were fossils last year. So

I built  my collections through gifts and finds, I also had some minerals and fossils picked up from gift shops, the typical Moroccan teeth and Madagascan ammonites. My interest was truly peaked in early 2018, when by chance a cleaner of my grandparents had heard I liked the natural stuff and one of the people she worked for had sadly passed and left an old Victorian collection that was going to the tip. Luckily she managed to save most of it. Then I found this forum whilst trying to identify the fossils in the collection and this really sparked my interest, especially after I found I had a damaged ichthyosaur paddle! Anyway it was a very lucky story and I’m glad it led me to this great forum

[kingcobb]

My journey started with collecting arrowheads and reading dinorsaur books as a child in Central Texas.  Add in visits to Dinosaur valley, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin, a love of beach combing for shells on the Texas Gulf Coast,  a general all consuming love of history both human and geologic......etc etc etc and then I bought a Megalodon tooth, found some ammonites north of Ft Worth, bought some more megalodons,  bought a T-rex tooth, and bought some more fossils.  Hope to go check out the sight in Waurika Oklahoma soon.

[siteseer]

I was into paleontology when I was a kid from the time we learned about dinosaurs in the first grade.  I found a fossil shell on the beach at Capitola in the late 70's but I didn't really collect fossils until I found them for sale at Nature Company and Natural Wonders stores in 1987.  Those were great stores - all kinds of natural history items for sale.  I still have some of those fossils I bought (oreodont jaw section, baculite section, two "makos" from Bakersfield, and a Squalicorax on a piece of matrix).  Both those chains went out of business by the late 90's, I think, but I started going to the Tucson and Denver shows by then as well as the MAPS EXPO a couple of times.  There are a few MAPS members from those days still here are on the FF.

 

I was very surprised to find fossils for sale back then.  I didn't think anyone but me would be interested in buying them.  It was great to see the variety available.

 

 

[Kikokuryu]

When I was growing up, the science channels all had a lot of dinosaur documentaries which was usually the channels my dad watched and I happen to watch along. Most of it wasn't even docufictions, just scientists explaining dinosaur anatomy and such. Thus, when compared to my school mates who had their fav dinosaurs as the standard Tyrannosaurus via movies, mine were the likes of Coelophysis and Majungasaurus.

 

Whenever I visited relatives in Japan, I went to the Tokai University Natural History Museum (as well as the Marine Science Museum next to it) in Shimizu, Shizuoka with my grandfather. Not really sure how many of their specimens are real. I still have my first fossil, the classic Spinosaurid tooth from the gift shop there.

[cngodles]

4 years ago my wife and I bought our first house. It’s land that is off to the side of a four way valley. I’ve had scientific interests over the years, from growing bamboo to space/physics to microscopic life. Buying chemistry and genetics books from resale book stores was a favorite hobby.

 

Im Winter 2018-2019 I started finding limestone pieces in the creek in the evening. I found a nice Crinoid column piece, and spent lots of time recovering pieces and tearing them apart using a microscope and tweezers. I had to use Google to figure out it was a Crinoid.

 

I thought I found a tooth and emailed a local geologist who wrote a newsletter article on “shark” Petalodus teeth. He answered me, and has completely expanded my world about local geology and paleontology.

 

Just over 2 years ago, I knew of geologic time, etc, but I didn’t understand any of it. I learned all about formations, rock types, and related things. I learned that dinosaur fossils are nearly non existent in Pennsylvania because most of it had eroded away or rocks were not being deposited reliably. I spent time examining rocks on my valley and located a 1 foot tall layer of limestone. I believe it is Brush Creek, but am still not 100% sure.

 

Now I spend part of my free time roaming the valley to find accessible limestone boulders to crack apart with hammers to find specimens within. I’ve found everything from large cephalopods, trilobites, brachiopods, Gastropods, clams, Petalodus teeth, plants and lots of things in between. Finding, researching and cataloging fossil specimens on my website has turned out to be a very enjoyable hobby. And through some friendships I’ve made in the fossil community, I even have had the pleasure of  visiting the Carnegie Museums invertebrate collections a couple of times.

[OregonFossil]

I always have been a nature person, then I got a dinosaur set for Christmas when I was a second grader and I was "infected". As an 5th grader I got to go to science camp that tooks us all around the state of Oregon. We spent some time at the John Day Fossil beds and I've been interested since then. Have collected and given away a lot of stuff, and after about 20 years of not collecting just started again at 70+. Most of the really good mammal fossils in Oregon and in the John Day Fossil beds which are look but don't touch. Amazing stuff there. The are about 10 regulatory bodies in the state, some federal -  some state, but if you read the rules and regs you can still legally collect some stuff and it's worth it just to travel the state. Have just got a Stero Microscope for the smaller stuff and have lots of macro gear for bigger stuff. Good to be back in the game.