Ideas for Denver/Morrison Colorado collecting.

[Raistlin]

So my wife has a business trip coming up in Sept. I'm going with her and want stuff to do on the few days she's at the office there. 

 

End of the week we are hitting up some museum places around Morrison. I'm also thinking of hitting up the Florissant Fossil Quarry, because that's at least one place I can go and find something myself. I mean I'm certainly going to buy a few fossils on the trip because well why not.

 

So there are a few things I'll visit without her just because I don't mind the hikes. I'd kind of like to find a few things myself and I know absolutely nothing about the area. I really don't want to get to far away from those areas because I am in a rental, have to pick her up from work, and again I don't know the area. I'll not be taking a lot of equipment because of other stuff and room in the car. I'll have hammer and chisel basically and a pack to carry stuff in.

 

Thanks for any help.

Robert

[Opabinia Blues]

I live in the Denver area and have been to all the places you've mentioned. Some things to consider:

 

• The Florissant Fossil Quarry is ~2.5 hours from Denver/Morrison. I don't know if that's within your definition of close, but it is definitely not the Denver area and will take a day to do. While you're there I also recommend the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park. Fun little museum.
• If you do visit Florissant and want to try to collect somewhere else, see if you can do some research and find the Manitou Dolomite. Ordovician-age, some cool trilobites in there, one of a small handful of fossiliferous Paleozoic rock units in the state.
• Most of Colorado's accessible fossil geology is Mesozoic/Cenozoic. I say that because most of what you can collect in terms of invertebrates and such won't be easily accessible (best bet is still the Manitou Dolomite or Pierre Shale on BLM land). Most of the notable paleontology in Colorado is vertebrate, though there are of course plenty of exceptions. The Denver area itself is not a very good place to (legally) collect fossils.
• CDOT prohibits collecting fossils from roadcuts in Colorado.
• If you're willing to drive another 2.5 hours up into the mountains there's lots of great BLM land with Pierre Shale exposure north of the town of Kremmling. You can collect baculites, ammonites, clams, etc.

Hope you have fun out here. It's a great state for paleontology!

Edited August 5, 2021 by Opabinia Blues

[jpc]

Public places in the Denver area not common but Florissant is good

 

edit: I posted before adding that someone from down there would know better, and Orabona blues proved the point

Edited August 5, 2021 by jpc

[jdp]

Just a reminder that you can't collect vertebrate fossils from BLM land, nor can you actually dig (surface collection of invert fossils is generally fine). 

 

I'm not sure about the Morrison area, but there's a lot of Niobrara/Pierre just east of the foothills in general and inioceramid clams and various cephalopods are pretty common finds there. In the Morrison area, Florissant is probably your safest bet.