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PaleoNoel

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Good evening to my fellow fossil lovers! This report has been on hold for a while, hovering near the top of my paleo-to do list. But to be honest, I haven't been on the forum as much these last few months and I've just sort of kicked the can down the road, pushing it off. Well here we are in August 2022 and I'm a whole year and some change removed from this excursion, but I say better late than never. With that out of the way lets jump into this adventure! I hope you're ready for...

 

The Roadtrip Through Time: Colorado

 

Part I: Pierre Shale

In the winter of 2021 I had the beginning of an idea... Something a bit ambitious, but within the realm of possibility. I wanted to organize a road trip which would bookend my already scheduled excursion with PaleoProspectors to hunt for dinosaurs in Montana during the last week of July. I present this idea to Quincy @Opabinia Blues, a friend I had made on my trip to Wyoming in the summer of 2020 and a native of Colorado, who would also be hunting the same week in the Hell Creek. My idea was to fly into Denver to meet with him, visit several spots throughout the state and eventually make our way north into Montana. Joining me on the trip from New Hampshire would be my best friend of over a decade, Michael @Mickeyb06. With a week of hunting the Lance under his belt from the year before, I knew his eye would be better, resulting in him finding more this time around. 

Several months of creating routes, researching accessible sites and forming itineraries led us all the way to mid July, when Michael and I would fly out of Boston Logan to Denver. By the time we had landed and met Quincy it was already mid afternoon. Quincy presented us with two options, head home for the evening or push on to one of the fossil sites. Ready to explore, I chose the latter. We decided to stick to our plans and head west into the mountains. The first site on our tour would be in Kremmling to hunt exposures of the late Cretaceous Pierre Shale. While I could have chosen this area or the Baculite Mesa, I decided I would prefer the mountainous scenery. Of particular note was the Kremmling Cretaceous Ammonite Locality, a protected zone where collecting was prohibited. Within this zone were dozens of calcareous sandstone concretions, many of which preserved the impressions of the giant ammonite Placenticeras and other marine invertebrates. This environment is interpreted as storm deposits of near-coastal sand bars, with the accumulation of ammonites coming as a result of their mating rituals, subsequent mass death and eventual deposition (similar to what was featured in Episode 1 of Prehistoric Planet!). After rain, water collects within these great molds, creating natural bird baths, a colloquial nickname for ammonites of this caliber.

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A view of the adjacent ridgeline and the mountains which surrounded us. Note the hazy sky due to wildfires elsewhere in the state.

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Candid shot of Michael.

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The winding trails.

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An assortment of smaller invertebrate fossils we found in the first few minutes, clusters of inoceramid bivalves and partial ammonites.

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Information plaque which included a beautiful illustration by Ray Troll.

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The first birdbath ammonite we found, with a large section of Baculite included.

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Another birdbath, GoPro for scale.

After checking out the site for a while, we ventured outside of the protected zone onto surrounding BLM land to hunt our own non-vertebrate fossils. 

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A beautiful piece of petrified wood.

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A partial cast of an inoceramid bivalve.

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One of my only pieces of ammonite that afternoon, a small segment of baculite.

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My last find of the day, a big chunk of Cretaceous sea bed, covered by the shell impressions of its long dead inhabitants (small inoceramids and a baculite). 

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A beautiful sunset through a hazing Rocky Mountain sky. 

Stay tuned for more, because there is plenty to come!

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I was at the Kremmling Ammonite site last September. Your stunning landscape shots remind me of my experience there. Looking forward to seeing more from your trip. Thanks for sharing. 

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  • 1 month later...

So looking forward to the rest of this report! To add to the fun, here’s a really nice baculite I found the first day in Kremmling. 
 

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Very cool! Nice fossils, and always nice to see some Ray Troll art, it's cool that they put his art on the information board. 

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