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Curiosity Got The Best Of Me! St. Clair, Pa Fern Fossil Finds


PawsNHearts

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Hello everyone! I guess curiosity just got the best of me and I decided to drive to St. Clair. I am only about 10 minutes away. I searched for the directions and ended up in what I thought was the same fern fossil bed as everyone else but, to my dismay, after checking Google Earth, I was not in the same area. I was on Burma Road alright, but just in a different "parking lot". Anyway, the day started out with a long trek on the path through the woods. A good friend and I had spotted some wild turkeys running ahead of us. That was fun. I decided to keep my pepper spray with me in case of a run in with some wildlife...hmmm...We kept trekking and trekking...getting nervous we weren't going to find the fern fossil clearing...well, we didn't find what everyone else has been to, we just found a small clearing with slate formations unearthed by water flows down the hilly area we were in. If it weren't for the water flows, the ground would still be covered in a thick layer of dirt and rocks. We spent just about an hour there and this is what we found (see pics) I'm not able to identify them yet, just being a newbie but I thought you may be interested in this little excursion. We may go to the high hill next to Walmart in St. Clair. My friend tells me there is a waterfall up there. I'll keep you all posted and let you know what we find there. There are more pics also, but I am unable to upload them :( Maybe another post....maybe it's because I am a newbie here. The first pic is my favorite...the fossil is raised from the slate, I believe it is a neuropteris seed fern. The others I am still hoping to find a name. Thanks for looking :)

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Some definite ferns a bit blurry for me to see for sure, but maybe some pecopterus and neuropterus? (sp?)

russ

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Whatever they are, very nice finds. If I found that stuff here in Cnt. Tx. I'd be jumping up and down.

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# 2 looks like Alethopteris. # 3 is too blurry to tell.

Nice finds - good luck on your next adventure. :)

regards,

    Tim    -  VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."

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Nice finds PawsNHearts!! I was looking at that area by the Wal-Mart as I was passing it and thought it might be worth a look. I'll be looking around there my next trip up. So there's a waterfall near Wal-Mart? Sounds interesting.

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Hello everyone! I guess curiosity just got the best of me and I decided to drive to St. Clair. I am only about 10 minutes away. I searched for the directions and ended up in what I thought was the same fern fossil bed as everyone else but, to my dismay, after checking Google Earth, I was not in the same area. I was on Burma Road alright, but just in a different "parking lot". Anyway, the day started out with a long trek on the path through the woods. A good friend and I had spotted some wild turkeys running ahead of us. That was fun. I decided to keep my pepper spray with me in case of a run in with some wildlife...hmmm...We kept trekking and trekking...getting nervous we weren't going to find the fern fossil clearing...well, we didn't find what everyone else has been to, we just found a small clearing with slate formations unearthed by water flows down the hilly area we were in. If it weren't for the water flows, the ground would still be covered in a thick layer of dirt and rocks. We spent just about an hour there and this is what we found (see pics) I'm not able to identify them yet, just being a newbie but I thought you may be interested in this little excursion. We may go to the high hill next to Walmart in St. Clair. My friend tells me there is a waterfall up there. I'll keep you all posted and let you know what we find there. There are more pics also, but I am unable to upload them :( Maybe another post....maybe it's because I am a newbie here. The first pic is my favorite...the fossil is raised from the slate, I believe it is a neuropteris seed fern. The others I am still hoping to find a name. Thanks for looking :)

post-9101-0-13235500-1343968728_thumb.jpgpost-9101-0-07008200-1343968742_thumb.jpgpost-9101-0-40016700-1343968769_thumb.jpgpost-9101-0-59886700-1343970162_thumb.jpg

Looks like you missed the prime spot but found some great fossils anyway - the shale formation runs under that entire area. Those large fossil leaves look like larger neuropteris leaves - the main site has mostly alethopteris and smaller neuropteris - I found a really large neuropteris on our 2nd visit last weekend but it shattered during extraction.

The instructions to the site are a little tricky but easy once you find it. Go past the driving range and there is a very small cup shaped gravel pull off with room for about 10 cars. At the end of this gravel area is a raised berm with a V shaped opening. Follow the trail and ignore the first rough looking turnoffs which are smaller trails - keep walking up the trail and you'll pass two large depressions that are usually filled with water - eventually you'll come to a V where the trail continues up the hill and a major trail veers left - it is strewn with baseball sized rocks. Follow that trail through the woods - you'll pass a couple of small birch trees laying across the trail. As you walk you'll see to your right, about 50 yards off the trail, a 10 foot high pile of tailings overgrown with trees and plants. The large shale formation/depression is on the other side of that rise but keep on the trail. The first turn to the right will be a steep cut formed by runoff - you can walk down that - it's steep but puts you right in the main pit. OR...you can keep walking another 25 yards up the trail and you'll see that the trail winds around the right and opens out onto a broad open pit area - you can see another trail across the pit on the other side. From here, you can follow the trails that lead to the RIGHT down into the large shale depression that goes on for a kilometer or more. Piles of fossil fragments and pits made by previous collectors are everywhere. You can work in those pits or find your own spot. The white fossils tend to be on the higher elevation toward the trail side of the pit. The orange and yellow fossils are lower down in the pit. Some areas have concentrations of certain types of fossils such as annularia or the most common fern which is alethopteris. If you want to sort through some of the piles of fragments, you can run across some rarer or scarce examples that other collectors didn't recognize, or a fragment that's really well articulated and worth taking home to display. I agree with the other collectors who recommend thinking about how you're going to carry in your tools and then leave and negotiate the trail carrying lots of heavy rocks.

The unknown factor right now is what the new owners (who presumably inherited the property) feel about people using the trail, or "mining" the fossil site. No one has reported any problem yet so the jury is still out but we've encountered lots of local collectors and most people are respectful of the property - except last visit as I mentioned in another post, someone had devastated a large very hard rock landmark boulder covered with yellow fossil ferns, someone else was digging under a tree which was about to fall over, and others had left plastic bottles littering the pit - how people treat the site (which is questionable right now) will determine whether the owners remain fossil friendly or not.

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  • 2 months later...

The locals who are just there to "shoot things" & party are more of a threat to access there...I have seen people take RV's back in there, and leave bags and bags full of garbage that promptly gets strewn by animals, dump their snarge tank, etc....people also treat it like a dump, lots of tube tv's, couches and mattresses all over...sad. The fern area is one of the clean spots because the most of the collectors care. Occasionally I will pick up someone else's snarge, but it is nothing compared to the mess non-collectors leave.

When I was in the McAdoo strippings digging crystals this summer, a bunch of kids pulled up in a truck and started throwing huge tube tv's off the cliff. Needless to say, I was not yelling greetings at them. As for a rock on the surface covered in ferns...that's on borrowed time and free game!(hard rock or not it will weather away eventually and be lost forever) The land in question is the trail in...there are other ways in to avoid that tract of land if issues arise. That is sad that he passed, talked to him on numerous occasions :( I know he had problems with 4 wheelers there, and even got assaulted by one of the riders when he tried to kick them off his land.

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