St. Clair - More Orange Fern Fossils - 2Nd Site Visit - Aug 4/2012

[hitekmastr]

Nancy and I revisited St. Clair (the large depression south of Burma Road) on Aug. 4. Only two other collecting teams were there - some young people who were excavating and found a lot of nice pieces, and a middle aged couple. The bear and her cub were not in sight - probably cooling off in a stream somewhere.

It was 91 degrees and higher in the pit but afternoon clouds and a strong breeze made the weather comfortable. We continue to improve our excavation techniques, which are nothing fancy - just a rock hammer and chisels, but we work to extract larger (1 to 2 feet) sheets intact, which we fragment into large thin pieces. Techniques we've seen other people use include "mining" fossils in large pits, and carving out large round slabs. Some people are excavating under trees which is not cool - we hard that's what got the site closed to fossil collectors several years ago.

This was a successful trip. We only spent half a day there, but met our goals. Last trip, I brought back a 2 ft. long section covered with orange and yellow fern fossils. This trip I was able to secure most of the other half of that section which is equally impressive (see photo below), plus we collected some white fossils in large (9 inches to 1 foot or longer) sections suitable for display on a shelf or on the wall. I worked to get some sections that are thin and light enough to frame but getting larger pieces intact is an art.

My impression is that a lot of people seem to be using hammers and just hammering away at the substrate. This produces piles of tiny fragments and partial fossils which are discarded. This also explains why there are so many small pieces scattered everywhere. We sorted through the throwaways in the pits - if you look closely and know what to look for you can find some scarce specimens that include sections of bark from Calamites, Siggularia as well as bright white, orange and yellow ferns, groups of fossils that are a bit harder to find such as Annularia, etc.

A general observation - there is a LOT of shale to excavate and explore, including many pits started by other collectors. Some look hard to extract but are easier than they look, but it requires a hammer and chisel and some careful cutting around the periphery to get out larger pieces - and often you have to remove some overburden that covers the fossil layers. Some pieces look smooth or round but some strategic hits with a chisel will segment them into small manageable sheets that sometimes come out larger than expected. It takes more time but you get more intact fossils. Also, many times I'll pull out a large sheet of shale thinking it looks totally empty or with only a few fossils visible, and will chisel it into increasingly smaller sheets with no results, then when I chisel open the very last layer, I'm rewarded with a really nice dense fossil mix.

Nancy continues to use her keen eye to find unusual shapes and patterns - some of which are included in the Fossil ID section. She mentioned finding a "feathery" fern that she discarded because it looked too fuzzy - and later going through a fern book we saw that this was a feathery fern called Odontopteris. Which just goes to show that it pays to bring home stuff that looks interesting. I also found two very large neuropteris leaves - about 9 to 12 inches - but they didn't survive the segmenting process. We keep forgetting that many large fossil trees had very large leaves but they are hard to find the way most people work on smaller pieces. We don't want to move up to commercial-size excavations which defeats the purpose of this being a hobby, but we do want to keep working with our hammers and chisels to remove display size pieces.

Didn't have much time to shoot photos but a few images are included here. Number 4 shows an Alethopteris and Annularia on the same fossil, which is a nice mix. The next images show "display pieces" from our trip, and a yellow fern. You can see more in our post in the Fossil ID section.

Edited August 17, 2012 by hitekmastr

[Auspex]

You are perfecting a methodology that works, instead of wailing away wily-nilly, and are reaping the rewards for your effort.

Fossil collecting is a thinking man's game!

[mzkleen]

Excellent!! You 2 are quite a team!! Glad you didn't see any bears. :-) Excellent specimens!! It looks like it will be 2 wks or so before I can get back up there. Busy social calendar, weddings & family gatherings and the like. It's a shame that someone or some people smashed that 1 boulder. I can't wait to go back up there!

Next time I'm going to check out some other locations around there too. Are you 2 going up again in the near future?

Judy

[Bullsnake]

Those are gorgeous fossils! Congratulations, and thanks for showing!

[hitekmastr]

Excellent!! You 2 are quite a team!! Glad you didn't see any bears. :-) Excellent specimens!! It looks like it will be 2 wks or so before I can get back up there. Busy social calendar, weddings & family gatherings and the like. It's a shame that someone or some people smashed that 1 boulder. I can't wait to go back up there!

Next time I'm going to check out some other locations around there too. Are you 2 going up again in the near future?

Judy

Nancy really likes this spot - so scenic and productive. Not sure how soon we'll get back - possibly next weekend. We're still learning what types of fossils are there. In the Fossil ID section we discovered that we have 3 Trigonocarpus which are fossil seeds about an inch long. That's really fascinating. Would love to find some well articulated examples of those, but will take a LOT of looking. We were very successful at patiently chiseling out some large flat sections and sliding them out from the substrate in some of the pits, and cracking them into thinner layers. It takes more time and patience but a methodical approach is more rewarding than simply whacking away at the exposed formations which apparently a lot of people are doing.

[hitekmastr]

You are perfecting a methodology that works, instead of wailing away wily-nilly, and are reaping the rewards for your effort.

Fossil collecting is a thinking man's game!

Thanks - hopefully there is some method to our madness. We keep asking ourselves, what will we have when we get home? Something unique and somewhat rare or hard to find? Something that completes our collection (esp. if we do some writing later)? Something we can display in a frame or on a shelf (our number one goal)? What we don't want is to wind up with a box (or room) full of samples stuck away in boxes and drawers (although we're doing some of that too, I have to admit!). We also want to be responsible collectors by setting targets, trying not to over-collect and treating each site with respect.