Fabulous Fossil Hunt In Princeton B.c. Canada

[franster]

This past week I took off from my home on wonderful Vancouver Island to visit the Southern British Columbia Interior town of Princeton. I had a lead on some great Eocene plant material in the silicious paper shales there. I was planning on visiting McAbees further north in B.C. but the government has taken over that site and is changing it's context. This was fortuitous for me as amazing stuff awaited me in Princeton. It's a long haul through the lower mainland of Vancouver and I finally made it to Princeton late in the day. The motel I chose was a $65 special and came straight from the 1960's. Excellent swimming pool! Although I was tired I decided to check out the site before I had a major dig the next day. Holy moly what an astounding site! I am a retired art professor and I love all things colourful but I did not expect the fossils to be so wild! The old name for Princeton is Vermillion and you can see why in the rock colours. I had to separate my collection into 2 groups - real fossils and pretty rocks. The kinds of fossils we have on the island are mostly Cretaceous and exist in grey coloured shales. Pretty dull matrix generally speaking. The colours ranged from purples to oranges reds and cream.

Wild! The fossils are all Eocene and are mostly lake deposits. The majority of the material is plant but there are bugs there as well.

I expected but did not see an fish.

After my initial visit I spent many hours the next days flipping rocks and splitting slabs. Heaven.One thing that was very funny demonstrates how local knowledge can be confusing. I found material which looks just like the white blocky (bentonite?) that they mine for kitty litter at McAbees. The pale brown shale at Princeton weathers white on it's surface and looks a bit blocky too. This material at McAbees is not fossiliferous so I ignored it for a while. Then I noticed lots of fragments of cedar and some Comptonia on it.

When I split a few pieces open I realized it was tan inside and chalky white outside. Then I targeted that material and came to realize that this was the true SILICIOUS paper shale. The bright coloured plates were not silicious although I am sure their silica content is high.

Some of the fossils were just too weird for words and strangely some were quite dimensional. Here is one I have no idea what is.

Also there was this material which I took to be trace material. Any ideas?

Here are examples of the colours- wild!

OK and I admit it - I have at least a million pieces of Metasequoia but when they are this colour I just can't say no.

After a day of fossil hunting I retired to the most incredible bakery in the world. It's called Thomasinas and has chocolate croissants that are better than the ones I ate in France. Blasphemy I know but there you are! As the weather was surprisingly cool for the interior I decided to take a run up to Nicola Lake and see if I could find the Quilchena Eocene site. After much bad language and being chased out of a field by an angry rancher I gave up and returned to Princeton. I did not read my fossil guide very well and found out the next day I had driven past an outcrop of the Eocene White Lake formation. Fortified by more coffee and chocolate croissants I drove back up the road and dug out some nice bits of leaves. I did not do that site justice but I will come back and fossil hunt there again another day. I would like to share the location of the actual site but it is a private quarry. If I get permission I will share that with everyone!

Have great fun hunting my friends, its a beautiful life and fossils just improve it!

Fran Benton

Edited August 17, 2012 by franster

[Auspex]

Fabulous fossils and chocolate croissants?

You're living right...

[franster]

I am living right! There are simply not enough fossils, coffee, or chocolate croissants in the world to satisfy me. But I do my best to rid the world of fine baked goods and caffeinated beverages. Yum!

Fran

[Missourian]

The colours ranged from purples to oranges reds and cream.

Wild! The fossils are all Eocene and are mostly lake deposits. The majority of the material is plant but there are bugs there as well.

What a wonderful insect!

The stuff in the orange piece resembles root molds I've found in a Pennsylvanian limestone here in KC:

[fossisle]

Great trip and some awesome finds, nice adventure!!

[Vordigern]

great finds! Love that bug

[franster]

Anyone have any idea what the last image is? Maybe trace? Aliens? Too much espresso?

Fran

[Missourian]

Anyone have any idea what the last image is? Maybe trace? Aliens? Too much espresso?

Fran

Kind of looks like a chocolate croissant in cross section....

Actually, I'm drawing a blank.

[Auspex]

Anyone have any idea what the last image is?...

Reminds me a little of a fish scale; how big is it?

[CH4ShotCaller]

Very nice pictures and fossils. The report is fantastic! I really enjoy reading trip reports from members and the more colorful, the better. I can imagine seeing an old farmer chasing you! Thanks for posting!

[FossilDAWG]

I think the last photo is a scale from a bowfin fish (Amia). I have a few like it from Princeton.

For anyone who wants to see more Princeton fossils, there is a great thread started by Paleopix (link).

Don

Edited August 18, 2012 by FossilDAWG

[palaeopix]

Anyone have any idea what the last image is? Maybe trace? Aliens? Too much espresso?

Fran

It's a fish scale as Don and Chas suspected! They are fairly common at some sites!

Great report Fran! It looks like you had a great time! Next time give me a call and I'll take you to some other spots!

Dan

[franster]

Oh that is so cool! The only other fish scale I have comes from the Cretaceous rocks at Collishaw Point on Hornby Island. I am very pumped about that! The scale is about 1 3/4 inches long and an inch across. Hey this is how you tell how old Canadians are. My elementary school taught us in inches and the secondary school taught us in metric. I have always been lazy in my use of metric although it is the standard of science! I would love to go to more sites in this area because the landscape is not burdened with tree cover. I do love trees but they sure get in the way of finding fossils.

Another thing about that rancher that scared the dickens out of me was his ENORMOUS handlebar moustache with sharp waxed pointy ends. That thing could have been weaponized it was so impressive!

I have a lot more weirdo things from this site which I will photo today.

[RichW9090]

The bug looks like some sort of Caddis-fly relative.

[Uncle Siphuncle]

Nothing goes together better than fossils and pastries. Reminds me of the time we had French pastries delivered to us onsite while we were pulling pyritized ammonites by the hundreds in the French Alps. Then a few days later we had breakfast at the Scholtz Baeckerei near Stuttgart, then split a ton of cool Jurassic ammonites out of the black shales near Holzmaden. Good times!

[fossiladdict]

_{Love the bug. Very neat fossils and colors for sure!}