Jump to content

Never Even Thought About Preparing A Fossil In Her Life; Need Some Assistance, Please!


Triflin_Trilobite

Recommended Posts

Hello forum!

So about a week ago, a couple friends and I went out to the Mazonia-Braidwood Fish and Wildlife Area in Illinois to do some amateur fossil hunting (first time for all of us). I was so excited when, at our first site, I found a pair of trilobites on the same rock and a few feet away there was the top half of the rock with their impressions. First of all, I love trilobites. I'm currently reading the book by Richard Fortey, Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution, and I hope to be able to study them somewhere along in my educational career.

So far, I've identified these little guys as Calymene celebra, but I'm not 100% sure on the species since this is my first time ever finding a fossil let alone having to identify it. But that's not my main focus as of right now. What I'm asking for is some tips on how to clean the rock containing the trilobites (it's really dark and still covered in some moss and lichen). I've rinsed it in warm water the night I brought it home, but that's all. I didn't want to risk doing any damage since it's my first fossil find and I'm overly attached already haha.

I'm also wondering about preparing it: what tools would you use, etc. I've never done anything like this before so any and all advice will be greatly appreciated!

Here are the photos so far!

post-15377-0-26978600-1401307581_thumb.jpg

post-15377-0-60914100-1401307748_thumb.jpg

post-15377-0-76658100-1401307758_thumb.jpg

post-15377-0-22355900-1401307787_thumb.jpg

post-15377-0-36790700-1401307924_thumb.jpg

Cheers!

--Jessica

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As far as prepping....I'd do a light toothbrushing on the one with some moss on it. Other than that, looks good to me!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

First of all as far as posting more than one photo you can resize them so you can fit more in your post. I right click the photo and select "open with" and choose "paint". Then you click "resize" in the tool bar of paint and change the "horizontal" and "vertical" box from 100 to something smaller. if your photos are each 1.5 mg and you want to fit two of them within your 2mg limit you would need to knock a third off their size or so. So I would change the 100 to 60 or so. Then save.

That is how I do it anyway but I am not tech savvy so there is probably a better way.

Now to your trilobites, WOW! What an awesome first find! congrats seriously.

As far as prepping them goes, I would strongly encourage you to hold off. I promise you will be glad you did. If you love fossils and especially trilobites as I do, you will always have a special place for your firsts. Don't learn to prep on those guys. Practice on some others for a while until you feel like you are doing well. Many mistakes in prepping fossils are not very fixable. Perhaps you can find some partial trilobites or, "trilobits" as some call them, to practice on?

As far as actually prepping fossils goes start by reading tons of stuff here on forum. Basic hand tools are needles and straight dental picks. more aggressive for excess rock removal would be hand scribes and cold chisels. A dremel can help with that too. eventually you might want to get an air eraser which is really helpful.

-Clayton

"We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever"

- Carl Segan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with starting with a toothbrush. Just go slow. They have waited millions of years to be found by you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Okay, so toothbrush it is! I didn't think I would need to do much prepping since they're both so visible.

And thanks, Clayton, for the pic advice. I have a Macbook and was using iPhoto and couldn't for the life of me figure out how to change the size besides cropping, but that kept it the same mb. I eventually googled it; it was just drag and drop into a file folder and then resize in the 'Preview' option. I don't have Paint on my Macbook so that's why I was having such a hard time. Well, I technically do, but it kept telling me to upgrade to the 'paid' version to open such a large file, which I'm not about to do haha

I was really expecting to come home that day with just a bucket of nodules but was so happy that I got to bring home these beauties. I want to carry them with me everywhere I go just to show them off! :D They definitely make up for being covered in ticks by the end of the day. But hopefully some of the other rocks I brought home can provide me with some practice in prepping.

Do you guys normally just bust them open or do you use the freeze-thaw method? Are there any other ways to splitting open some rocks?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow. Very nice. And so cool that you were able to find both pieces!

Were these found at Mazonia Braidwood? Were they in rocks that had been brought into the area (ie stones for embankment/gravel) or were they among the nodules?

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.–Carl Sagan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do you guys normally just bust them open or do you use the freeze-thaw method? Are there any other ways to splitting open some rocks?

Yes, freeze-thaw is your best bet for the nodules. Most of them don't break nicely by just hitting them... particularly the ones from Pit 11 (Mazonia-Braidwood).

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.–Carl Sagan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow. Very nice. And so cool that you were able to find both pieces!

Were these found at Mazonia Braidwood? Were they in rocks that had been brought into the area (ie stones for embankment/gravel) or were they among the nodules?

Yes, they were found at the Mazonia-Braidwood State Fish and Wildlife Area. If you go in the main entrance (by the information building), you'll follow the road until you get to the last and fourth parking lot before leaving out the back way. We were located on the left side of this map I attached right above the white square area. Not sure if that's Pit 11 or not. I'm not from the immediate area and I'm new to these fossil locations.

post-15377-0-02245100-1401318433_thumb.jpg

One was half buried in the dirt and the other was covered in thick moss. If I hadn't pulled the moss back I wouldn't have known it had the impressions! Sheer luck, I tell you! :meg dance:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Outstanding find, most will go a lifetime without the same. I do hope your luck/skill continues. Enjoy!!

Just how deep is deep time?..... :unsure:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It does look like a calymene. If that is the case then it would have come from Silurian rocks from further north instead of the Carboniferous of Mazon Creek, transported there by either glacier or humans.

Anyone know if there are any carboniferous trilobites that look like Calymene? Just wonder if that is a possibility?

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.–Carl Sagan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very nice find ! - and very nice of you to offer up the exact location ..... although :blink: ..... I'm not sure everyone else would do the same B)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very nice find ! - and very nice of you to offer up the exact location ..... although :blink: ..... I'm not sure everyone else would do the same B)

Oh, shoot. I didn't know it was a competition. Hold on...while I go delete that post....

haha just kidding. I can see why someone might want to keep a site to themselves, but I don't really mind. Maybe someone with more expertise will find something of great scientific importance that I never would. Don't wanna take that chance! :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It does look like a calymene. If that is the case then it would have come from Silurian rocks from further north instead of the Carboniferous of Mazon Creek, transported there by either glacier or humans.

Yeah, when I was trying to identify the fossil I noticed that the Calymene genus comes from the Silurian period while the website for the area I was at said it was Pennsylvanian age. I would probably guess it was from glacial movement. The area didn't seem to have much for man made gravel pathways. It was off the main path in the trees. There was a tiny path but it was mostly dirt with a few big rocks buried in there. But then again, it could've been a completely different place decades ago.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

These are definitely Calymene trilobites from the Silurian Dolomite.

A very nice plate too!

Could be cleaned with bleach to get the algae off quickly.

Thanks! I wasn't sure if bleach would do any harm. Like I said, I'm completely new to all this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I second the bleach recommendation. I did that on one that was covered in algae and lichen and worked very nicely.

Other than a little cleaning, I wouldn't think you'd need to do anything else. Your fossil looks amazingly nice as it is.

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.–Carl Sagan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for all the help. I cleaned it with bleach and water the other day and it's clean now for the most part. Some of it turned black and requires a lot of scrubbing with a toothbrush and picking at with a sewing needle that I still have to do. I also think there's another fossil(s) in there. After scrubbing away the green layer I found a small, whitish object sticking out the side.

post-15377-0-57986700-1401560585_thumb.jpg post-15377-0-63525500-1401560611_thumb.jpg

And on the top half there's this:

post-15377-0-27495600-1401560655_thumb.jpg

It's right above the yellow flower on the book, kind of a peanut shape. But the impression of one of the trilobites is almost directly under that one (if you flip the rock over the pygidium reaches to about the middle of this shape) so I'm not sure if it has anything to do with that.

Anyways, thanks again for all the advice. It's not completely cleaned yet, but it looks much better than before!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good job!

The peanut shape could well be a cross section through another trilobite. :)

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

A stiff q-tip (one of those cheap ones) with some water on it works great for getting off anything small without damage.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

WOW - congratulations!

What I would give to find a trilo - let alone ones that nice.

Dont mess too much with them, as others have said you will never forget that first one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...