A Weekend Trip You Dream Of; A Dream, Come True

[ZiggieCie]

I went down to south central Ohio near Dayton and Ludlow Falls for a Fossil hunting trip organized by our Fossil club, the North Coast Fossil Club out of the Cleveland Ohio area. Our hunt was planned for Saturday 8/29/15, and I was able to go down Friday for an extra day of fossil hunting around the Dayton and Xenia areas.

Friday was a bust, the area I planned to hunt north of the Wright Bros. memorial looked very good but I could not get to it. Dirt road was overgrown, too far for me to walk, and not about to scratch up my brand new Ford Edge, 2000 miles, no way.

So, I went over to the Xenia area to check out the road cuts on OH 42 south. That was a flop, very little left to collect between Xenia and Waynesville.

Saturday morning we all met at the Quarry (not naming because access is getting very restricted) north of Dayton. Expecting to hunt the same area we were at two years ago, I was glad to see we were going to a new part of the quarry; things are looking up.

Not so much, I can see everyone moving around and not finding anything worth picking up. Time to move further along the cut. This is all newly blasted, Silurian age Dolomite that has not seen light for the last 430 million years. What I and the rest are finding is there was not much alive that became fossilized in this area either. It is beginning to look like another disappointing fossil hunting trip to this Quarry.

I am finding some of the large Pentamerid brachiopods, and a nice section of a straight cephalopod, split long ways. It would of polished up nice, but was left behind.

One of the members said that the Women farther down had found some Trilobites. Off I go to see what was found. These were a few nice prone Calymene Trilobites. These were on a light tan sandstone type of Dolomite that was splitting in two to three inch thick sections. Usually at this quarry, you bring your bigger sledgehammers and spend a lot of time busting rock hopping to find a surprise, bug. This was very interesting. I went up the blast pile, which was mostly gray here, with some of the tan in areas.

Up on top of the pile apx. 25 to 30 feet high and in the swale, I would call it; was a lot of this tan stone in thinner sheets. I start a more thorough search of this stone

and a nice prone Calymene trilobite. OK, I found “ONE”. That usually makes it a great trip.

Waite! What is this, another one??? Can’t be, that’s not my luck.

Another one!!! I must be dreaming, you only read about other people doing this.

Another one? This is getting serious.

OK! Things are getting strange for me, I am building up a stack of stones with prone and full molds of Trilobites.

This is not the usual trilobite pieces and parts, usually tail sections or an occasional head; these are all full Trilobites except where the rock split through it. This area must be one of the mass mortality areas you only read about.

I look around to see who is around I can call over, this is too good for just one person; too many trilobites in too big of an area, I need to get more members here to get in on the fun. Great luck, I see one of our newest members of the Forum and our Fossil club, Velociraptor99. I yell out to him, to carefully climb up where I am, I want to show him something. Being new, he is wanting a trilobite, like we all do. He gets up where I am, and I show him what I am finding, and he is thrilled. I show him what he is looking for, what kind of stone to look for what he is looking for and send him over 10 feet away. There is no need to send him far away, there are too many bugs right here. I also tell him to also check out the loose dirt, sand and ground stone between the rocks for rollers.

It only takes a few minutes till him let out a holler that he found one, than he calls out he found a lose one, in great shape. Then another. He is thrilled for being 16 and on his first big quarry trip. I give him a piece of orange marking tape to put on his growing pile of Trilobites so they don’t get lost in the excitement.

Ok, Time to call in more members there are more to share, Hey everyone come on over. The members that made it over ALL had a memorable trip after this find. I have over twenty Trilobites that should be very close to full prone or slightly bent after they get prepped out. Of the full molds, I hope to make casts of the missing bugs. High explosives have a tendency of being rough on fossils, but many of these are beautiful.

Short info: This area is the Cedarville formation – Dolomite

Pentamerid brachiopods are found near contact with the Springfield Dolomite

This are is Silurian age, Dolomite

Wenlockian age, 430/433 million years old

Some of the Calymene Trilobites I found.

[ZiggieCie]

Here are some of the Calymene Trilobites:

Table full of Bugs

[ZiggieCie]

More fun:

[ZiggieCie]

OK, how about a few more.

[ZiggieCie]

Do I have more? Here are a few of the large Pentamerid brachiopods.

Here is my one Spirifer.

[Fossil Claw]

Holy cow.

Nice finds.

Dayton is just up the road from me.

[ZiggieCie]

Here are a few photos of an interesting contact between two totally different rock layers exposed by the explosives tipping the rock layer to an angel and sliding the tan layer off of the black layer it had been sitting on. I think it is an amazing wonder, to think of what happened right here over an unknown length of time between these two layers of rock and time. These layers are tilted to the right.

The blast separation area, and the glacial till layers behind it.

A very interesting bulge in the layers. I do not know if this is caused by explosives, I don't think so.

[Cris]

Excellent trip report and very nice trilos, Ziggie! Thanks for the pics of the site, too. Looks like a pretty cool place to be able to hunt (even more so after seeing those tons of trilos).

[Raggedy Man]

Whew hew!!!! Now that's a trip!!! Fantastic finds mate. I bet the back of your head hurt from the massive smile you had lol.

Best regards,

Paul

[ZiggieCie]

THX guys. More than the back of my head hurt. It took me about 8 trips up and down the rock pile to get them down. I bet I have more than 150 lbs of rock and 98% have bugs in them. It is not easy to size these down since the dolomite is very hard and can break anywhere, usually through your trilobite. So will finess them down as I get time.

[erose]

Nice score Ziggie. But sorry to hear that the WB Memorial site was a bust for you as well as the Rt 42 cuts.Those cuts can look rather sparse but when you get in close the fossils are abundant.

For your large rocks with bugs consider renting a stone/tile saw from Home Depot for a day. They are easy to use and if you have all the chunks lined up you could knock em down to size in an afternoon.

[izak_]

Wonderful! What great trip!

[Ludwigia]

It's always satisfying to read a report about such a successful outing. Thanks for sharing.

Putting things directly into context, I think I could be allowed to call you a really lucky "bugger".

[amour 25]

Nice road trip indeed.

So a cutting saw maybe?

Ever try a Tile saw to cut rock?

[Fossildude19]

Wonderful Report, Ziggie - thanks for posting it.

Glad you hit the Trilo Lottery.

Congratulations on a great trip.

Regards,

[Megaladonna]

Nice!!!!! Great trip

[Manticocerasman]

Great report Ziggie, thanks for sharing

[Auspex]

WOOT!

How long before you can bear to put some "Pennsylvania racing stripes" on your new car?

[ZiggieCie]

THX everyone, it was a great day. I believe that 7 or 8 of us from the club were able to get in on the fun. Who has time to count when your knee deep in bugs (trilobites). I know those who decided not to come on this trip will be sorry when they hear about it. An amazing part is that I had to leave behind many perfectly good molds/imprints of trilo's that I never would of done before, that's how good it was.

Another sad part is this blast section will be converted into gravel in the next week or two; at least we rescued some of them.

I do have a tile saw with diamond blades, used it for granite tile I installed on the kitchen counter and backsplash when we remodeled.

I also love reading other peoples trip reports and seeing there photos, so everyone keep that up, it is a great part of the Forum.

[JohnJ]

I read this report with pleasure. Well done, sir.

[RJB]

Quite the outing for sure! Looks like a treasure hunt that produced. Nice! I use a tile saw all the time to cut down excess rock, works great. Good luck

RB

[PaleoWilliam]

Nice finds!

[Malcolmt]

Great post, you did real good!

[old bones]

What an incredible haul! The sore muscles were worth it, I'm sure. I've never found a bug...can't imagine being 'knee deep' in them. Thanks for all the pictures.

[ynot]

Tony