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Richmond Queensland Trip 21 To 26 September 2015


Mike from North Queensland

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I had gotten an invitation to the 20 anniversary celebration for the Kronosaurus Korner Museum in Richmond Queensland Australia. Seeing this a perfect excuse to do a little fossicking I readily accepted and my wife and I made arrangements to stay at Richmond for a few days before function.

We proceeded to drive out to Richmond Monday morning 21-9-15 after a five hour drive we arrived at Richmond and booked in to our accommodation and had a quick bite to eat for lunch. My main aim for the trip was to get some matrix to process for macro fossils after finding a small theropod / bird claw the week before while processing some matrix from my previous trip, not big at 6mm long and 1.5 mm wide but a nice find. That afternoon we decided to do some specking along the road among the broken moonstones (round limestone concretions). After a couple of hours with nothing to show I stopped a spot where I had previously found some material and within 5 minutes I found a small piece of moonstone with some fossil Ichthyosaur vertebrae and ribs embedded and then within the next 5 minutes spotted a section of skull protruding from under a tree. Had to drive the Ute over to get the rock as it weighs at a guess about 35 kilos. We had a good look around and lifted every rock near but found no other fossils embedded in the moonstones.

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Tuesday 22-9-15 we started looking in the quarry proper (site 1) and started lifting the rock layers until we got down to the layer of fish mash layer of matrix, this we did for the rest of the day and we collected about 35 kilos of matrix for processing later. My wife found a nice Ichthyosaur that we kept and several small shark teeth and some belemnites that we gave to some children fossicking there with their parents. Hopeful for some more material related to the claw as the quarry deposits are as deposited 100 million years ago.

Wednesday 23-9-15 decided to go for a little drive towards Winton for the morning and walked the side of the road looking at the rocks that had floated to the surface. We picked up some ammonite bits, a piece of nautilus shell, some bivalve shells and some trace fossils. Not a great deal of material but one must look. We returned to the quarry in the afternoon and did some surface specking for the afternoon but only picked up a few bits of broken bone that I gave away.

Thursday 24-9-15 decided to look at Site 2 of the quarry in the morning and lifted some rock but could not find the layer I wanted, so went back to specking and found a couple of isolated Ichthyosaur paddle bones and some other assorted other bone fragments, kept the best paddle bone and gave the rest away. Returned in the afternoon to the far end of Site 2 and noticed someone had extended my hole from last year and had uncover another section of fish mash matrix so I collected about 15 to 20 kilos of material for processing latter and did some specking but only found a small paddle bone that I ended up giving away.

Friday 25-9-15 went back to the main pit in Site 1 and gathered some matrix to process over the Australian summer in the morning. We spent the rest of the day specking to no avail, as there was no room left to carry any more matrix material and did not want to lift layers and find more matrix that I could not carry, with a quick trip back to have another look for skull pieces again with no luck.

Saturday 26-9-15 spent the morning specking over the various areas of the quarry but found nothing of interest and spent the afternoon helping set up for the anniversary function and then drove home Sunday and hosed off the partial skull for a better look.

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Great report, Mike!

The Ichthyosaur finds are Fantastic!

Glad you found some cool stuff, and look forward to seeing what your matrix holds.

Thanks for posting this trip for us.

Regards,

    Tim    VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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Wow! I can't wait to see everything prepped! Great finds!

~Charlie~

"There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why.....i dream of things that never were, and ask why not?" ~RFK
->Get your Mosasaur print
->How to spot a fake Trilobite
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What an awesome find by an experienced eye. A passing glance might only see tree roots.

:fistbump:

The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true.  -  JJ

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