joshuajbelanger Posted August 14, 2017 Share Posted August 14, 2017 So I'm curious for the best place in America for a variety of fossil hunting. If you guys could move anywhere in the US, where would it be? There has to be a perfect spot with different epochs in all directions right? Maybe not, but what do you guys think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJB Posted August 14, 2017 Share Posted August 14, 2017 I really dont know about one spot in the US, but if youve got a lot of gas moneys and a lot of time, then you could travel to lots of states and find lots of stuff? I dont travel near as much as i use too, but that is probably the best way? RB And of course, if you've got lots of moneys, you could always buy a bunch of stuff from all over and save all that gas money and time hunting? RB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffrey P Posted August 14, 2017 Share Posted August 14, 2017 I live in Upstate New York about seventy miles north of New York City and surprisingly within a day's drive is an enormous variety of fossils and collecting opportunities. North and west of me is the Allegheny Plateau with abundant Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian fossils. Southwest in Pennsylvania are Carboniferous deposits with excellent plant fossils. Directly south is the Atlantic Coastal Plain in New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland with excellent Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary fossils such as mollusks and shark teeth. And running between them is the Newark Supergroup with Late Triassic and Lower Jurassic fossils of fish, plants, and dinosaur footprints. Check out my galleries for a sample of what can be found. I know many other parts of this country and Canada have a lot to offer, but I feel it will take a very long time for me to explore all of the opportunities here. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joshuajbelanger Posted August 14, 2017 Author Share Posted August 14, 2017 @RJB That's pretty much what I'm doing now. Once I finish my degree I'm probably gonna shag out of Florida and move somewhere with a nicer variety of fossils. I'm heading to Iceland in a week, and then Midwest next year for a few trips. I buy a few fossils, but there's something so much more exciting about finding your own! @Jeffrey P That's what I'm talking about! Sounds like a may have to plan a trip to that area next year. I've yet to hunt any Mesozoic yet! Something I'm eager to change! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJB Posted August 14, 2017 Share Posted August 14, 2017 Always much more exciting to find your own. A real treasure hunt for sure. RB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Herb Posted August 14, 2017 Share Posted August 14, 2017 Kentucky has all of the Paleozoic 1 "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"_ Carl Sagen No trees were killed in this posting......however, many innocent electrons were diverted from where they originally intended to go. " I think, therefore I collect fossils." _ Me "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."__S. Holmes "can't we all just get along?" Jack Nicholson from Mars Attacks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miocene_Mason Posted August 14, 2017 Share Posted August 14, 2017 I'm quite happy with Maryland (aka little America) which (from more or less west to east) includes fossils from the Carboniferous, Permian, Devonian, Silurian, Ordovician, cambrian, Triassic, Cretaceous, Paleocene, Eocene, miocene, a few scattered pliestocene and Holocene. But we do lack Jurassic and Precambrian, as well as Pliocene. Two hours drive to lost river, york (for the kinzer), the cliffs, Douglas point, the purslane from my house, one hour to cambrian (hard to find a site though, haven't succeeded) Triassic, and Devonian. Thirty minutes to some undated rhizolith, six hours and pretty much all of Pennsylvania is accessible. Maryland may be hard to hunt in, but it's not for lack of fossil variety and quantity. 1 “...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin Happy hunting, Mason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joshuajbelanger Posted August 15, 2017 Author Share Posted August 15, 2017 Maybe when I check out Maryland, you can show me around @WhodamanHD. Although I find it interesting that Maryland can have Triassic and Cretaceous but somehow skip Jurassic! Yeah, I definitely need to find a good Mesozoic site. Dig me up some dinos! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miocene_Mason Posted August 15, 2017 Share Posted August 15, 2017 3 minutes ago, joshuajbelanger said: Maybe when I check out Maryland, you can show me around @WhodamanHD. Although I find it interesting that Maryland can have Triassic and Cretaceous but somehow skip Jurassic! Yeah, I definitely need to find a good Mesozoic site. Dig me up some dinos! I can do my best, but I am beginning in the world of fossils! But with an outdated inaccurate geologic map, a car, a hammer, and some luck, some fossils are sure to be found! Currently I have fossil sites in the Devonian (two, very productive, except with trilobites) an undated site, I think maybe holocene or Pleistocene (just rhizoliths and unfossilized wood, I don't know how expensive carbon dating is, but I assume incredibly) , of course the popular Paleocene and Miocene sites, and I'm working on a site in the Triassic. I've heard of cave deposits in the aptly named cave town, but I know little of them. For those who want a Maryland fossil without travel, simply go to a place with red gravel, and there is a chance it's Gettysburg shale (some quarried in Maryland as well as PA) and plants traces and worm burrows as well as raindrops from the triassic can be found! I do seem to remember a university of Maryland reference to a small sliver of jurrasic rock along the Potomac, don't know much about it, guess the glaciers didn't take kindly to them! But yeah, next time your up here, I'll see if I can show you to places I know! “...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin Happy hunting, Mason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PFOOLEY Posted August 15, 2017 Share Posted August 15, 2017 I'm partial to New Mexico ... ...much land (and geology!) to roam. 1 "I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?" ~Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) New Mexico Museum of Natural History Bulletins Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joshuajbelanger Posted August 16, 2017 Author Share Posted August 16, 2017 I'm actually getting some blue halite from a coworker in New Mexico any day now! I'm planning a trip there next year @PFOOLEY. Definitely looks promising. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobWill Posted August 16, 2017 Share Posted August 16, 2017 I don't know about different epochs but if different periods would do Oklahoma has everything from Precambrian through Cenozoic to offer all crammed into a fairly compact area. Not all great exposures and not always good preservation but best of all it's close to North Texas where the Cretaceous and Pennsylvanian collecting sites are pretty hard to beat. Also if variety of fossils counts as much as variety of ages then some of those Texas sites like North Sulphur River with it's Mosasaur material just down the road from Sherman with it's creeks full of shark teeth just down the road from Jacksboro with 150 species of Pennsylvanian invertebrates in one spot, not counting micros, well, it just feels like fossil-heaven here in the middle of it all. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scylla Posted September 3, 2017 Share Posted September 3, 2017 I have collected California to Florida to New York. There are wonderful sites across the country, but I would live near the four corners region if I wanted the most variety. Northern Arizona like Falstaff or so. You get the whole of southern Utah, parts of New Mexico, and Arizona within a day trip range. Also weekend trip range might get you to Northern Utah and Parts of California too. Add in the minerals and it becomes a no brainer. Plus the Tuscon show isn't too far to visit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EMP Posted October 15, 2017 Share Posted October 15, 2017 On 8/14/2017 at 10:40 PM, WhodamanHD said: I can do my best, but I am beginning in the world of fossils! But with an outdated inaccurate geologic map, a car, a hammer, and some luck, some fossils are sure to be found! Currently I have fossil sites in the Devonian (two, very productive, except with trilobites) an undated site, I think maybe holocene or Pleistocene (just rhizoliths and unfossilized wood, I don't know how expensive carbon dating is, but I assume incredibly) , of course the popular Paleocene and Miocene sites, and I'm working on a site in the Triassic. I've heard of cave deposits in the aptly named cave town, but I know little of them. For those who want a Maryland fossil without travel, simply go to a place with red gravel, and there is a chance it's Gettysburg shale (some quarried in Maryland as well as PA) and plants traces and worm burrows as well as raindrops from the triassic can be found! I do seem to remember a university of Maryland reference to a small sliver of jurrasic rock along the Potomac, don't know much about it, guess the glaciers didn't take kindly to them! But yeah, next time your up here, I'll see if I can show you to places I know! On 8/14/2017 at 10:29 PM, joshuajbelanger said: Maybe when I check out Maryland, you can show me around @WhodamanHD. Although I find it interesting that Maryland can have Triassic and Cretaceous but somehow skip Jurassic! Yeah, I definitely need to find a good Mesozoic site. Dig me up some dinos! Yeah, I'd say Maryland has quite a bit. I've posted about some of the fossils I've found in the state, though I have loads more to post whenever I get around to it. Gravel's a good idea. A lot of it in this area comes from quarries in Frederick/Hagerstown, as well as some from Virginia, that have rocks from the Frederick and Grove Limestones on top of others like the Conococheague and Newark Group. It'll take some time to find anything beyond stuff like algae and plants, though. There are some latest Triassic-Jurassic intrusive rocks in the Gettysburg and Culpepper Basins, but they're very rare and usually covered by other sediment. The reason there's Triassic and then Cretaceous is because the Triassic rocks occur in a different geologic province than the Cretaceous fossils (Piedmont vs Costal Plain), though apparently if you dug down deep enough (a mile or more) in some parts of the Eastern Shore you'd be able to uncover the Triassic and even some Jurassic rocks. Dinosaur fossils are pretty rare from Maryland. Only two formations readily produced them, the Gettysburg and the Arundel, and unfortunately the old quarries where they were found originally don't exist anymore. I know more about the early Cretaceous stuff though, so I'll talk more about that. Basically what happened was that there was a big iron industry that existed in the central part of the state in the mid-19th century, and back then the deposits they were mining were bog iron and limonite occurring in shallow deposits. To get to them, slaves had to hand dig the pits to access the ore, and, as it so happened, in the process they began uncovering many fossils along with it. Anyways, the iron dried up as better, higher quality ore was discovered elsewhere, so many of the old iron pits were either closed or converted to gravel and clay pits for brickmaking. This was around the turn of the century. While this was occurring, several paleontologists began taking an interest into the scattered dinosaur bones and teeth that were being dug up or had been dug up, and there began a series of investigations into the fauna and flora of the Potomac Group, chiefly the Arundel Clay. At first the scientists were split between assigning a Jurassic age to the formations, and one wanting a Cretaceous age. Those who argued for a Jurassic age did so because they saw the partial dinosaur finds as belonging to Jurassic forms, such as Allosaurus, where as the Cretaceous group used the plant species to justify an early Cretaceous age. As time wore on once again, interest in the Potomac Group declined by a large degree, especially as more important discoveries were occurring in the west. Eventually they discovered that the IDs for most of the dinosaur fossils were incorrect (the "Allosaurus"-es being other theropods, such as Arcocanthosaurus), and that the deposits really were early Cretaceous age, but soon afterwards (relatively speaking) the issue dropped by the wayside pretty much. Urban development and the closings of most of the remaining works left many of the past sites destroyed, and interest in the rocks sparce. It really hasn't been until fairly recently that an up-tick in exploration into the deposits has occurred, especially with new parks opening up stream dissections of the formation (not to mention Dinosaur Park in Laurel). Nowadays the only sites left open are on park or private land, and collecting isn't allowed on pretty much all of them. That doesn't mean there's opportunities to make cool finds. I think sometime back near 2010 a guy from College Park found the imprint of a baby ankylosaur in a creek by his house; a new species. It's a similar story for the Triassic rocks, though with those studies have been focused outside of Maryland a lot more often than inside it. Urban development and quarry closings have destroyed pretty much the only sites that existed for dinosaur fossils (including the one near Mt. St. Mary's College and the famous Fulton Site), but smaller, creek and roadside exposures still exist here and there, you just have to spend a lot of time looking for them. Here's a decent report on the subject: http://www.mgs.md.gov/output/reports/ES/ES_6.pdf 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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