Formative Fossil Experiences And Finds

[Uncle Siphuncle]

What finds and events cemented your interest in paleo? For me it all began at the Blue Ash YMCA day camp in the suburbs of Cincinnati back in 1980. There was a camp counselor, a pretty old lady or so I thought at the time, who taught about fossils as one of the activities we could choose throughout the day. After dominating the BB gun and archery ranges I sort of began gravitating more toward the fossil lectures which were always followed by collecting the creek that ran through the property.

This counselor often mentioned the Caesar Creek Spillway in Waynesville, OH and I soon talked my family into going there one weekend. This was back in the days before legions of collectors had hit the site for decades and I managed to grab a killer enrolled Isotelus c.f. gigas in the first 20 minutes, quite a big deal for a pudgy 10 year old with nerdy thick glasses. I still remember my dad saying, " I've been looking for a trilobite for 20 years and never found one!" In subsequent trips I picked up a few tiny enrolled Flexicalamene trilobites from the flat, but that Isotelus was and still remains one of my most treasured finds. I don't know what was less likely: being preserved after 440 million years or not being lost over the last 28 years, especially during my childhood.

Last year on a trip back to Cincinnati I tracked down my camp counselor that I had not seen since that summer way back when. I found her in an assisted living center and visited her there and chatted with her at length, letting her know what a monster she had helped to create. I left her with some nice Texas fossils, sent a Christmas card, and felt good about bringing that nostalgic loop full circle.

What was your start in paleo?

[Guest solius symbiosus]

I was in to the sciences as a kid collecting rocks, and doing astronomy. When I started college, I choose Geology as a major, and my advisor was the Paleontologist, so It really took off from there.

[Xiphactinus]

Great topic!

Growing up, we had a creek behind our house loaded with Pennsylvanian fossils. I still have cephalopods, gastropods, etc. that I found in that creek more than 30 years ago.

[ebrocklds]

i always wanted to be an archeologist growing up. but that changed when i met a new friend in middle school whos mom volunteered at a paleontology lab close to my home. she saw that i was interested and invited me down to the lab to see the latest dinosaur, a stegosaurus stenops. i was so impressed at the time that when i turned 16 i went and applied for a job doing anything just to be around it. long story short they hired me and that is all that i have done since. to suppliment the paleo lab experiences my grandparents would also take me out to the desert to find elrathia trilobites and a variety of minerals since i was 10 or 12 years old.

Brock

[Guest N.AL.hunter]

We moved from Pampano Beach, FL to Huntsville, AL when I was 5. My family moved into a house on top of a local mountain, Monte Sano. In the front yard, I found a neat shaped rock. Took it to my only neighbor, Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, one of the original German Rocket Scientist, and he told me it was an Indian Arrowhead. Well, that had me looking down at the ground whenever I was out walking or hiking on the local trails. The mountain has trails all over it, and even a state park. Well, I did not find anymore Indian artifacts, but I did start finding fossils. By the time I was 7 (back then parents allowed kids to be kids and enjoy the out-of-doors), I already had a collection of many blastoids, archimedes, crinoids (stems mostly), bryozoans, and brachiopods. Dr. Stuhlinger, having four PhD's, was always able to tell me what I had found (He is a hero of mine. As I said, he was our only neighbor as we lived on a dead end street with just our house and the Stuhlinger's house). So I've been doing it ever since and will until I can't walk or am dead.