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Your First (Found) Fossil


facehugger

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Someone has very likely already posted something similar to this, though a quick search didn't yield many results. So I thought I might give it a stab, and see if we get any bites. Also not sure if it belongs under general fossil discussion, but the admin gods will surely know...:zen:

 

Anybody got a first discovery they would like to share? 

 

Maybe a childhood fossil, or your first significant (maybe just to you) find?

 

Do you still have that initial specimen? And maybe a story to go with it?

 

If you care to, please share here. Thanks. :D

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Back in my childhood days, boys were allowed to be boys. A group of neighborhood friends would gather down by the train tracks daily to decide what mischief we would get into that day. It was winter and we decided to go on a hike up the tracks. About 3 miles into our adventure, we saw steam coming out of a snow bank. Seventh graders are inquisitive and we were no different. The snow was quickly pulled back revealing a small opening into the ground. We were not satisfied with this, so rocks were removed from around this hole in the ground until we were able to slither inside this tunnel. To our amazement, we had discovered an old abandoned mine. Not having any light source, we abandoned our deeper exploration of this cavern until the following weekend. Upon returning to our treasured find, we entered with many flashlights. When examining the rock wall, I could see these tubular structures in the rock. It was hard to extract them to take home but I did find a loose piece of rock that contained a very large tube in it. Over the next few weeks, I painstakingly used a nail to remove the matrix from the fossil. Once freed up, I  took it to school to show the science teacher. I was so proud of my find. The teacher identified it as a crinoid stem and then suggested I leave it with him!!! Being a bit shy, I could not say no, so my prized first fossil of my life was  lost to me forever!! And that is my story! 

 

Mike

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15 minutes ago, minnbuckeye said:

Back in my childhood days, boys were allowed to be boys. A group of neighborhood friends would gather down by the train tracks daily to decide what mischief we would get into that day. It was winter and we decided to go on a hike up the tracks. About 3 miles into our adventure, we saw steam coming out of a snow bank. Seventh graders are inquisitive and we were no different. The snow was quickly pulled back revealing a small opening into the ground. We were not satisfied with this, so rocks were removed from around this hole in the ground until we were able to slither inside this tunnel. To our amazement, we had discovered an old abandoned mine. Not having any light source, we abandoned our deeper exploration of this cavern until the following weekend. Upon returning to our treasured find, we entered with many flashlights. When examining the rock wall, I could see these tubular structures in the rock. It was hard to extract them to take home but I did find a loose piece of rock that contained a very large tube in it. Over the next few weeks, I painstakingly used a nail to remove the matrix from the fossil. Once freed up, I  took it to school to show the science teacher. I was so proud of my find. The teacher identified it as a crinoid stem and then suggested I leave it with him!!! Being a bit shy, I could not say no, so my prized first fossil of my life was  lost to me forever!! And that is my story! 

 

Mike

My grandfather has a similar story. He grew up on a farm near the small town of Balko Oklahoma, and one day around the farm found an extremely strange rock that looked to him to be a meteorite. He brought it to his teacher, and his teacher said that it was nothing special, but also made my grandfather give it up to him. My grandfather never saw that rock again...

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In my earliest days of hunting I wouldn't really dig deep on the internet to find fossil sites, instead I just read from fossilsites.com, the lists from which I have seen linked all across the forum under different domain names. Since I live in NH, I'm unlikely to find a trilobite, crinoid or brachiopod in the granite which make up the majority of the state's rock exposures. I instead  went to Vermont with my dad to go fossil hunting for the first time. We make our way across the state to the grand isle area on lake champlain. Near the town of Alburgh we tested our luck out on some road cuts and managed to find some trilobite fossils. I still have those in my collection as I only found them back in 2012 when I first started fossil hunting.

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I was about 8 years old when I found my first fossil. It's long since disappeared, but it looked a lot like a more weathered version of this more recent find:

 

Mediospirifer audaculus

 

This one is Mediospirifer audaculus. The original was probably not the same species. 

 

I found my first fossil in a creekbed out in the woods near home. I remember running home with it, greeting my Dad with a cry of "Daddy! This rock has a seashell in it!" Dad looked at it, explained what fossils were, then suggested that we look it up in the field guide. The Golden Guide to Fossils told us it was a spiriferid brachiopod.

 

I kept it, but nearly all of my childhood posessions are long since gone. It's been a few decades since I last saw it.

 

That is the origin of my pseudonym, too. I don't know what kind of spirifer it was, but Medios are common, and I like the sound. :D

 

 

 

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I am sure the vast majority of us that have much age to our lives have since lost our first finds to the sands of time.

Mine ( that I remember at least) was a very nice crinoid plate from my uncle's tobacco/ corn farm in Kentucky. I want to say somewhere around 1968 / 69.

 

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3 hours ago, caldigger said:

20190227_202451.png

 

I miss the kitty! :(

I didn't initially remember who 'facehugger' was until you mentioned what was missing! I tend to forget who I'm dealing with when they change their pic.

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5 hours ago, minnbuckeye said:

Back in my childhood days, boys were allowed to be boys. A group of neighborhood friends would gather down by the train tracks daily to decide what mischief we would get into that day. It was winter and we decided to go on a hike up the tracks. About 3 miles into our adventure, we saw steam coming out of a snow bank. Seventh graders are inquisitive and we were no different. The snow was quickly pulled back revealing a small opening into the ground. We were not satisfied with this, so rocks were removed from around this hole in the ground until we were able to slither inside this tunnel. To our amazement, we had discovered an old abandoned mine. Not having any light source, we abandoned our deeper exploration of this cavern until the following weekend. Upon returning to our treasured find, we entered with many flashlights. When examining the rock wall, I could see these tubular structures in the rock. It was hard to extract them to take home but I did find a loose piece of rock that contained a very large tube in it. Over the next few weeks, I painstakingly used a nail to remove the matrix from the fossil. Once freed up, I  took it to school to show the science teacher. I was so proud of my find. The teacher identified it as a crinoid stem and then suggested I leave it with him!!! Being a bit shy, I could not say no, so my prized first fossil of my life was  lost to me forever!! And that is my story! 

 

Mike

 

5 hours ago, Heteromorph said:

My grandfather has a similar story. He grew up on a farm near the small town of Balko Oklahoma, and one day around the farm found an extremely strange rock that looked to him to be a meteorite. He brought it to his teacher, and his teacher said that it was nothing special, but also made my grandfather give it up to him. My grandfather never saw that rock again...

Wow... Boys were allowed to be boys, but apparently teachers were allowed to be swindlers!

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This topic has come up once or twice but I never bothered to get a pic of mine until now. I think these are some of my first finds when I was a kid - Actually my parents, brother and I found these on summer trips to the local river (the Chemainus) which as it turned out is well known for heteromorph ammonites. There were a few that I have since lost, including a couple heteromorphs (Glyptoxoceras) one of which I recall being of nice quality. I tended to lose things while playing with them outside as a kid, and it's still rather a heartbreaker thinking about that today. Not knowing anything about fossils at the time, we had no idea what the heteromorphs were except that they looked like worms, as I recall!

On the other hand, the first and only artifact that I ever found, and then lost, my mother miraculously found out in the barnyard shortly before we moved away from that place! So sometimes I'm lucky.

 

ChemRiv-1stFinds.jpg

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12 hours ago, minnbuckeye said:

Back in my childhood days, boys were allowed to be boys. A group of neighborhood friends would gather down by the train tracks daily to decide what mischief we would get into that day. It was winter and we decided to go on a hike up the tracks. About 3 miles into our adventure, we saw steam coming out of a snow bank. Seventh graders are inquisitive and we were no different. The snow was quickly pulled back revealing a small opening into the ground. We were not satisfied with this, so rocks were removed from around this hole in the ground until we were able to slither inside this tunnel. To our amazement, we had discovered an old abandoned mine. Not having any light source, we abandoned our deeper exploration of this cavern until the following weekend. Upon returning to our treasured find, we entered with many flashlights. When examining the rock wall, I could see these tubular structures in the rock. It was hard to extract them to take home but I did find a loose piece of rock that contained a very large tube in it. Over the next few weeks, I painstakingly used a nail to remove the matrix from the fossil. Once freed up, I  took it to school to show the science teacher. I was so proud of my find. The teacher identified it as a crinoid stem and then suggested I leave it with him!!! Being a bit shy, I could not say no, so my prized first fossil of my life was  lost to me forever!! And that is my story! 

 

Mike

Wow! Finding an abandoned mine shaft as a kid sounds totally awesome, and a bit dangerous. I only found storm drains as a kid in Houston. 

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11 hours ago, PaleoNoel said:

In my earliest days of hunting I wouldn't really dig deep on the internet to find fossil sites, instead I just read from fossilsites.com, the lists from which I have seen linked all across the forum under different domain names. Since I live in NH, I'm unlikely to find a trilobite, crinoid or brachiopod in the granite which make up the majority of the state's rock exposures. I instead  went to Vermont with my dad to go fossil hunting for the first time. We make our way across the state to the grand isle area on lake champlain. Near the town of Alburgh we tested our luck out on some road cuts and managed to find some trilobite fossils. I still have those in my collection as I only found them back in 2012 when I first started fossil hunting.

Would be thrilled to see it, if you have a pic...

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18 hours ago, caldigger said:

20190227_202451.png

 

I miss the kitty! :(

The little jerk is very happy and healthy... :rofl:

 

You wouldn't miss him if you knew him to be the fossil destroyer that he is...

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6 hours ago, Wrangellian said:

 

Wow... Boys were allowed to be boys, but apparently teachers were allowed to be swindlers!

I was thinking the same thing. Why couldn't these teachers go find their own fossils?!

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5 hours ago, Wrangellian said:

This topic has come up once or twice but I never bothered to get a pic of mine until now. I think these are some of my first finds when I was a kid - Actually my parents, brother and I found these on summer trips to the local river (the Chemainus) which as it turned out is well known for heteromorph ammonites. There were a few that I have since lost, including a couple heteromorphs (Glyptoxoceras) one of which I recall being of nice quality. I tended to lose things while playing with them outside as a kid, and it's still rather a heartbreaker thinking about that today. Not knowing anything about fossils at the time, we had no idea what the heteromorphs were except that they looked like worms, as I recall!

On the other hand, the first and only artifact that I ever found, and then lost, my mother miraculously found out in the barnyard shortly before we moved away from that place! So sometimes I'm lucky.

 

 

I know what you mean, I think I lost a lot of childhood finds as well. But I still have my first major find, from about 30 years ago, and will share it after work. Thanks for sharing your first finds! :D

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The year was 2000somethingorother, I was invited along on a fossil hunt...I didn't find squat. The next trip though...

 

...wham!...

 

5c77fab988e22_firstspathites.thumb.jpg.f9674eb3d17bb536bc7c9c392bfa3a7d.jpg

 

...the spark to a magnificent flame. 

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"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    

 

point.thumb.jpg.e8c20b9cd1882c9813380ade830e1f32.jpg research.jpg.932a4c776c9696d3cf6133084c2d9a84.jpg  RPV.jpg.d17a6f3deca931bfdce34e2a5f29511d.jpg  SJB.jpg.f032e0b315b0e335acf103408a762803.jpg  butterfly.jpg.71c7cc456dfbbae76f15995f00b221ff.jpg  Htoad.jpg.3d40423ae4f226cfcc7e0aba3b331565.jpg  library.jpg.56c23fbd183a19af79384c4b8c431757.jpg  OIP.jpg.163d5efffd320f70f956e9a53f9cd7db.jpg

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I found some shark's teeth on a school field trip as a child.  I can't remember the location.

 

I still have them, here they are:

DSCN0206.JPG

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It was in 1959, when My parents took a curious 2 year old to the top of sandia mountains east of Albuquerque New Mexico.

I found this brachiopod....

DSCF1861.JPG.6bfb39906bf2037e2c6f4a17b49d0d41.JPGDSCF1862.JPG.d42be0d9174f9ade4f7296f9a69e4e73.JPG

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Darwin said: " Man sprang from monkeys."

Will Rogers said: " Some of them didn't spring far enough."

 

My Fossil collection - My Mineral collection

My favorite thread on TFF.

 

 

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1 hour ago, ynot said:

It was in 1959, when My parents took a curious 2 year old to the top of sandia mountains east of Albuquerque New Mexico.

I found this brachiopod....

DSCF1861.JPG.6bfb39906bf2037e2c6f4a17b49d0d41.JPGDSCF1862.JPG.d42be0d9174f9ade4f7296f9a69e4e73.JPG

And you still have it! That's awesome!!! :dinothumb:

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I was on a school geography trip at the time I did not care for the country side been an inner city punk. I found this hash plate in a stream and at the time it reminded me of some ancient writing. I was 15 or 16 and lucky enough had no interest in showing the teacher. Going by the past post here and the magpiesque teachers  my instincts served me well and I still have it today.

7BC61C98-2B95-46DE-81BA-626892EBE763.jpeg

6D7162AF-EC1D-4E37-9DE9-6CCC31EBC2F1.jpeg

9EFF3D31-1350-434F-86C7-6EDFC64E157F.jpeg

4D53CE8E-A829-44C7-B614-C61E3DE1D793.jpeg

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My first find was 1973 while camping on a beach near Darwin.

I picked up this little ammonite.

Dropped, broken and repaired but still with me.

As a first it is still special.

 

Mike

D-1.jpg

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31 minutes ago, Mike from North Queensland said:

My first find was 1973 while camping on a beach near Darwin.

I picked up this little ammonite.

Dropped, broken and repaired but still with me.

As a first it is still special.

 

Mike

D-1.jpg

So tiny, and even has the inner whorls...

 

It's beautiful, Mike! What a cool first fossil... :dinothumb: Thanks for sharing!

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1 hour ago, Bobby Rico said:

I was on a school geography trip at the time I did not care for the country side been an inter city punk. I found this hash plate in a stream and at the time it reminded me of some ancient writing. I was 15 or 16 and lucky enough had no interest in showing the teacher. Going by the past post here and the magpiesque teachers  my instincts served me well and I still have it today.

 

Right? Judging by the other posts here, the teacher would have surely claimed your first fossil! Sometimes better NOT to show and tell...

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2 hours ago, facehugger said:

Right? Judging by the other posts here, the teacher would have surely claimed your first fossil! Sometimes better NOT to show and tell...

Definitely, teachers in this thread seem be more than happy to line their collectors draws with their ill gotten gains or your first fossil  find.

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You could always say no. :mellow:

 

I had an art teacher that would charge the kids for supplies that the school ( and our tax dollars ) already supplied him with.

 

 

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