It's Summer And You Want To Go To Pit 11 For Mazon Creek Fossils

[Fossil-Hound]

Kind of eerie. The setting reminds me of some scenes from Annihilation. Very nice.

[stats]

Great post, Ralph!   I've been out 8-10 times this spring.  Probably wait until September to go again.  It is MUCH easier in March than now.  Everywhere is overgrown, but the new plant growth makes it worse.  Did you see much poison ivy?  I haven't been out for about 3 weeks and back then some of the paths were fairly think in it.  The ticks are out now, too.  I had 4 on my clothes last time.  They do thin out as the summer gets hot.

 

There are pretty much concretions everywhere, but as you said, "you need to work for them"!   

 

Jellyfish are very common, actually the most common.  I get them all the time as I freeze/thaw, so I won't post any.  Here are a couple newly opened concretions.

 

Lepidostrobophylum

 

Pectopteris sp.

 

Cheers,

Rich

 

[Nimravis]

Rich @stats I did not run into any Poison Ivy or ticks and in some places I almost crawling in some spots to take pictures. You have a couple pretty fossils there and yes there are a lot of concretions to be found.

[Wrangellian]

On 6/16/2019 at 10:24 PM, Nimravis said:

I believe that they can- and concretion depletion is not something that I worry about. It has been that way for years and if you want concretions, you really have to work for them. Unlike other places that people collect fossils, there is not guarantee that anything is going to be found in a particular area, it is the luck of the draw. 

 

I really with that the State would go in and bulldoze the Tipple Area to turn it over. As it stands now, not much will come out of there and it is getting harder each year.

No, you shouldn't worry as you've already got tons and live sort of nearby so you can go back for more! But I think if the collecting pressure increases, it will get that much harder to find any. Well, maybe knowing that it's much harder than it was back in the day will deter some of the casual collectors.

Sure it would be nice if the state went in with a bulldozer. The fossils are worth it, and it might encourage a bit of tourism!

[Nimravis]

4 hours ago, Wrangellian said:

The fossils are worth it, and it might encourage a bit of tourism

I totally agree

[deutscheben]

Thanks as always for your Mazon Creek report! This one was a great comparison of the past and present of the park. As everyone has said, it would be really great if the IDNR would do some/any management of Mazonia-Braidwood to improve fossil collecting. Hopefully with the state on more stable financial ground we might see that going forward. 

[Nimravis]

22 minutes ago, deutscheben said:

Hopefully with the state on more stable financial ground we might see that going forward. 

We can hope.

[stats]

20 hours ago, Wrangellian said:

No, you shouldn't worry as you've already got tons and live sort of nearby so you can go back for more! But I think if the collecting pressure increases, it will get that much harder to find any. Well, maybe knowing that it's much harder than it was back in the day will deter some of the casual collectors.

Sure it would be nice if the state went in with a bulldozer. The fossils are worth it, and it might encourage a bit of tourism!

I would love it if they would plow like was agreed in the beginning.  Also, it would be great if there was a way to clear some of the overgrowth.  It is very hard to get into most of the regions.  We went very deep to some new areas a couple weekends ago.  The dead and fallen over trees are everywhere.  You have to force yourself through.  Even using a machete didn't help much.  The best is to find game trails, but i think there are areas that even the deer don't go...

 

Cheers,

Rich

[Randyw]

On 6/17/2019 at 9:45 PM, stats said:

 

 

Jellyfish are very common, actually the most common.  I get them all the time as I freeze/thaw, so I won't post any.  Here are a couple newly opened concretions.

 

Lepidostrobophylum

 

Pectopteris sp.

 

Cheers,

Rich

 

Jellyfish are common? Sigh I knew I lived in the wrong part of the country! Jellyfish...

[Wrangellian]

4 hours ago, stats said:

I would love it if they would plow like was agreed in the beginning.  Also, it would be great if there was a way to clear some of the overgrowth.  It is very hard to get into most of the regions.  We went very deep to some new areas a couple weekends ago.  The dead and fallen over trees are everywhere.  You have to force yourself through.  Even using a machete didn't help much.  The best is to find game trails, but i think there are areas that even the deer don't go...

 

Cheers,

Rich

I guess there aren't too many sloping areas (like that pile shown above) where erosion will continually uncover new conc's?

2 hours ago, Randyw said:

Jellyfish are common? Sigh I knew I lived in the wrong part of the country! Jellyfish...

It seems funny that one of the softest, least-often preserved critters would be the most common thing at the site! I have a few of them already but would never turn them down, as jellyfish fossils are generally rare worldwide, and there are always collectors who don't have any yet that you might be able to trade with. If you just wanted one example of soft-bodied preservation in your collection, I bet you will end up with an Essexella.

[Yoda]

@Nimravis

Fantastic post. 

 

Do you go to this site regularly?

 

[Nimravis]

2 hours ago, Yoda said:

@Nimravis

Fantastic post. 

 

Do you go to this site regularly?

 

Thanks and no I do not. About 20 years ago I would be out there every weekend and if it rained during the week, I would go after work. Now I will only collect at the beginning of March when the fossil collecting season starts.

[digit]

14 hours ago, stats said:

The best is to find game trails, but i think there are areas that even the deer don't go...

I'm up in the Chicago area for a few weeks and decided yesterday that it had been too many years since I'd collected any Mazon Creek goodness. I brought a backpack (optimistic) but that really held my water bottle and some zip-top bags and my bottle of DEET. I wore my lightweight long pants that I usually use out in the field and a long sleep shirt (despite the heat). I tucked my pant legs into my socks and sprayed my ankles, wrists and neck area with a heavy dose of DEET to keep the ticks at bay (worked, I came back without any which is a change). I poked around under the trees and thick under brush on sloping areas where erosion could keep the ground a bit free of the vegetation and bring some nodules to the surface. I did spot one deer out on the trail and saw several deer tracks where I was so (on a very steep slope) I think it is pretty difficult to find places where even the deer don't go.

 

Managed to fill a zip-top baggie with some nodules and found several split ones with ferns and plant material showing. Left 5 hours later tired, sweaty, scratched up and with some new rips in my pants (raspberry bushes and thorny trees in the undergrowth) and had a whopping great time.

 

Thanks again to Ralph for this excellent illustrated guide to the Mazonia-Braidwood area and where and how to hunt for these famous nodules. You may know that I tend to write long winded and illustrated trip reports and it was a great treat to see that someone else took the time and effort to document the lesser known bits of a well known location like Mazon Creek. Congratulations on a top-notch effort that will benefit the readership here and add to the collective knowledge archived on the forum.

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[bigred97]

On ‎6‎/‎17‎/‎2019 at 5:55 PM, Mark Kmiecik said:

Thanks for the effort to photograph the various parts of the collecting area and posting a most excellent report here. This should make the area a little less "scary" for people heading there for the first time. It won't make things any easier as far as moving along the terrain goes, but it does show what and where to look for it. There is 160 square kilometers of land area that was mined so there's hundreds of millions of concretions still to be found. The problem is getting to them. Ground cover is very thick and particularly "nasty", but the best finds are in the thickest parts of that cover. You will leave bruised and abused and grinning from ear to ear.

"bruised and abused and grinning from ear to ear." I love that description, Mark!  Perfectly describes how I feel after spending a day there!

[Nimravis]

1 hour ago, digit said:

Thanks again to Ralph for this excellent illustrated guide to the Mazonia-Braidwood area and where and how to hunt for these famous nodules. You may know that I tend to write long winded and illustrated trip reports and it was a great treat to see that someone else took the time and effort to document the lesser known bits of a well known location like Mazon Creek. Congratulations on a top-notch effort that will benefit the readership here and add to the collective knowledge archived on the forum.

Thanks for the nice comments Ken.

[stats]

9 hours ago, digit said:

I'm up in the Chicago area for a few weeks and decided yesterday that it had been too many years since I'd collected any Mazon Creek goodness. I brought a backpack (optimistic) but that really held my water bottle and some zip-top bags and my bottle of DEET. I wore my lightweight long pants that I usually use out in the field and a long sleep shirt (despite the heat). I tucked my pant legs into my socks and sprayed my ankles, wrists and neck area with a heavy dose of DEET to keep the ticks at bay (worked, I came back without any which is a change). I poked around under the trees and thick under brush on sloping areas where erosion could keep the ground a bit free of the vegetation and bring some nodules to the surface. I did spot one deer out on the trail and saw several deer tracks where I was so (on a very steep slope) I think it is pretty difficult to find places where even the deer don't go.

 

Managed to fill a zip-top baggie with some nodules and found several split ones with ferns and plant material showing. Left 5 hours later tired, sweaty, scratched up and with some new rips in my pants (raspberry bushes and thorny trees in the undergrowth) and had a whopping great time.

 

Thanks again to Ralph for this excellent illustrated guide to the Mazonia-Braidwood area and where and how to hunt for these famous nodules. You may know that I tend to write long winded and illustrated trip reports and it was a great treat to see that someone else took the time and effort to document the lesser known bits of a well known location like Mazon Creek. Congratulations on a top-notch effort that will benefit the readership here and add to the collective knowledge archived on the forum.

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

You are probably right.   The deer go everywhere.  Some place are very thick.  Pretty much every time I go, I crawling around under branches for a good amount of time as that is where the ground is bare.  Was the rhubarb coming up?  That makes it hard to see the ground, even where it would ordinarily be clear.  We bring rakes to reach under and around the vegetation.

 

I think we met back when Fossil Rock Campgrounds was open.  I miss that place!  Pit 11 concretions are different.  Some of them are very hard and stubborn.

 

Congrats on the finds!

 

Cheers,

Rich

 

[digit]

The rhubarb was coming up but I was able to find channels and rills where rains had eroded enough of the thick clay topsoil to keep lots of vegetation from growing. Many times the rocks that were flushed out by this process accumulated in piles at the top of a tree trunk (which made for fertile probing for nodules). There is enough leaf litter covering the ground in most areas that you really need to sweep that away to see the bare ground below. A rake might be good for more open areas but where I was hunting was so tight between prickly vegetation that I'd never be able to navigate with a full long-handled rake. I broke off a short straight section of one of the many dead branches littering the ground and used that to sweep the leaf litter to one side to expose nodules. On a steep slope (roughly 45 degrees) it is easier to sweep the litter down so I found going to the base of the incline and working my way up one of the erosional channels sweeping the debris down as I climbed seem to work better than working in the opposite direction. For those who would like something more high-tech than a stick (which worked for our ancestors for millennia ) I'd suggest bringing something like the small 3-tine garden cultivators.

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

[smokeriderdon]

Wow! A place i have always wanted to collect but had ZERO idea where to go or what to do. Much thanks! That being said, where EXACTLY is this place? LOL I mean, I know its in Illinois...

[Nimravis]

21 minutes ago, smokeriderdon said:

Wow! A place i have always wanted to collect but had ZERO idea where to go or what to do. Much thanks! That being said, where EXACTLY is this place? LOL I mean, I know its in Illinois...

Southwest of Chicago near the towns of Braidwood and Godley.

 

Collecting area is in Yellow.

 

[digit]

On 6/16/2019 at 11:53 PM, Nimravis said:

The Red arrow is a Ponderosa Lake.

 

 

When you gate to the Boat ramp parking, proceed down the road where you will have to cross another chain fence, again these chains are just to stop you from driving down this road. As you continue down this road, you will see it is more of a path that goes up and down.

 

 

 

In case i confused anyone, here is an aerial shot of where you cross the chain.

 

 

I took this path for quite a distance, but did not see where it ended.

This path (from the yellow arrow shown above) goes completely around Ponderosa Lake for a distance of probably a few miles (haven't had the chance to circumnavigate on this path yet).

 

Tammy and I took advantage of a break in the rainy weather passing through the Mazon Creek area with a dry (but stinking hot) forecast for earlier today (possible storms this evening). In the last week I was able to make it out once to the Monster Lake area by myself and once to the tipple hill area mentioned earlier in this post (with my mom!) as this area is somewhat rugged terrain but free of the heavy overhead vegetation that requires crawling around and getting scratched up. My mom was game to see this area that I'd been talking about for so many years (and bringing back bags of concretions). We didn't find many concretions in the tipple hill area but one of the ones we found was one of the most beautiful concretions I've ever found in Mazonia-Braidwood. It is such a gorgeous hamburger patty of a concretion that it would be a shame if it turned out to be blank so I think I'll keep this one whole and not subject it to the freeze/thaw cycles. I need to take a photo of this pretty little thing and post it here.

 

During today's visit, Tammy and I prospected the big hill near the Monster Lake parking lot on 5000 N and while the terrain looked really nice (steep slopes with relatively bare clay soil free of much undergrowth) but we rarely even saw any indications of the rusty brown siderite concretions--whole or fragmentary. It was nice to prospect in an area we had not yet been to in Mazonia-Braidwood but it was just too hot to wander around for more than about an hour without finding more than 3 complete concretions.

 

We continued on to our primary destination at the Ponderosa Lake parking area (as shown above--yellow arrow). There were a few trucks there with trailers attached showing that a few other visitors were enjoying a day on the water seeing if they could get some Redear Sunfish or Bluegills on the line. I think we were the only visitors silly enough to go tramping through the underbrush risking dehydration, scratches and scrapes, and the ever present menace of the scourge of Mazon Creek: ticks!

 

After parking in the lot next to the boat ramp we headed off in the roped-off trail that Ralph pictured above (I was lazy and didn't photograph this same trailhead as he'd done such a great job of showing it already). The lower part of this trail at the start was a bit sodden from recent heavy rains but that was not a problem for our hiking boots as it was only a couple of inches deep. Before long the trail starts to rise and you gain a fair bit of elevation while walking along the trail. One of the first times we'd visited this area we (very naively) looked for nodules right along the trail (there are none!) and didn't realize that you need to depart the openness of the trail itself and plunge into the undergrowth off either side. We've since been off both sides of the main trail with good success either way. Today we walked up the trail till it leveled off and started descending a bit. I decided that would be a good enough spot to choose as a stepping off point and so we headed off the trail to the right (toward the lake) and started picking our way under the branches and through the thicket of dry dead branches in the undergrowth.

 

The trail with dense undergrowth hiding concretions off either side.

 

Within a few feet of the trail we started finding the rusty color of broken concretions littering the gray clay of the open ground. In just a few minutes we'd already collected more concretions than we had at our first prospecting stop. We scrambled down the slope working our way down the valleys where rains gather and wash out and deposit concretions. Before long we were having a grand old time spotting nice concretions on the surface or revealed using a scraping stick broken off from one of the many dry branches to choose from under the canopy.

 

    

 

    

 

A bit further down the slope we started seeing some nice large size concretions lying on the surface. These always tended to be halves that had weathered out and split during the winter. This large one seems to have a faint trace of a Essexella asherae jelly (aka "blob") only visible after rinsing this off back at home.

 

    

 

We got down to the base of the hill (probably 30-40 feet of elevation drop) closer to the lake. It leveled off into a muddy area with some of the reeds and grasses that grow along edge of the lake. At the base of this hill we got into the mother-lode with quite a number of concretions appearing at or near the surface which became visible using my found stick tool to scrape away the leaf litter. I always enjoy the hunt for concretions but it really gets downright fun when you get into the zone and the concretions start jumping up off the ground into your zip-top bag. The group shown below were all found within inches (and seconds) of each other. Nothing brings a smile to the face of a surface-hunting fossil hunter than being presented with the site of an abundance of that which you seek.

 

    

 

    

 

Here's a bit of in-situ goodness so you all can vicariously feel what it is like to sneak-up on an unsuspecting concretion.

 

    

 

 

We pretty well filled a gallon zip-top bag with concretions from this area and seemed to exhaust the finds near the surface that could be found with a bit of scraping. It's an extra bit of an adrenaline jolt when your scraping stick reveals the edge of a concretion buried under the gray surface clay and a bit of probing pops out a beautiful plump concretion. We had been through most of our water by this time and our DEET supply was waning so we figured we were about ready to head back up the slope and back to the car where we could change into drier clothes and drive into town for a cold drink and a late lunch.

 

While I was finishing scratching around the ground with my high-tech tool, Tammy amused herself by poking around with her longer stick that she used as a combination scratching stick and walking stick. She saw the telltale red brick color of a sideride concretion in the gray clay (that is the result of the decomposition of the Francis Creek Shale) and poked it with a stick--as one does. Her first poke revealed the curve of a concretion that looked to be whole and not a weathered half. I had the presence of mind to stop her so I could get an in situ photo before she uncovered and pried out her find. There was quite a shout of surprise combined with equal amounts of shock and joy as the day's largest concretion revealed itself in all its splendor. Guys, whether it is within your power or not it is always a smart move to let your wife discover the find of the day. After revealing this prize we decided we were done for the day--it just couldn't get better than that!

 

    

 

 

These spoil piles are many decades old and we've even hunted nearly the same section several years ago but that shouldn't allow anybody to assume that this world-class Lagerstätte is tapped-out. Year after year erosional forces bring new concretions to the surface. If we are not there to scuttle through the undergrowth and defy skeeters, biting flies and blood-sucking ticks to rescue these concretions before they naturally weather into pieces and are lost forever (after waiting some 308 million years for the chance to be discovered). Do your part and put Mazonia-Braidwood on your fossil bucket list. Use the information in this post to guide your hunt so that you will stand a good chance of being successful. Plan your trip in the spring (fossil season opens March 1) when the undergrowth is less and the temps are more pleasant. When you do make it out, take lots of photos and post a nice trip report so we can all drool on our keyboards.

 

 

No. It's not Bigfoot--something even better, Tammy emerging from the undergrowth with a smile and a handful of concretions.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

[Nimravis]

@digit Ken great recap on a super collecting day, thanks for posting and hopefully something nice comes out of your concretions.

[digit]

The fun for us has always been in the potential of the hunt. We got into a nice density of concretions and finding some big whoppers added to the excitement. Mazon Creek concretions are always interesting in that they have a time delay bonus as well. Like collecting scratch-off lottery tickets, we won't know what (if anything) we've collected till we get the big reveal after multiple rounds through the freeze/thaw cycle. I'll be soaking these for several weeks in a bucket of water in my garage. I've got a plastic shoebox and I'll be transferring a few handfuls of the concretions into the shoebox and onto the quick freeze shelf in my freezer. They'll sit there for at least a day (till I remember them again ) and then they'll go outside and the shoebox will be filled with water from the hose. I've found that the thermal shock of being warmed with water can help to peel away the outer layers of the concretion. It's the expansion by water (hopefully) penetrated into the concretion in the freezer that is doing the real work of attempting to split the concretion on the fossil plane. More than a day or so in the freezer is no more effective than a shorter spell as it is the phase transition from water to ice that does the mechanical work of opening these concretions to see if they are duds or if they contain 300 myo prizes.

 

Here's the (cleaned up) haul from yesterday at Ponderosa Lake:

 

    

 

And this is the prettiest concretion I think I've ever found at Mazonia-Braidwood. It's very symmetrical and has a nice shiny surface. I'll probably keep this one as an example of a concretion and not subject it to the freeze/that cycling. There might be something interesting inside but life needs its little mysteries and this one will remain mysterious.

 

    

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Tidgy's Dad]

Very useful guide to those who don't know the area.

One day...........

Maybe............

[Nimravis]

@digit Ken those are some pretty and big concretions.

[Mark Kmiecik]

5 hours ago, digit said:

   

I don't think this one is a concretion. I've collected tens of thousands and never came across a shiny one! Not saying it can't be, just wow if it is. Iron siderite, that composes the concretions, has a specific gravity of 3.96, and you may want to check this specimens specific gravity against that of a known MC concretion as a comparison. I'm guessing that since the concretions aren't 100% iron siderite their specific gravity should be somewhere between 3.5 and 3.8 -- of course, this is just an educated (poorly) guess.