Search the Community

Hi All! Long-time lurker who finally decided to introduce myself. I’ve used this awesome forum numerous times to find places to fossil hunt as I travel around the Midwest (for work & pleasure). Always touched at how generously folks share fossil sites on here!! Just got back from a 3-day jaunt to Bentonville, Arkansas, and thanks to some advice from this forum made it to some neat “quickie” fossil hunting (I had about an hour in the morning before my hubby woke up & I had promised I’d be back & cleaned up & ready to go to breakfast by 10... which was wise, actually, now that I think on it ‘cause without the deadline, I’d have stayed out till my knees stopped straightening & the sun was setting!! lol Yeah, smart hubby!!) And I did, in fact, find a couple neat little fossils in Little Sugar Creek off Price Coffee Road. (And what a scenic area too— SO picturesque! worth the drive even without fossils!) Anyhow, as for me, fossils are really more of a “side-line” to my rock-hounding interests. My great-grandpa was a stone mason, his son (my paternal grandpa) was a long-time lapidarist (I was just a kid then — how I regret I never cared to learn lapidary from him back then! What a missed opportunity! One of my true regrets in life!) So, I’m a 3rd generation Los Angelina. My dad took us kids (all 3 of us girls) fossil-hunting from an early age. I’d say I probably caught the hunting “bug” on a trip to a place I remember as being called “Shark’s Tooth Mountain” in Bakersfield (??) (I still have the shark teeth & such gleened from a full day sitting in the dirt there.) Well, it’s also highly likely I got exposed to Valley Fever there too ... ah, the good ol’ days before we had the Internet to tell us all the things we were doing wrong! So, yeah, as for me, my current interest in rocks and fossils are mostly related to seeking materials to make jewelry and art out of. I work out of Dallas, Texas, now so I’m hoping to *finally* get a chance to join the Rock & Gem Club out there & learn some genuine lapidary skills. Same with metalsmithing. Though I’m not doing anything fancy—just stuff for my own pleasure & to wear or give as gifts, etc. (Not commercial, in other words— purely an amateur!) But, I am also a naturalist above all, and simply love being out in the fresh air exploring Nature. I am an Environmental Planner by trade and one of those rare folks with a biology degree (well, B.S. in Zoology, to be exact) who actually did field biology (chasing endangered flies around sand dunes in Colton, CA!) Honestly, I get just as much enjoyment from finding a bird’s feather, a shiny pebble or spotting an iridescent dragonfly as from unearthing a fossil. So, it’s all good! I will try to post pix of my finds, old and new, as I am able. I know almost nothing about names or the geology of paleontology (it’s been 30 years since I took geology and paleontology was one of the few courses I wasn’t required to take, so I’m pretty much a beginner on here. Oh, except I do work with geologists— and, luckily, I’ve yet to meet a geologist who WASN’T willing to opine on any fossil or rock I drag in to them! Thanks everyone! (Sorry for the windy post—kudos if you’ve actually read all the way to here!) =) CAT B