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After a bust season in Florida for the Peace River, it has been way too high. I am excited to be planning a trip back to Newberry, Mi. Two years ago when I was there, I was able to collect at a degrading hill side east of the town. There is a quarry of Collingwood Shale south of the town, but I was fortunate to find drift cobbles, and some Collingwood Shale on a friends property. Last time I found several nice impressions of Pseudogygites , mostly just the pygidium. I also found a couple of kinds of graptolites, and brought back a 4 inch thick, 16" long slab of shale with a nice orthoceras impression on the top. As i began salivating about my new trip, I returned to the shale and decided to split it, hoping I would not break the orthoceras impression on top. Well I am glad I did. It was such an interesting afternoon. One of the splits revealed just a fine grain layer of dark mud, with nothing in it. That was the middle split. Then I split each of those halves...in the have below the clean layer, I saw lots of little white dots...ranging from 1/32 of an inch to 1/16...Turns out they are braciapods. I captured a photo of one of the largest, and in it, the hinge even shows. Amazing. On the the half lying between my orthoceras impression on top of the clean grainy mud. Excitement. And drum roll please. I popped open what appears to be a small orthoceras, but perhaps it is a conularid, can't really tell. The exciting thing for me was the preservation. It has a nice decomposition blow ring of color around it, deriving from the decomposition gasses. I learned that from studying my Conasauga trilobites. And then it has some nice detail indicating structure. I was really excited. In the photo of the two halves, one looks larger because it is closer to the camera. On the other side, the top of this piece, my orthoceras was preserved, but a little chip from the side revealed a nice graptolite. A bit more might be revealed, but my previous experience with graptolites. precludes that...I don't plan to touch it. I found so many of them last time, I played around to see if they would be cleaned up....not the ones I have, they just break apart at the slightest touch. So overall, I feel like I am experiencing my trip once again, and I hope to be able to post new photos in June after I return. First photo is the little brachiopod (unknown type). Second photo is the Collingwood shale after splitting. Third photo is the two halves in same photo. Fourth photo is half A - fifth is half B