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G'day TFF, I thought i'd share with you all the results of my recent trilobite hunting trip in country NSW, Australia. This is only the second time i have been able to collect trilobites and i am very pleased with the results! My family and i went out to a spot near Forbes that is part of the Silurian-aged Cotton Formation. The rocks are marine and date back about 435 million years old! It's crazy to think that at the time these animals were alive in the sea, there was very little life yet on land at all! The most common find here is the trilobite Odontopleura markhami, but you can also find graptolites and rare brachiopods and gastropods. We got to the site around about 11 am and quickly started splitting as many rocks as we could looking for the trilobites, and after being there for only about a minute i managed to split a beautiful near-complete Odontopleura markhami with both the positive and negative sides. It was only about the second or third rock i cracked open too! For the next few hours my family and i continued to whack away at the rocks and we managed to find at least 5 other complete trilobites during that time, in addition to lots and lots of disarticulated body parts (isolated heads, tails, sections of thorax etc). Mum and i got the best examples, but it really does tend to come down to luck (and persistence)! It was a great little trip and the specimens below are already proudly displayed in one of my bedroom glass cabinets. Now for the pictures! The Location: The Days Best Finds (complete or near-complete trilobites only) First of all i thought i'd include a picture of what the seafloor might have looked like in this part of Australia 435 million years ago. This was the Odontopleura markhami i found barely a minute after arriving at the site! My other favourite example that i found I love this Odontopleura markhami that mum found! The detail of the spines is amazing! Other great examples. All are again Odontopleura markhami. Thanks for checking this report out and happy hunting to all! Cheers, Nathan
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- australian trilobites
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Hello Everyone In June last year I went on a trip with my parents to the Late Ordovician / Early Silurian-aged Cotton Formation at the Cotton Hill quarry in Forbes. All relevant permission was obtained from the local council prior to attending. I have heard that the Fossil Club of Australia (formerly NSW) do trips here as a group as well, that's probably the easiest way to attend. I planned to post this in August, however due to Covid I didn’t have access to the fossils to take pictures. Also, I only just recently bought some macro equipment to take photos of the fossils which is why my post took so long. Be sure to zoom in on each photo as they are all highly detailed. (open in a new tab) For useful previous expeditions and information by others see: For those unaware, the fauna is dominated by Sinespinaspis markhami, a small odontopleurid trilobite. Unfortunately, I found no specimens with their free cheeks attached, nor did I find any specimens of the rarer Aulacopleura pogsoni or the even rarer Raphiophorus sandfordi. We had two days of digging, and the temperature was a cool 14-15C on both days, but once the sun came out and with long-sleeve shirt and pants on, we definitely started sweating. As soon as we got out of the car, I found a partial trilobite negative lying on the ground. It was 8mm long and looked like it was left behind by another fossicker. Once we realised where the designated fossicking area was (back near the road entrance, and not in front of the parking area) we could start properly searching for fossils. The first ones we found were on the surface on the westernmost boundary. It’s amazing how big the actual site is. Considering how deep the hole in the ground is, there probably would’ve been thousands or millions of fossils unearthed and used in road material over the years. Both the plates seem to be death assemblages, with hundreds of “trilo-bits” on them along with what looks like tiny shells. When I got home, I wanted to split the L-shaped to expose more of the second layer (you can see one set of cold chisel marks) but the matrix must have been unstable as it cracked into five pieces and exploded. It did set free a new trilobite though, which is cool.
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- bivalve?
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A few things from the Silurian (Llandovery) Cotton Formation near Forbes, NSW Australia. Most of these specimens are currently undescribed, but a paper will be released on them soon. One of my strophomenid brachiopods from the site will be in the paper, so I'll post it when it comes out, since they're a pain to photograph. The rare Aulacopleura pogsoni ....
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- australia
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Paper describing A. pogsoni - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236011643_Early_Silurian_Llandovery_trilobites_from_the_Cotton_Formation_near_Forbes_New_South_Wales_Australia
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- aulacopleura
- aulacopleura pogsoni
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Wow what an early Christmas present. I've just found out that me and my brother have made it onto a Forbes list; The Top Ten Fossil Finds of 2016. Here's the link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/shaenamontanari/2016/12/22/the-top-10-fantastic-fossil-finds-of-2016/#6ab517d32d87 Dracoraptor hanigani. Happy Christmas everyone. Enjoy the holidays. Nick
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- 10
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- dracoraptor
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