Fossil Hunt in Central NY

[Ged]

Hello everyone.

I'm making this post to show my recent trip to Central New York and what I found. I would also really appreciate advice on better techniques and further identification.

I started the trip by entering Tully, NY. I had heard there was a good site behind the hotel, right next to the exit. Unfortunately, the large exposed rock face was now marked with do not trespass signs. I decided to drive around the old quarry there and eventually found a random pile of rocks that I assumed were from the quarry to dig through. In there, I found the first two fossils. Two pieces of Crinoid stem and a nice little Brachiopod. (Photo 1).

 

Then, after doing a bit of research, I decided to head to Madison County. In Madison, I found an old quarry on Brigs Road. The quarry was divided into two tiers, and the top seemed to have a lot more fossils. After sifting through some of the rubble, I found a Trilobite section (photo 2) and a Trilobite imprint (photo 3). At the base, I also found several Brachiopods (photos 4–6). Most interesting, though, I believe is (photo 7), which appears to be a Crinoid feather segment, which are considerably harder to find than their stems. 

 

Finally I went down a ways to the Deep Springs Road quarry. This one had three tiers but I decided to focus on the top one. I dug in two areas. one halfway up the top tier and the other at the very top. Both proved very productive in trilobite sections. From this site, I recovered (photos 8-10). Unfortunately, no complete Trilobite was found. Interestingly, photo 8 had very fine preservation of the eye and intricate detail can be made out.

 

Overall, this was a great trip and I found some interesting stuff, especially since I had rather limited tools, using only a hammer. The main take aways are the high abundance of Trilobites in deep springs and the dense Brachiopod death layers in Brigs. I'll have to come back with better equipment to further investigate.

 

Photo 1:

 

Photo 2:

 

Photo 3:

 

Photo 4:

 

Photo 5:

 

Photo 6:

 

Photo 7:

 

Photo 8:

 

Photo 9:

 

Photo 10:

 

Briggs Road:

[trilobites_are_awesome]

Cool finds!

[Fossildude19]

FYI -  Please be advised  -

The Briggs road site was closed to collecting a few years ago.

It is private property, and some collectors were told they were no longer welcome to collect there by the owners.

 

That said, you did reasonably well.  The Eldredgeops  trilobite with the best eye detail is likely complete, or nearly so. It's just enrolled, and needs to be prepared out of the matrix.

[Fossildude19]

# 1  - Crinoid stem

# 2 -  Eldredgeops rana pygidium.

# 3 -  Imprint of the bivalve  Orthonata undulata

# 4 - Grammysia bisculata bivalve

# 5 - Spiriferid brachiopod, - hard to tell with no size. Either Mucrospirifer mucronatus, are Spinocyrtia granulosus.

# 6  - Spiriferid brachiopods. ??

# 7  - is not a crinoid. It looks like a brachiopod imprint,  with some sort of worm tube encrusters.

# 8 -  Enrolled Eldredgeops rana.

# 9 -  Eldredgeops rana Thorax

# 10 -  Greenops sp. pygidium.

[Darktooth]

As Tim already mentioned Briggs is closed to collecting but boy did I like going there for Eldredgeops. Found so many there, and some really big ones too! The preservation of the trilos from Briggs is outstanding.