A gander along the river

[Collector9658]

I decided to take a trip out to the Mississippi River. With the weather warming in Missouri, the trees and plants are starting to grow and bloom once more. It is quite beautiful seeing some of the flowers and trees flourish, which I wish I had snapped some photos of. The downside to that, is some of my fossil hunting spots get quickly overgrown, or sometimes get submerged underwater.

 

This trip was to check out an exposure of Silurian aged Bainbridge Formation rock. I had not been to this site before, so I was excited to get out and explore once more. After a nice walk to my destination, I found the exposed red rocks along the river I was looking for.

Almost immediately, I found what I was searching for, trilobites! Calymenids are common in the right exposures of the Bainbridge Formation, but I didn't expect to see so many. 95% of the specimens found were weathered, damaged, and missing a lot of shell. Here's a few photos I took before I got overwhelmed by the sheer amount of trilobites exposed on the rock.

 

See how many you can find in the first picture. You may need to enlarged the photo. I counted over 10.

And the search was on! The goal was to find a nice, complete specimen or two to take home, clean, and then compare to other Calymenid trilobites I've found in different exposures of Bainbridge Formation rock. I spent the warm and windy afternoon hunched over, scouring over all the exposed bedrock. After hours and counting over 100 poorly preserved specimens, I finally found a nice looking one worth taking home.

It had a little bit of weathering, but looked to be all there. Many of them were exposed in this sort of flexed position. A bit of noise, and I extracted the specimen. This is a nice one I'll hopefully get a professional to clean, so I carefully packed it up and continued my search. A nice cephalopod, and a few crinoid holdfasts were also exposed atop the bedrock.

They were both pretty cool to see, especially that cephalopod fossil. Like trilobites, they aren't things I get to see everyday. I didn't find anymore good trilobites exposed and I didn't want to split rock, so I shifted to flipping over and looking through the river tumbled rocks for a while. The 9th rock I had fllipped over, looks to have a ventral trilobite on it.

The luckiest, and cutest find was this little .3 inch Calymenid trilobite that was washed along the riverbank. I have no clue how it hadn't been destroyed from the river, but I was quite happy to find it. Note how it's exposed in the similar flexed orientation as the last one I found.

One other interesting rock on the riverbank that probably has a complete specimen within was found. It had a few pleura segments and part of the pygidium exposed, but I forgot to photograph it. I'll upload a photo of it when I get home and unpack it if I don't forget.

 

It was great to get back out to the Mississippi River. I always enjoy nature, solitude, and fossil hunting. I avoided ticks this trip, but not the mosquitos! A good afternoon spent, I decided to pack up my belongings and head back to St. Louis for the night.

Edited March 26 by Collector9658
Spelling

[Fossildude19]

Great report and finds!

That first rock is pretty impressive.

Thanks for bringing us along with you!

[Isotelus2883]

This might be why.

[Brandy Cole]

Awesome report!

[Balance]

Thanks for the trip! So cool to see y’all’s fossil hunts now the winter is waning. 
 

“after a bit of noise”. 😂 

 

Jp

[Ludwigia]

Thanks for the report and congrats on the great finds. Please do show us the final results once you get these prepped.

[Collector9658]

7 hours ago, Ludwigia said:

Thanks for the report and congrats on the great finds. Please do show us the final results once you get these prepped.

Will do. A few are being cleaned up currently, so I hope to share them soon.

[Collector9658]

Here are the other finds I didn't upload. I actually had two. The one I forgot to photograph in the field, and also a larger plate with what looks like it could contain a larger Calymenid.

 

Part of the cephalon and a few axial rings are exposed. I'm hoping it is all there, because it would by far be the largest specimen I saw.