Day Trip to the Liberty Formation of Indiana

[jforbes]

 

 

Hi everyone. Here is a trip report from a recent visit to the Liberty formation in Indiana. I almost exclusively hunted the "butter shale". I made a 3.5 hour drive from Illinois and hunted for approximately five hours. Feel free to drop some IDs if you know them offhand. this is my first time hunting this area so im relatively unfamiliar with the flora.

 

Here is a picture of most of my finds before cleaning:

 

I'll start with the trilobites. I did not do as well as I had hoped in this department, but I did manage to get a few. My best trilobite was about 75% complete and only about half an inch long. I somehow managed to lose that little guy along the way, as he wasnt in my bag when I got home. As for the trilobites that made it home, here are some pieces:

 

Next are some brachiopods. I just want to say how happy I am to have found this first one. It is in such good condition and I love the shape of it:

 

Here are some more images of a few brachiopods I cleaned up. This does not reflect all the brachiopods I found, but shows a good representation of what is present in this formation.

 

Here is one of many horn corals just because:

 

And here is something I do not have an ID on. Anyone have any thoughts on this? 

 

Thanks for looking. If I return back the this site, my fingers are still crossed for rolled trilobite!

 

Edited April 18 by jforbes

[connorp]

Your mystery item is an orthocone. You can see the septa and siphuncle.

[jforbes]

1 hour ago, connorp said:

Your mystery item is an orthocone. You can see the septa and siphuncle.

Well that is much cooler than I imagined. Thank you for the help.