Our program this month will be presented by Dry Dredgers member Don Bissett. Don will be taking us on a whirlwind tour of several US trilobite localities he has collected, many with Dan Cooper. His presentation is titled, Trilobite Travelogue. This spans sites in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, New York, Oklahoma, and Texas. He will describe the localities and present pictures of selected specimens from each.
Don Bissett is a long-time member of the Dry Dredgers and MAPS. His passion for collecting fossils began in 1975, when he was introduced to the hobby by another Dredger: Bruce Gibson. Don's formal training is in chemistry (UConn) and biochemistry (Michigan State), followed by a 33-year career at P&G and subsequently 15 years in technical consulting in the industry. In his paleontology hobby, he has provided site information to professionals and hobbyists, led field trips, volunteered for 25 years as dealer chair for GeoFair and two decades at Penn Dixie’s Dig with the Experts, and donated thousands of collected specimens to school science classes and for study by professionals (e.g., University of Iowa, UC, Cincinnati Museum Center, Miami University, SUNY Plattsburgh, Binghamton University, and Central Connecticut State University). He is author on numerous articles for the MAPS Expo Digest, nearly 200 articles for area club bulletins, and co-author on many technical posters and peer-reviewed journal publications.
TIME: 8 pm
DATE: Friday, May 22,
2026
PLACE: Room 201, Braunstein Hall, UC Main Campus,
Clifton
SIMULCAST: via Zoom
- Link included in the paid members PDF version of The Bulletin
Meeting Attendance Attendance at UC was good at our April meeting with 20 on Zoom and 31 in-person.
Election of Officers The annual election of officers wil be held at the May meeting. Bill Heimbrock as Election Committee Chair will present the slate. Nominations will be solicited from the floor as well. Committee Chairs are appointed by the president elect so if you are interested in getting involved in a committee, let the president know. Current Chairs should also let the president know if they are willing to continue in their current roles.
Addendum to program by professor Danita Brandt Professor Brandt has supplied us with a reading list to augment her program from the April meeting. The list is appended at the end of the PDF bulletin sent to dues-paying members.
Education Chair As announced in a previous bulletin, long time Education Chair, Greg Courtney, has retired. Lincoln Shoemaker has volunteered to step into this position and will do his first Beginners’ Class at the meeting this Friday. Besides the Beginners’ classes at our meetings, Greg did many presentations at schools where the students and teachers loved him. We want to thank Greg for all of the effort he has put into this position over the years.
The May Meeting will be held at the University of Cincinnati, 201 Braunstein Hall.
Beginner's Class
by Lincoln Schumaker
The Beginners Class will be conducted from 7:15 PM to 8:00 PM on April 24th. It will be held before the general meeting in Room 300, Braunsiein Hall, one floor up from our regular meeting room. Greg will be presenting a slide show on fossil hunting methods and tools including an introduction to Ordovician sea life. It will be in-person only. No remote Zoom.
Lincoln’s program will be: First Principles - An Introduction To Geological Time
Summary: For beginners first dipping their feet in the world of fossils it is not abnormal to hear references to "deep time" or the "geologic timescale", and wonder how these concepts came about. You may be told for example, that the rocks underneath Cincinnati are from the Ordovician Period - but what is a time period in a geologic sense? After all, what you are seeing when you look at rocks is some combination of lithified sediment and fossil remains - and to go from these sediments and fossil remains to a time scale each divided up into different eras and periods can seem like quite the leap! But make no mistake, much like the periodic table, the geologic time scale was not invented, but discovered. This class will give a brief overview of how geologists initially discovered the geologic timescale, and the principles which allow us to interpret the rock record.
On almost all our field trips, we have one or more members who have previously visited the site. That experience is always helpful; however, someone who works at a location AND is also an amateur paleontologist provides a special benefit.
On Saturday, May 23rd (yes, that is Memorial Day Weekend) we will be making a return trip to East Fork Lake State Park in Clermont County (Please note there is a $3.00 visitor fee.) The spillway area exposes the Fairview Formation, containing a variety of specimens. This is a “family friendly” site, so all ages can enjoy this outing.
Our last visit was two years ago, and we were accompanied by Natural Resource Specialist Trent Smitley. When I called to set up things up, Trent himself answered the phone. He remembered our previous trip, and said he enjoyed meeting with us, then asked: “May I join you this time?” Those of you who were there saw just a few of the finds Trent himself had made, which inspired attendees; within 15 minutes almost everyone had made special finds, including several large calyxes. Trent knows where the “good spots” are and will happily show them to us.
This field trip is primarily for dues-paying members of the Dry Dredgers. If you would like to become a dues-paying member of the Dry Dredgers, here's how: http://www.drydredgers.org/register.htm
Directions to where we are meeting at East Fork Lake can be found in the PDF
file version of the Bulletin that is emailed to dues-paying members.
NOTE: Fossil collecting at East Fork Lake is allowed ONLY when you
obtain a permit at the Visitor Center.
The Dry Dredgers were pleased to announce the winners of the 2026 Dry Dredgers Paleontological Research Awards at our April meeting. The value of the awards for this year totaled $2,400. The winning applicants are:
Kyleigh Hope who is a Masters Student at the University of Cincinnati. Her project is A Paleoecological and Stratigraphic Analysis and Comparison of Liberty Butter Shales.
Lincoln Shoemaker who is a student at the University of Cincinnati. His project is The First Record of Hirnantian Echinoderms from Indiana and Ohio.
Natalie Morgan who is a Masters Student at the University of Tennessee. Her project is Do Regional Diversity and Ecological Change in the Great Basin, USA Match Global Trends during the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event?
Elizabeth Altier who is a PHD Student at Binghamton University. Her project is The Paleoecological Evolution of Echinoderms across the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction: a View into the Microstructure.
The Dry Dredgers have been making these awards since 1999. To date, we have now made over seventy of them totaling over $38,000.
More interesting and informative articles, along with color illustrations is available in the full E-Bulletin that was emailed to dues-paying members.
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