It had rained for several days before the field trip with almost no letting up. At the time we left for the field trip that Saturday morning from our respective homes around Cincinnati and Dayton, it was still pouring down rain. Twelve Dry Dredgers said "that's okay" and headed out to the Indiana road cut to collect trilobites and begin the quest for even greater fossils. No one was disappointed. The rain disappeared as we crossed into Indiana. We had two hours of fossil collecting without rain when we arrived. It drizzled for another half-hour. That didn't stop the Dry Dredgers, as we continued to find trilobite after trilobite. It seems the long rains left lots of the small Flexicalymene retrorsa minuens trilobites on top of the soft Liberty shale.
Even the young ones found trilobites. Here are the photos I took on the trip, including the fossils the members found and my own finds after I arrived home and washed the specimens. Keep in mind that the specimens photographed on the site are very muddy and so are not clearly illustrated. The camera lens also got wet, so some photos have a blurry spot.
It's the second day of Autumn. The trees have not begun to change. But the weeds have turned brown and dried. So collecting was better.
Since Bill Heimbrock gave a presentation at the meeting the
night before showing just where the trilobites were, everyone went right to the
butter shale layer for those tiny Flexi's.
It took close examination of the wet shale. Quite a few people
found a trilobite in the first 10 minutes of looking.
The terrain was slippery. It was a personal decision each
member had to make, whether to try to climb higher for more interesting fossils
like coiled cephalopods and colonial coral, knowing the rocks were surf boards!.
Next Page: Fossils Found That Day
T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S
Page 1: The Site and Collecting
Photos
Page 2: Fossils Found: Cephalopods
Page 3: Fossils Found: Trilobite Flexicalymene
Page 4: Fossils Found: Trilobite Isotelus
Page 5: Fossils Found: Articulate Brachiopods
Page 6: Fossils Found: Inarticulate Brachiopods and Corals
Page 7: Pelecypods and Gastropods
Page 8: Fossils Found: Crinoids and Ichnofossils
Previous Trips to this Site
March 2006
March 2004
October 2003
April 2002
Back to the Dry Dredgers Home Page
The Dry Dredgers and individual contributors reserve the rights to all information, images, and content presented here. Permission to reproduce in any fashion, must be requested in writing to admin@drydredgers.org .
