I am going to start this from the end, and then you will know why I used this title. This was a whirlwind (Kids get bored quickly!) 3 hour 5 site hunt!
Six year old Andreya’s first fossil hunt of the year, and within three minutes she says, “Bev, Bev, I found a weird one!”
WOW! I knew it was a trilobite (IDed by Piranha as a Flexicalymene pygidium) and I’ve got to admit I was green with envy! It was a BIG pygidium! LOL
Last year on her FIRST fossil hunt she found a rare for this area Halysites coral that is just stunning! The post on that is here: http://www.bluffcountryfossils.net/blog/rare-find-ordovician-halysites-chain-coral/
Of course she wanted a necklace of it in her favorite colors – blue and gold.
So we started the afternoon hunt after lunching at Dairy Queen on the $5 lunch deal at what I call my “Brachiopod” site. A beautiful spot that is out of the way, serene with only the lolling of cows in the distance and the occasional sound of farm machinery from the rise. It was a perfect late July day with highs in the 70s, the fresh air laden with wild flower fragrance and various colorful butterflies punctuating the soft breezes.
I believe this is Maquoketa Shale, but I don’t know for sure.
It is not nearly as steep as it looks. It is layered with rock and then kind of a muddy fill which the brachiopods, and apparently trilobites, fall right out of. The shelves themselves are heavily embedded hash plates of the Ordovician sea bottom. We were sitting with a laminated copy of my BluffCountryFossils ID sheet and placing the brachiopods, crinoid segments, and trilobite on it. She can’t read yet, but it has good pictures. It gave her the idea of matching up what she was finding with a basic ID sheet.
Andreya “on the rocks” and showing her trilobite.
These Flexicalymene trilos are supposed to be fairly rare finds – whatta girl!
Going out with a six year old with good eyes sure put my fossil hunting into perspective as I can’t see fossils unless they are fairly large and then I have to put on my reading glasses to actually see what I have found. I must be just walking over lots of fossils! I dragged a rock home from this site that I found interesting and planned to put in my rock walkway and when I got it home I found an Isotelus pygidium in it! Yup, I’m walking over fossils!
I don’t think we were there more than a half hour and she was getting bored. So off to another spot. This one was a dry creek bed, we got maybe 100′ in and weren’t finding anything but rough agates the size of my fist and decided to leave and go to a river to hunt.
Well, not far up that road I hit a Decorah Shale site for 5 minutes. First rock had a trilo part in it, but she was bored, sooo….
Off to the river. I have a map of 7 sites within 10 miles of Spring Valley on the back of my ID sheet and we were now getting into that area. So as I was driving, I started teaching her to read maps. She can’t actually read yet, but she knows her letters and numbers up to 100. Quick study though! I had her tracing our route on the map with her finger, I was calling out the numbers of the crossroads as we drove. She has left and right down pat so we discussed North, South, East and West orientations on the map as we drove. The truck has a little direction indicator on the rear view mirror. I also had her watching the speed limit signs and checking my speedometer. After I pointed out where we were going, she got to the point where she was telling me to go right, north, or left, west. Great way to pass time with a kid in a car and teach them at the same time.
We got to the first river and she wanted to wade, but the current was a bit fast.
So I pointed her upstream to a shallow area and started poking around for fossils. Found a couple of interesting water worn hash plates, and she decided it was just too muddy to wade here, so off to another river spot I knew of.
At that spot I found several nice hash place, one with a trilo cephalon on it. I showed her raccoon tracks in the mud, we saw a dead crayfish that I dragged home, and she got to wade a bit in the river.
Then I found what I thought may be a Mammoth Tooth!
Well, I put it in the ID section of thefossilforum.com and no it wasn’t, but it may be some other kind of fossil. 🙂 Tethys thinks it is a stromatolite with worm borings – very cool!
Andreya got a bit scratched up in the tall weeds. I told her she should be wearing jeans and old shoes, but you know how little girls are. Gia, the collie dog, always gets a pup cup from Dairy Queen after a fossil hunt, so we drove through and got small chocolate and vanilla twist cones for ourselves.
And the haul? Don’t think this is all of it, but most. 🙂
Grandpa put on pizza for dinner. I made Andreya a necklace of her Flexicalymene pygidium.
Grandpa said she was out like a light within 5 minutes of getting into the car for the hour plus drive back to Winona.
What a fun day with a granddaughter!