A topic came up on thefossilforum.com General Discussion forum on your best of 2014 fossils – found, purchased or traded for.
So here are what I consider my Best of 2014
I love, love, love this fossilized rock! In 2013 this rock showed no fossils. In the spring of 2014 when I walked by it, I was amazed! It is just loaded with Maclurites! A Minnesota freeze and thaw cycle (winter) can reveal amazing things in the layers of the rock that break off.
It took me an entire summer but I finally got the rock purchased (it was in a quarry) and moved here. I had it sat on cement blocks to make a bench just outside my front door where I can admire it every time I leave the house. For scale you can see my favorite chicken – Henny Penny and I have a tape measure sitting on the back of the “bench”.
This is my first confirmed Bellerophon. I was told by Caleb Scheer, who has hunted this area for 30 years, that there are no Bellerophons in southeast Minnesota – I found one! Actually, I think it is my second as I also found one over in Winona County, just haven’t gotten it all extracted from the matrix to be absolutely certain.
I was at Niagara Cave and just couldn’t resist this drop dead gorgeous plate of Moroccan Silurian Scyphocrinites elegans crinoids! They are totally lovely an elegant, poetic, metaphoric dance of death. Crinoids are animals that look like plants – there are some great videos on YouTube as they never went completely extinct. Unlike most crinoids Scyphocrinites had a lobolith, which is a floating sphere, that kept the animal afloat in water hanging upside down at the surface. And yes, they extended their range to North America.
So that was my best purchased fossil, but I love the Mammoth tooth I bought at MAPS as well.
This is what I consider my best creative project with fossils this year. The walking stick features a number of “junk” fossils, my first attempt at hammered copper and a deer shed I found while out fossil hunting all set in a Diamond Willow stick. For multiple views of this staff and what I did, go here:
http://www.bluffcountryfossils.net/blog/shaman-staff-aka-a-medicine-stick-with-fossils/
If you would like to see some fabulous fossils that others consider their best of 2014, go here:
http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/51555-lets-see-your-best-of-2014/
