Fossil Hunting Evening, Morning, and Just Plain WOW!

Andreya & Kristina Huntin’ Fossils

Wow! An hour and a quarter evening hunt with the girls, Andreya and Julia, and

Kristina. And what a haul!

Julia with two of her finds, a maclurite and a rare Ordovician chain coral.

Ordovician Halysites Coral – Chain Coral

Julia and I both found our own Ordovician Halysites (chain coral)–rare here! We were all jealous when the five year old, Andreya, found a rare fossil on her first hunt!

A bucket full of maclurites found! 🙂  Love those macs… LOL Everyone found cephalopods! It took me two months of hunting to find one ceph!

And they definitely have the Fossil Bug! Kristina was washing fossils out back in the dark! Then she came in and was examining them.

8 am we took off for a quick hunt on Hwy. 52 before they had to take off to Winona. Ten minutes and we had brachs, bivalves, bryozoa, ceph and, Yes, trilo pieces!

Celtencrinurus Trilobite- very rare!

Paleontologist Caleb Scheer showed up to collect my rare Ordivician Trilobite–Celtencrinurus. If I understood him right, this is only the third known to have been found. He pointed out an eye to me and is hoping it is a complete specimen. It will eventually go into a Univeristy collection with my name is “found by”. Yeah!

He took another one too. Better home for them than mine would be. 🙂  Gave me back a prepped

May be a Flexicalymene sp. on its side???

Anataphrus vigilans! So Gracious! I was not expecting anything!

AND he IDed a bunch of fossils for us–including the Halysites Coral, trilobite pieces galore, cephs, etc.  Poor guy had women and girls crowding all around him with, “What’s this… What’s that…” He survived with a smile on his face. 🙂

Fillmore County History Center exhibit of large cephalopods – Fountain.

We all got interviewed by John Weiss, a reporter for the Post Bulletin newspaper in Rochester, MN, about fossil hunting, he then went off to take pictures of the big cephalopod collection at the Fillmore County History Center in Fountain. The girls took off for Winona.

Caleb and I decided to go see if that two foot trilo Gary Erickson had speculated was in that rock on the Cty. 5 cut just north of Wykoff was real. Nope–very provocative worm tubes… Oh, yeah.

Then we decided to go up to the shale cut just north of Fillmore on Cty. 5. Caleb was busting shale and I was turning over shale. And I piled interesting rocks for him to look at. Yup, I’m beginning to “see” trilo parts with some coaching. 🙂 But Caleb is looking for a rare trilo reported to be in that cut. So, we left a pile of trilo parts. 🙂

Cystoid something – note fine dark lines in a row.

Cystoid something 2 that I found at home!

However, he showed me a “new” to me fossil–cystoids! I had no idea! Caleb, if I heard him right, said they were round with a short tail and little arms–Hmmmmm. And then when I got home, after he had pointed one out in the field, I found one myself in my rocks here! Sooooo cool!

Caleb Scheer and his CRINOIDS!

We got to talking and he remembered the rough sawn block of rock with at least 6 crinoids, EACH

the size of my hand, in his trunk!!!!!!!!!!!! He had posted pictures of these last fall and I have been dreaming about them ever since!

Crinoids! Each as big as my hand!

Caleb opened his trunk and I practically fainted! The excitement! My heart started beating faster! He even let me touch them!

WOW, what a night and a morning fossil hunting! Reporter! Rare Find! Rare Find Hand-Off! Trilobites! Giant Crinoids! WOW!