Every 4th of July I get left home as Bob takes off with friends to ride his Harley Up North. And I fossil hunt! 😀 I’ve been doing a ton of gardening this year and today was no exception – Flower Addiction! – and didn’t get out into the field until late afternoon.
It was a very warm, sunny afternoon, so I decided on the cool shade of Masonic Park. The temperature drop in the roadside ditch was welcome with the breeze carrying birdsong and the scents of wild flowers, and the black caps were juicy black in ripeness. I was munching my way through this hunt! 😀
Native berry – Black Caps. Smaller than blackberries.
But I wasn’t finding any fossils! It was then that I noticed the rocks thrown up on the side of the ditch – ah, someone had recently hunted this spot. 🙁 And indeed, both sides of the ditch showed it had been hunted. I guess I have to wait for the next good rain for more fossils to erode out of the hillside, which is happening today, in fact!
Previously hunted.
The right-of-way trimming crew had just been through here and mowed down a bunch of orange ditch lilies, perfect for replanting. and I had several spots for these hardy beauties. So I pried a couple of shovelfuls of flower clumps out and decided to try two promising road cuts I had just noticed, but never explored.
All shale splitting apart naturally from the Minnesota freeze thaw cycles.
Fossiliferous Shale
The usual brachiopods, lots of crinoid sign, and lots of trilobite molts. The prize from this site was this crinoid stem in longitudinal section that I had IDed on thefossilforum.com
Crinoid stem in longitudinal section for scale.
Crinoid stem in longitudinal section.
What incredible detail! I had never seen anything like it! Remember, I’m a fan of crinoids! These hardy creatures are still with us today – an evolutionary mainstay!
Onto the next site which turned out to be truly rich in trilobite molts. I found these two Isotelus pygidiums – one with the original shell partially intact – within 3 minutes!
Two Isotelus Pygidiums.
And how I wish I had worn different shoes and could climb the slope that these had eroded down from!
Trilobite Shale!
As I headed back home with my prizes for the day I drove on a bridge across this creek.
I truly wish the highwaymen would put signs up on these bridges as to which creek/river is running beneath, but I guess with 750 miles of trout streams crisscrossing Bluff Country that would be costly and this is only a county of 18,000 souls, so the locals know what creek it is anyways and that is what matters I guess. But it did make me think about getting my fishing license and trout stamp, heck, I own half of a trout stream with Brown Trout in it for the catching! But the fishing always looks better in another creek! 😀
Prize of the day was the incredibly detailed cross section of a crinoid.
A Good Fourth of July Hunt!
