PapaDave, his thefossilforum.com handle, is a retired Earth Sciences prof who has become fascinated with fossils since he retired. He had purchased my Winona County fossil hunting map at the Winona Historical Society and has been hunting with his granddaughter and doing quite well!
He came over for a fossil tour/hunt on Saturday, June 11th about 8:30 am. It was a hot and sultry day with temps going over 94 degrees and high humidity. He had already bought Dr. Sloan’s book – a GREAT deal as just $30 including shipping, check out my webpage for Sloan’s address to get his book – and I wanted to show him as many places to hunt as possible and funnel as much of my knowledge as I could to him, and keep us in the shade as much as possible. 🙂
I just had to show him Masonic Park with the beautiful cliff face, cave, abandoned quarry, hidden stream and roadside hunting in the shade. I pointed out various fossil hunting spots as we went and then hit Norse Road for a bit of prasopora bryozoan hunting as there is a layer there that I just love. Onto an old favorite trilobite haunt of Caleb’s and then we visited another trilobite favorite stop with lots of shale where I have pulled out 5 enrolled Anataphurus borreaus trilos myself.
Trilobite Shale!
And we just had to stop at the premiere gastropod quarry in all of Minnesota!
PapaDave at Minnesota’s premiere gastropod quarry.
Onto a number of spots around Forestville/Mystery Cave State Park – I’ve just created a map with 16 spots in that location – and we stopped at an area of shade with loads of shale and trilobite sign that I had just discovered this spring. I picked up a nice rock showing a lot of crinoids that I have yet to prep and even a nice subulite gastropod that I gave to Dave.
Shale and Shade!
Then we went onto Wubble’s Ravine.
PapaDave at Wubble’s Ravine.
It was past 1:00 and we were both getting tired but I just had to show him a few more spots and Rifle Hill Quarry!
PapaDave at Rifle Hill Quarry.
He dropped me off back at home and I have to say I collapsed taking an afternoon nap. He later emailed and said he was overwhelmed by the amount of information I had given him and that he very much enjoyed himself.
We both collected some awesome fossils that I neglected to take a picture of! 🙁 But the real adventure was in the learning and sharing. 🙂
