As of yesterday, December 16th, I gave the last swings of the hammer before returning home and putting the tools to bed for winter, thus calling the season. 2021 has been an interesting year with some notable surprises. It has also been quite active, although not as much as lockdown 2020, and with more quiet periods and less new prospects. In essence, the year was a due diligence one in returning to various key sites, but there are plans to get 2022 back into the more widespread exploration and discovery that marked the 2020 season. Looking over the many pages of field notes, I can say things weren't idle. I did visit several new sites, a lot of them more miss than hit, or tapped out fairly quickly. In terms of numbers: Season duration: 292 days Days in the field: 67 (down from 82 in 2020) Trilobite species encountered: 32 (down from 40 in 2020) New trilobite species field collected: 9 (down from 12 in 2020) New trilobite species added (collected, gifted, purchased): 45 Trilobites Encountered in the Field 2021 (BOLD = NEW)
PART 1 of 4: FIeld Collecting___________ And now time for the month by month accounting, being somewhat circumspect about locations. February This was just a practice run at the end of the month to a site I had bookmarked for followup. I certainly jumped the gun as the site was still covered in snow, with only a few rocks showing. Nothing of note was found, but the early thaw meant a welcome early start to the season. March I managed to get out 9 times this month, all to local/regional spots in the Devonian, spanning early Devonian (Bois Blanc Fm) up through the Hamilton Gp. I encountered all my usual fragmentary hits. I would have to say the find of the month goes to this mostly complete Pseudodechenella sp. that is massively distorted -- but still a rare find in a very busy near-shore interval in the Dundee Fm. April The season begins to heat up along with the weather, and I was out for 10 days. It was also at this point the pandemic meant more restrictions to travel, but I managed to get out pretty far before all those took effect. The first half of the month saw me on my first multi-day trip adventure, my first time up in the Silurian of northern Ontario with its distinct fauna roughly equivalent to that of Anticosti Island. The big draw are the encrinurids, of which I can say I had found a nice assortment. The remainder of April was local/regional site visits. Pictured above, top row: a rare and lovely fragment of Ekwanoscutellum sp., a cheek of Distyrax sp. Bottom row: a complete Rielaspis elegantula freed from its matrix, and a ventral weathered specimen of an Encrinurus sp. The find of the month would truly come to shine brightly only after it was prepared by my friend MT in late summer. This is pretty much a museum piece: an assemblage of Rielaspsis elegantula containing evidence of 15 individuals(!). This might also qualify as my find of the year. May Although the season started strongly, the month of May seemed to fall into the ditch, which is not uncommon for me given that I generally have to run a course that month (this year, it was two courses). Compounding the silence of the hammers was the ongoing travel restrictions due to Covid, putting plans to do a major Quebec trip on ice as the provincial border was closed. I only managed to get out 4 times this month, and just two of those was a return engagement up north where the pickings were slimmer this time around. We still managed to find a few pieces. Here is a cheek-less Rielaspis I prepared: - June Historically, June is a kind of second wind to the season (with the looming awareness that, with summer's beginning and the longest day of the year, half the year is over and days get shorter again). Just when it seems the season is just beginning, it's time to buckle down and get some collecting in since fall semester is just around the corner! June saw me out for 8 days, most of those just around the summer solstice to the Quebec City area the second the provincial border reopened. It was go time. We visited some old sites, and prospected some newer ones. Some good finds were had. Top row: a 5 cm (two inch) Flexicalymene senaria, pretty much a giant for the species here. And one of many Ceraurus pleurexanthemus found that I still seem to be preparing. Bottom row is a rare sponge (the mass of spicules) that has yet to be formally described, and this true giant Isotelus gigas that would be the find of the month and in the care of my prep friend MT. This enrolled monster may exceed 10 inches on the roll. That is truly massive for Quebec. July Not much to show for this month. I managed to get out just 4 days, two of which were up in the Manitoulin area where I didn't find very much at all since nothing had changed from what we had picked over the year before. July is also brutally hot and sticky, so field time is not as pleasant. August It seems almost silly to include this month at all since I only got out once, and just to show a visiting friend a local spot. If May saw my season fall into a ditch the July-August stretch almost seemed as productive as the depths of winter. September The school bell was ringing, and so it was back to campus for in-person teaching. Gone were the prerecorded lecture days of 2020 when I could vanish for a week-long trip during the start of prime fossil collecting season. I still managed to get out 7 times despite work obligations, but all of it local/regional. Not my find, but a field comrade of mine bumped into this one on our occasional Sunday afternoon prospects. A complete ventral Pseudodechenella sp. is nothing to sneeze at, and particularly so in a crappy horizon of the Dundee Fm that is high-energy, dominated by bits and brachs. I made an epoxy cast of this one for my display area. October This is the third wind phase of the season, or the panicked-squirrel-looking-for-nuts-because-winter-is-coming phase. The temperature is perfect, the autumn colours beautiful, the bugs less of a nuisance, and the flora thinning out to permit more site visibility. I managed to get out 11 times this month, making it the top month for days in the field (followed by second place April with 10 and third place March and November with 9). October involved both extensive local site visits and a return engagement to the north for round 3 of Silurian searching. The local trips were in some very ugly rock (at least ugly for Bois Blanc Fm), but resulting in two surprise finds from the same ditch. The northern Ontario Silurian trip might have been a complete bust if not for me finding something truly spectacular. Two new dalmanitids for me. The one on the left was suggested to me as Neoporobilium n. sp., but still hard to say. The one on the right is a large (~7-8 inches wide) cephalon of Anchiopsis tuberculatus. I prepared this one as I suspected it was a Distyrax sp. Turns out I was right, judging by the pygidial spine fork. * Cough* *Splutter* If the Rielaspis plate was the find of the year, this one is vying to be a real contender. Currently in the hands of a skilled preparator, it remains to be seen if this one (and some skin in the negative) can be prepared as one piece or as a split. This one may not seem terribly exciting until one realizes this is likely a complete Ekwanoscutellum (or a scutellid at any rate), perhaps the only one ever found in the Thornloe Fm. Rare fragments do appear (I have a few), but this is a one of a kind find, and likely of scientific significance as well. November The Temiskaming trip of mid-October was my last multi-day, far-from-home trip of 2021, so November was all about local spots, which was all I could manage given my teaching obligations. With the loss of my Terataspis site, I have been resigned to the massive hoard of parts I have in my collection, many of which are in various states of preparation. And yet a visit to two very nearby spots (within 15-20 minutes from home) yielded a healthy number of Terry parts. Pictured here is the steinkern of a positively enormous median glabella (bigger than a golf ball). The beekite rings are neat, and I do have the shell on the counterpart. There is also more of it inside the rock, too, but it is also set in brutal chert. I am swimming in Terry pieces, for sure. December Once we hit this month, it is very touch and go. In fact, it is considered very lucky to have any collecting days in December. By the end of November, we got dumped on by snow, but a warm spell burned that off and made things intermittently pleasant. I managed to get out 3 times, as there were many days when the temperatures were very near or below freezing, it was raining or snowing, or I had to grade papers. It simply is not a wise decision to plan more than a day in advance for collecting trips, and certainly not for any multi-day far-from-home ones when weather is very borderline. Also, with the new Omicron variant taking hold, the prospect of travel restrictions being reintroduced is a very real one. In all, from a field collecting perspective, a mixed bag. I didn't get out as far/often as 2020, with just 5 multi-day trips (Temiskaming x3, Quebec City, Manitoulin). I took a number of other photos, but mostly for my own records and not for public sharing. Extensive planning is in the works for 2022. Part 2 of 4: The Purchase FormationNot all are pictured here, and some have multiple angles. I missed taking a photo of a Koneprusia, and there are several other pieces I purchased unprepared that I can show in part 3. Some of them are higher quality replacement specimens (such as Asaphus kowalewskii -- this is one nice 8 cm prone!). These range from Russia to Morocco, England to Nevada, USA, and Yunan province (China). The sources are many, but mostly from trusted diggers and field comrades. No, I won't caption them as all of them were included in previous posts this year, with the exception of the very last one, which is an Austerops sp. from the Jorf locality, Morocco. Still, a list of acquisitions that are new to the growing collection (one shy of 200 species) is never out of season. Roll call!: “Unspecified trinuclueid” Asaphus acuminatus Asaphus bottnicus Asaphus broeggeri Asaphus lamanskii Asaphus sulevi Austerops sp. Calymene breviceps Calymene clavicula Comura bultyncki Dysplanus acutigenia Dysplanus babinoensis Ectillaenus katzeri Encrinurella Ingsangensis Illaenus atavus Illaenus plautini Isabelina glabrata Kainops sp. Kendalina greenensis Koneprusia dahmani Lonchodomas mcgeheei Megistaspidella triangularis Niobella plana Ogyginus corndensis Ogyginus sp. Palaeolenus Lanlenoisi Paralejurus elayounensis Placoparia turneminei Pseudobasilicus planus Pseudocybele nasuta Ptychopyge lesnikovae Ptychopyge volchovense Sinocybele sinensis Stapeleyella inconstans Subasaphus platyurus Trinucleus abruptus PART 3 of 4: Fresh from the labI don't have the best tools in the world, and it is amazing I can achieve the results I can with some less than optimal equipment. I've made mistakes, but I've fortunately not botched a single specimen this year. Preparation takes a long time, and with my tools it takes even longer. But, as one of my field comrades like to say, "if prep was easy, everyone would be doing it." This year marks the first one that I did not prep even one Eldredgeops rana. There are some pieces I know are too important for me to risk doing myself, or require much more sophisticated equipment I don't own, so those are sent to the pros. Me? I do mostly amateur work, but here are my (completed, not ongoing) projects of 2021: An Asaphus latus Asaphus latus Asaphus punctatus Asaphus punctatus Asaphus cornutus Illaenus sp. Calymene breviceps Mrakibina cattoi Flexicalymene senaria Dysplanus acutigenia Paralejurus elayounensis Rielaspis elegantula Elrathia kingii Ceraurus pleurexanthemus with brachiopod hitchhikers. This one has a new home. Onion paper thin Ceraurus pleurexanthemus Flexicalymene senaria Ceraurus pleurexanthemus (sustained field-related extraction mishap) Tiny and crushed Flexicalymene senaria Illaenus plautini Dysplanus babinoensis Pliomera fischeri Asaphus expansus robustus with healed pleural injury. Ceraurus pleurexanthemus And to close out the year in the box, this large (~3 inch) Reedops. A time lapse, and some static images. Part 4 of 4: Doodle BugsI didn't put pencil to paper all that much this year (but now that I've committed to giving the prep tools a rest until the new year, and since collecting is finished, I guess I can get back to it). In fact, just three drawings for 2021, the first of which (the lichid from Jorf) has been reassigned by Allart van Viersen in a May 2021 paper. So, overall, not a bad year with some field activity, postal formation goodies, work at the bench, and even some illustrations. I don't think there is any doubt that I have chosen to specialize in trilobites. Apart from one sponge photo in the mix here, it seems that I have my niche!
So upward and onward to 2022. Time for me to close things out with some drawings in the mean time, and to get heavily into trip planning. Comments are closed.
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Kane Faucher
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February 2024
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