Another trip here in town, plus threading some fossil hunting into our week-long Ottawa trip, mark our new finds. We scouted along the Ottawa and Rideau Rivers, and for me it was a bit of a homecoming. Much of the area is dominated by the Billings Formation, composed of either rich black or brown highly fissile and fossiliferous Ordovician shale. The typical biota includes trilobites, nautiloids, brachiopods, graptolites, crinoids, etc. Pictured here on the left is a fairly substantially sized pygidium of the trilobite Pseudogygites latimarginatus, while on the right is a hash-plate of fragments from the same species. It is very challenging to find a fully intact specimen, and far more common to find the moults or bits of cephalon, thoracic spines, pleura, and pygidium. This strata also shares with another branch of trilobites, Triarthrus Another very busy hash-plate, pulled from the Rideau River near Strathcona Park. As we didn't think to bring tools on our trip, I had to channel my inner neanderthal by dead-lifting a 220lb rock and dropping it on another rock in order to split this one open. Note on the lower left: tantalizingly close to being a full specimen. "Here Lie The Trilobites - Rest in Peace." Well, to my mind it does almost appear like a grave marker. Another fairly busy and impressive hash-plate pulled from the same small cluster of large rocks along the Rideau. The prize find goes to Deb for finding a nearly fully intact cephalon of Pseudogygites. In fact, she was the first between us to pull a pygidium as well as spotting the glabella of Triarthrus. On the right is a few more assorted pieces we selected to take with us, leaving the rest behind. Our luggage was heavy enough without the additional rocks.
And that's all for today. I am still lightly prepping a few specimens that I pulled from the nearby hill, and there have been some welcome surprises. Until then... Comments are closed.
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Kane Faucher
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February 2024
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