The fossil season -- lacklustre as it was this year -- is pretty much over, now that there is snow. That said, I am not going to officially call it prematurely since oscillating temperatures and surprise opportunities are more the norm in the past few years. My annual blog tradition of a roundup post of the year's finds and happenings will wait a bit longer. Instead, a small post to signal some work in the lab. I am in need of a few more tools, but I'm waiting for the economy to improve a wee bit (and perhaps we'll be waiting a while). There is no doubt I have several flats of unfinished/abandoned/delayed preps to clean up. Sometimes I get in that "let's clear up the backlog" moods to cut down on the mountains of half-prepared clutter threatening to topple over me in the little lab. I had received a package of St Petersburg trilobites for prep. None of them came out very well at all, and this one was no exception. In this case, stupid me went ahead and glued these pieces together without properly marking the location of the trilobite, so it was blind scribing until I hit shell. Fortunately, I didn't scribe right through it (much). This is a Pseudobasilicus lavrowi, and these are deemed much rarer than the Asaphus sp. that turn up in these rocks. Rarer, and much thinner and less forgiving. To complicate matters, parts of it were encased in that sticky translucent calcite that is tougher than the shell, so abrasion would just burn the shell around these little calcite globs. Some parts were lost. The first attempt at some restoration was a disaster, but reversible. I opted to scale back my efforts in that regard. It isn't a "wow" display piece, but an "example of the species" piece. I've done much better work, but I've also prepared much kinder trilobites. This one was mostly prepped when I got it, and I just continued a bit without getting too risky. It has two starfish (Schuchertia stellata, I think), and two species of Ceraurus. This Nanillaenus/Thaleops was mostly prepared but missing some parts. I did some matrix landscaping and somewhat tasteful restoration I can fine tune later.
There's a handful of others "on the go," which means they are on top of the blast box as higher priority. Unless I get my hands on some new complete trilobites to prepare this winter, it is likely I'll be focusing on the B- and C-material I have. I don't get out nearly as much as I would like, what with logistics of site access and that whole job thing, but autumn is by far the very best of the fossil season: not too hot and full of vegetation like summer, not too buggy, not too soggy like spring. I did manage a good handful of local trips to the Devonian hot spots that I've mostly tapped out (but doggedly determined to squeeze out the last drop), but I've been remiss in not recording them in the trusty field record as I lost a good deal of enthusiasm mid-summer. That said, the tools are still active, but not as much as I would like; next year will hopefully see a renaissance for my collecting activities. Even though it is out of sequence of collecting events, I will stick with the geologic sequence by starting with the Ordovician. I hit up a Cobourg Fm spot which generally is far too high energy to have much trilobites that are more than just bits. I still had some luck. This is what can typically be found: parts of Isotelus, Pseudogygites, and (I will get shout at for saying this) Thaleops. I mean, Nanillaenus. :P Maybe someone I know will publish the definitive paper to set the world to rights. Heh heh. I also found a weathered Ceraurinus glabella that is about as exciting as finding a weathered glabella sounds, so no photo required of that one. It really is not great rock for splitting, but scanning instead. While leaving one section, I just happened to look down in the talus to see this nicely enrolled Flexicalymene senaria that should clean up nicely. Some issues with the left pleurae, and a chip off the anterior process of the cephalic margin, but that's small potatoes when it is a tumbled specimen in what is almost gravel. I'll take it as a wee win. This was my happy find, and a bucket list item for me: a loosely enrolled Pseudogygites latimarginatus, also just sitting in the talus, wedged in the piles. I've wanted a 3D version of this species for some while, and it was the first species of trilobite I ever found back when I was seven. Of course, all of them were flat in the black and brown shales of Ottawa, so getting a puffy version brought me some small joy. Yes, it is sadly exfoliated in places, but again it was sitting out loose and in much better shape than one might expect. I also found what may be a full prone Flexi that I haven't shown a photo of here, but I'll wait until I prep it. On to the fickle Silurian on a northern jaunt. After 20 hours of splitting ugly rock, I didn't come away as well as I would have liked, or like I had in the past, but some things were got. Just as an interest piece, I took this slab of Thalassocystis striata, a macroalgae that appears as a thick carbonaceous film. Flag the slab on the left for now. Although it is just parts, some preliminary prep has revealed some neat parts after all. The sad genal on the right is from the toad-like encrinurid, Distyrax. I still haven't quite found my complete one yet. Any fragment of Ekwanoscutellum ekwanensis is worth picking up on account of it being among the rarest of the five trilobite species in this formation. On the right is a typical but unfortunate split of a Rielaspsis, but that is a simple matter of gluing (which I have since done) and it is a complete prone. Not sure if it has cheeks yet, though. As far as trip-makers go, this was my closest. Half of a Stelckaspis perplexa (line drawing on the right for comparison, in Ludvigsen's text on Anticosti trilobites which are similar to this site). The stupid irony is that this was just sitting out in the talus, and not from all the hard pounding being done on frustratingly blank, coral-infested, or burrow-ridden rocks. What makes this special is I can now say I have examples of all five of the trilobite species in this formation, even though four out of those five are incomplete. That first Silurian slab above? I was playing around with it to see if I could prep out all the parts (there are so far over 50 specimens and I've just started) and this one closeup shows four species. There are obvious Rielaspsis here, but also Distyrax pygidium at 7 O'clock and a genal 3 O'clock to the left of a Diacalymene cephalon, and even half a a Stelckaspis cephalon at 5 O'clock (a better photo of that one will come at some point). And that's just barely a few inches of the entire slab with so much more to find. Will there be a complete one? Not likely, but I've had surprises in the prep box with this material before in finding one. My Devonian adventures have been... meh, apart from that nice roller I found and posted about last blog entry. Me and a fossil comrade explored what must have been the crappiest facies of the Bois Blanc Fm, which was poor in trilobites, rich in corals and brachs. Still, a placoderm part to the left, and a complete (yet brutally exfoliated) phacopid on the right. Otherwise, I've dug in the Dundee, Amherstburg, and other associated Devonian formations in southwestern Ontario with not much to show but the same old parts.
I hope to get out again a few times, but that will depend on logistics and crimes of opportunity. If not, well, I can prep a few things to show and tell in the months to come. |
Kane Faucher
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February 2024
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