It looks as though I fell into radio silence on this blog, with no new entries since summer began. And now that we are cruising into autumn and I'm back on campus teaching, this is usually the time of year the fossil season begins its colourful wind-down. July was pretty much a lull in collecting activity, less on account of the heat and more due to unseasonal raininess. In August, I did spend two weeks on the road to visit some exciting locales with a dear fossil comrade. Many adventures and mishaps occurred, but we made it through relatively unscathed, and even had a few brief interludes of luck. A week after I returned, I played host to two great collectors from the US. I took them on a tour of Arkona and Formosa Reef. If they could have stayed longer, I would have brought them to a few of my local spots, but I still managed to give them some specimens from those areas. Beyond that, I've been doing some prep now that I have working scribes again. The DNSons scribes are working quite well and I find they need a lot less PSI (about 65 instead of 100+). A nice enrolled Illaenus bayfieldi from the Mingan Fm. With these largely effaced trilobites, it can be a challenge to figure out if they are coming or going! Apart from some minimal loss of pleurae on one side, this is pretty much complete. I decided to leave it parked on matrix rather than free it entirely. Before I left on my two week journey, I had picked up a Leonaspis from Bolivia at a very good price.
There are a bunch of Ordovician and Silurian fossils I found on my time away, some of which I'll show at some later point. I also received some lovely trilobites from one of my fossil comrades, so that is in the queue for photographing and posting on a future blog update. One of those gifts included examples of Synphoria stemmata, a lovely dalmanitid of the lower Devonian Glenerie limestone. I've wanted one for a while ever since reading Lesperance's work on the synphoriinae. I do have a soft spot for Devonian dalmanitids, after all., I could have worse addictions! I may have two trips left in me to close out 2023. In all, it hasn't been the best of collecting years, but it was an improvement over 2022. Spending time with good fossil friends remains the highlight of the year. Took the train out to my little hotspot and came back with mostly the same stuff from that site. I can safely say I've pretty much tapped out the accessible material, with the rest so dense that it will shatter rather than split on bedding planes. It is a rather unique and interesting environment, with ridiculously abundant brachiopods ranging from tiny to honking huge, as well as an equally ridiculous amount of rostroconchs. Trilobites just about always come out as fragments, as this was probably a tidal washout area. My plans to go far east to dip into some Ordovician this weekend have been scuppered by the Canada Day weekend motel rate markup; hard to justify the cost at this time when I am gearing up for a very expensive August trip that should prove more exciting by an order of magnitude. So unless some other good option comes my way, it looks like the national long weekend will see me at home. But in other fabulous news, I ordered three new scribes, which means I can get back to doing prep after a long hiatus! Ok, just some quickie finds: The better examples of the undescribed Odontocephalus sp. on the left, with the scrappier bits on the right. There were not as numerous this time around, and it is next to impossible to find one with the pygidial rostrum preserved. If only I had a nickel for every little bit of Coronura aspectans I encountered. These tease pieces were the more significant, with the majority of them showing as isolated thoracic segments. The one in the upper middle has a big one and a little one on the same rock (the reverse has the anterior "cowcatcher" denticles of Odontocephalus pictured in the previous photo). Other stuff. No, I didn't bother with the thousands of brachs, but I generally pick up a few better preserved rostroconchs, particularly if they are free of matrix. These ones are a bit dirty/chalky, and just need a wee wipe down. The one on the lower right has both the snout and hood preserved (just need to prep it out). Oh, and a medium spired gastropod steinkern on the upper left.
So, no great shakes, and probably not worth the train fare, but this was all that was really worth taking in eight hours. I am far overdue to give a report on my dozen dirty days in May, and now that summer has officially started (and I'll be doing a mini-trip this weekend), I may as well tie up some loose ends. Overall, spring fossil digging starts out strong, motivated by pent up winter hunger, and steadily dwindles -- mostly on account of a grad course I teach, and this year some municipal stuff as I don one of my other many hats. Let's just say that I have yet to find my trip-maker of the year, although I think I found some okay things so far. I still have two months on the freedom clock before the school bell rings and calls me back to labour from refreshment. Immediately after teaching the grad course, the very next morning I was on a train with little more than my field pack of tools and a duffel bag with clothes and necessities. I went across Ontario and into Quebec, sticking exclusively with the Ordovician. I didn't find as much as I would have liked, but I'm also a bit fussier about what I take home. Pictures or it didn't happen: Site 1: Bobcaygeon Fm This material has pretty rough preservation and is more a scanning rather than splitting type of rock. Pictured here is a solo Pleurocystites squamosa Flexicalymene and Calyptaulax can be found here. These were not worth taking home. An incomplete cheirurid, and a mostly complete Isotelus gigas, but so bashed in and tough to make out. Both were also left behind. The only two trilobites I took home was this Gabriceraurus that is mostly complete with its cephalon bashed in, and what I hope will turn out to be a complete Bumastoides. Site 2: Billings / Utica It was a Triarthrus bonanza, and I haven't even scratched the surface of this location. I was averaging maybe 2-5 of them an hour. These shales were loaded in orthocone nautiloids and long graptolite beds, but also a number of pyritized trilobites. The first one is complete but needs to be glued down and prepared. The second one is missing cheeks and the tail, but still shiny. The issue with Triarthrus rougensis is that the genal spines always appear in the negative, so both sides must be collected. Given my space restrictions on an already 150 pound field pack filled with fossils, this all adds weight. Although a scrappy-crappy Triarthrus eatoni, I had to keep this one for it trying to disguise itself as a nautiloid. The T. rougensis on the right was just one of several I collected, so no sense picturing them all. Triarthrus eatoni, and a fairly nice pyritized one. I kept the headless one on the right on account of its freakish size (see tape measure for scale). Some non-trilobitic keepers: a somewhat rare ammonoid (Trocholites?) and the sponge Stephanella sancta. This is a solo example with very defined spicules; I also collected a whole plate of them where the spicules are not as distinct. Sites 3-5: Neuville Fm, various horizons My kingdom for a complete Cryptolithus. At this particular location, there were beds with these abundant hash plates of moults. I have found complete cryptos in the past, but generally in shalier layers and crushed. These are all 3D, and I kept them because they are showy with good contrast. Some closeups of the plates I brought home. Look very carefully or you'll miss the two Ectenocrinus here. In the Neuville, one has to have a good pair of eyes and go slowly. Once I prepare this, it will be like night and day. As for trilobites, the Neuville is generally dominated by Flexicalymene senaria and Ceraurus pleurexanthemus (the "true" C. pleurexanthemus that is virtually identical with the Rust-Walcott variety). Apart from some Isotelus gigas parts, it was mostly a lot of these two bugs. A Ceraurus semi-enrolled at the eighth segment. A researcher friend of mine speculates this could be the female protecting the eggs. On the right, another Flexi a bit distorted, but nicely buried (exposed parts tend to get exfoliated, so you want to focus on the more buried ones). Ever more Flexis. And yet even more. This was just too cute to pass up. A very tiny Ceraurus, hopefully complete. It did not add too much to my travel weight (I actually kept it in my wallet!). Another Ceraurus, missing its eyes. C-grade. On the right is evidence of Meadowtownella at a new spot. A return visit there to do a proper strata investigation is merited. Non-Sites! Being in Quebec means also spending lots of time with one of my best fossil friends in the world, so there is a social aspect to all of this, too. I acquired from him this neat Anacheirurus from Morocco, and a bucket-list item for me, the Chinese Cambrian lichid, Damesella paronai. I have something coming from him soon that is going to be really exciting.
Overall, it was an okay trip for finds, but not the best. Hanging out with my buddy, and the hair-raising adventures, made this more an experiential run. I have some new sites bookmarked for follow-up, which is great. I was not great at taking photos on this trip, as I was just too focused on the rocks to pull out the camera. Obviously, any site photos I took are for my own reference as disclosing locations is pretty much taboo. Looking over these photos, however, inspires me to get on with planning the next adventures. And, if the stars align, I do have an incredible adventure coming up before the summer is done! I've returned from almost two weeks in the field, living almost entirely from a field pack and a duffel bag. Much was found, and that might require a separate blog entry with a lot of circumspection. Summary: I did find a lot, but nothing new. Some sites were a great surprise from prospecting. I traveled about 3500 km, and I do have even more sites and trips lined up for what I hope will be an exciting season. Many tales from the trails to be told, but many of those are campfire stories.
For now, as a placeholder, I wanted to talk about Penn Dixie (PD) -- a site I last visited in 2019 and will never visit again. This is in no way some kind of negative Yelp review at all, but an acknowledgment that it is time to pass the torch. I love Penn Dixie. It is a premiere spot for finding a lot fo Devonian riches. I used to go every year, sometimes more than once. Just about everyone who goes will come away with something to put a smile on their faces. The staff are fantastic and informative, the site is accessible (even for those with mobility issues), prospective diggers can rent tools, and they run a very good set of educational programming that even includes astronomy. Through their hard efforts, the PD folks have turned this former quarry and subsequent abandoned spot where people did doughnuts with their vehicles into a world-class site for people of all ages and abilities. They have secured state and municipal funding, while making partnerships with local businesses. It truly is a success in terms of its offerings and sustainability in its mission to provide an informative, educational experience as a must-go fossil park. I really wish we had something similar here in Ontario with all our vast fossil riches! That said, for me, I probably don’t need to ever return. The site is just not for someone like me, which isn’t anything negative about the site at all! — It is productive and wonderful and a great educational experience for the casual collector. For us seasoned veterans, though, we likely have hundreds or thousands of perfect specimens from there that it would be a waste of time for us to hunt there, and would just deprive more casual collectors from the joy and wonder of finding great fossils. When some of us Canucks come down, we come down with serious tools. We are human backhoes. We wreck and rule. Pry bars and rock saws galore. We leave the area drastically changed after a few days there. We cut out huge blocks with determination, and we go home with vast fossil “riches.” Well, from a commercial standpoint, not so much. Those Eldredgeops don’t command much of a high dollar value. When one factors in costs in gas, accommodations, prep, and shipping, it isn’t worth the effort — and that is just fine since PD should not be a site for commercial exploitation by its visitors. This site is for the science and wonder for everyone. When I first got into collecting, PD was an absolute dream. Eventually, though, I graduated in my collecting to pursue other things with a more focused agenda. This site was never meant for someone at my stage of collecting, and never marketed itself to be that way. For those of us in this more advanced stage, it is about more specialized collecting in difficult locations to find rarer things. Coming in and hoovering up everything with our excavation experience is no gain for us, and ruins it for more casual collectors. The site isn’t for us, period. I have one good fossil comrade who goes every year, but he isn’t there to collect. He is taken on board to be an expert to help others find the riches we prospered from in the early days. At PD, it isn’t about us, but the new folks to experience the magic we experienced when we were also new. Gone are the days when we need to go home with 100 specimens of the same trilobite — for what? Hoarding is ugly, and just deprives others. Those like us have other spots and different goals, so why come in with our experience and prevent others from getting a piece of the Devonian delight? I can’t speak for others in my fossil orbit, but I am happy to say that I had some great times at PD, time to pass it on for others to enjoy it without me taking all the goodies. I owe it to the new collectors and I owe it to the mission of PD. For those of you reading this blog entry and wondering if you should go, an emphatic yes if you are just getting into collecting or have little access to Devonian material. It is productive; your pack or bucket won't be empty. Perhaps you might have to make choices of what to bring home for the volume of fossil material available! To learn much more, go here: https://penndixie.org Until next time when I can update this blog properly with finds and such, I'm still in the "accumulation" stage of the year. I'm digging! Starting May 13th, I will be en route to be in the field for a week or longer. I will have intermittent internet access. I hope to provide some kind of update upon my return. For now, field work shall dominate my days!
Very close to the month of May and starting to set up plans for some multi-day digs. April mostly saw me keeping things local, checking on my usual dump spots. So far, I've encountered about 13 distinct trilobite species in the field, but nothing complete or all that much worth bringing home. It isn't springtime in the southwest of Ontario without me finding a few Terataspis fragments, which is always exciting. I also bought a trilobite at the auction house from a fellow Ontario collector: No, it isn't a complete Bufoceraurus, but a complete one would likely require taking a mortgage out on my house. I've found fragments of this toad-like cheirurid in Manitoulin a number of years ago, but this remains the most complete example in the collection. At one of my rock dump spots in town, I was finding the usual Bois Blanc / Onandaga trilo-frags. This one was worth taking a photo of given the size and the nature of the shell. Good ol' Anchiopsis, always appearing as either pygidia or cephalons. Maybe one day I will be lucky to find a complete one, but I'm not holding my breath. The high chertiness of this kind of rock means everything shatters, sadly. It also likes to send sharp missiles to any exposed skin. It is mostly corals, which are the hardiest in terms of erosion, but every once in a while I might hit a sandier plane underneath them where some trilobite parts have washed in.
I should also say that I've been reading comments left by readers of this blog, and appreciate them (not the spam ones, though). My apologies for the comments not appearing or my delay in response, but the settings on this Weebly-powered blog seem a bit broken. I'm not sure how I can fix that, but rest assured I read and appreciate the comments. You can always leave me your email if you want me to get in touch, as I'm always happy to talk fossils. Well, it's just about May and time to start gathering my tools and make my way out and about. Apart from one course to teach for a week, and one workshop to run at month's end, I look forward to busting some rock in farflung places. I have designs on some Devonian sites, but mostly I will be focusing on the trilobite-rich Ordovician. I have a bit of a bucket list of specimens I'd like to add to the collection this year, so with effort and luck maybe I'll be able to cross them off. If I'm really lucky, maybe I'll find something new. We'll see what happens when I play the rock lottery. With the winter semester in my rearview mirror, I've been plunging face-forward into the fossil season, having been out a dozen days so far this year. I have yet to embark on more farflung, multi-day trips yet, but it is coming. 2023 promises to be a very different kind of collecting year. I will be aligning myself a lot closer to science than just merely collecting pretty things. To that end, I already am under a research project that is quite exciting, although it does not involve my true love of trilobites. The way I see it, I have until September to make as much use of this time as possible to get out in the field and do the work. I had a pretty fair day out at my Devonian hot spot yesterday. I was in the high energy horizons of the Dundee Fm, loaded as it is with rostroconchs, brachiopods, bryozoans, gastropods, some corals, and loads of trilobite... parts. Although I would be foolish to post any site photos or information, I can share some of the spoils. Starting with the abundant rostroconchs, we can see here that there is some species diversity in this material. Amidst the usual species in this material, Trypaulites calypso is not a frequent find. It might even get mistaken as yet another Pseudodechenella (which is, by far, the most numerous of trilo-parts in these rocks), except for a few notable differences: additional pygidial ribs is one, but the sagittal nodes (somewhat abraded off here, but still showing a bit of an arch) point to the right diagnosis. Not the best examples I encountered yesterday, nor from this site in the past, but representing here is Odontocephalus sp. (possibly new species). We have the trademark "cowcatcher" anterior cephalic projection on the left, the trademark pydigidal rostral fork on the right. I bumped into a ridiculous number of Coronura aspectans fragments. This is just a few I decided to take home. There was one rock where every split had evidence of this rare and fascinating dalmanitid. They could attain some pretty healthy size, too, topping out at up to 50 cm(!) None of these samples would have been even half of that, but they are all still of fairly robust size. I've got cheeks, eyes, and pygidia. Orphaned single thoracic segments were plentiful.
So, in all, a great day out in the field. So far, my encounter tally for trilobites is the following, from my field notebook: 1. Isotelus gigas 2. Pseudodechenella sp. 1 3. Crassiproetus crassimarginatus 4. Pseudodechenella sp. 2 5. Pseudogygites latimarginatus 6. Triarthrus eatoni 7. Anchiopsis anchiops 8. Burtonops sp. 9. Eldredgeops rana 10. Coronura aspectans 11. Odontocephalus sp. 12 Trypaulites calypso .I did neglect to mention that I got my hands on some old Craigleith material that must have been collected several decades ago. These were ridiculously loaded hash beds, so complete examples of our classic Canadian asaphid, Pseudogygites latimarginatus, were almost nonexistent, but I did find one scrappy complete and possibly a second under a sticky layer -- once my tools are fixed, I can try to confirm that. Also, an in-town trip may have netted a complete Pseudodechenella, but it will be a tough glue down job in hard, diagenetically reworked material, something I can get to and confirm when the tools are operational again. So, the season is on. My constant burning question remains: where to next? This has been one quiet space for such a long time, perhaps the longest radio silence for this blog ever. Well, I haven't done much of any fossil-related activity at all since I downed tools, not even prep (my tools are a bit on the fritz). But, the snows have receded, and temps are going up, albeit this is going to be a sluggish start to spring. This will mark the 10th year of field collecting, and I have a list of places to check out and put my hard shoulder into. Some places are, as usual, entirely on spec, and others I've collected before. I might not be posting about trips so much given how close we have to play the cards close to the proverbial vest. That said, I'll still post the nice finds and discuss some of the more salient paleontological details to keep this as educational and informative as possible. I did purchase just one trilobite recently: This asaphid is a Hoekaspis yahuari that occur in nodules. Sadly, the impression side was lost, but what prompted me to make the purchase was that these usually appear without their cheeks. Even the genal spines can be seen as an impression, and both eyes are intact. I've seen a lot of these for sale that are missing those cheeks, but I was holding out for this hero. It certainly isn't in the best condition, but it makes up for it by being relatively complete. Measuring in at 9.9 cm, not too tiny, either.
My teaching is done until the week-long course in May, so now is the time to start gathering my tools and making plans. I hope to have a much better year than 2022, which was a really low time that only saw three long distance, multi-day trips. It is a time to tool up and try to carry that momentum throughout the year instead of falling into the typical summer rut. Wish me luck as I get cracking with exploration! To all my fossil comrades, near and far, a happy new year. My last post of 2022 ends with this year's most recent doodle.
There hardly needs to be any stronger indication the fossil collecting season is over than an arctic blast of heavy snow and plunging temperatures. It is solidly winter in this part of the world, and even a forecasted thaw late next week won't be long enough to pull back the blanket of the white stuff. So, it is time for the retrospective part of this blog's programming, which will be a bit different this year. Compared to the 2020 and 2021 seasons, the "post-pandemic" year of 2022 has been, by turns, underwhelming and utterly disappointing. There were a few highlights, but the general trend -- like the stock markets of this year -- has been bearish and down. Like most seasons, it began strong with a lot of hope. I actually went out to bust a few rocks as early as January 1st, which was snow-free (didn't find much at all), but then my next opportunity arrived on March 5th as my season's first "official strike." I was restricted to spots in my city until April 22nd, when I was able to visit a fossil comrade in "La Belle Province" for a week. After that, it was back to my local haunts, checking on a few so-so prospects or failed ones. By the end of May, I spent a weekend collecting in Hastings County for some okay finds, and after that it was a few local spots before the summer lull, and nothing much at all until October up north in the Silurian for a few days where I spent more effort and got less of a reward as a result. In terms of trilobites, I bumped into 29 taxa this year, of which 5 were new to my collection: Triarthrus beckii, Gabriceraurus plattinensis, Erratencrinus vigilans, Cyphoproetus wilsonae and Stelckaspis perplexa. So, a drop from 2021's record of 32 taxa and 9 new to the collection, and a further decline from 2020's tally o0f 40 and 12, respectively. Part 1: Collecting As stated, I didn't get out to many good spots this year, and only a few new ones compared to previous years. Triarthrus beckii and a Gabriceraurus The new additions, minus the Erratencrinus, which is just a few fragments. I did encounter more Terataspis parts this year, so I am getting a bit closer to being able to do a reconstruction on paper. Part 2: The Wallet Hammer I made a number of purchases this year, but not as much as previous years. Some of them were for me to prep, which I'll save for the third section. A plump Gabriceraurus, and a large Ceraurinus, both from Ontario Thaleops/Nanillaenus, and a plate of Ceraurus globulobatis with two starfish. A British trinucleid and a Chinese illaenid A lovely lichid from Jorf, Akantharges mellishae, and a nice Russian asaphid. Another Baoshan bug, the harpetid Dubhglasina yunnanensis, followed on the right by a mostly free-standing Crotalocephalina gibbus, with this being a more popular trend in recent years.. There were a few other specimens I'd have to fish out of the photo roll, but this was most of the goodies. Nothing that broke the bank this year. Part 3: Preparation I did some prep this year, taking on a few "lost causes" among what were written off by the pros as "un-preppable." In a rather lean year for finds, I doubled down on these for lack of much more promising projects in the prep queue. Some highlights. An easy Asaphus lepidurus A robust Asaphus punctatus. Out of the batch of Waldron shale calymenids I acquired, only one turned out to be complete. That Hastings County Gabri. The brutal project from hell. A Quebec Isotelus gigas of about 11 inches, with plenty of resto. I'd have to find the before images for these. A plate of Walcott Ceraurus, and a conga line of Quebec Flexicalymene senaria. A significant piece, also deemed to be on the lost cause pile: near complete Ekwanoscutellum ekwanensis, Thornloe Fm, Silurian of Ontario. In my own backyard -- a super local Eldredgeops rana, complete and enrolled (and encased in Moroccan-hard rock). There are likely a few other preps I missed, but I would say these are the highlights. Part 4: The Doodles I did a few illustrations this year, with my last one just yesterday that I will post here. Not as many as prior years, but it seems I only pick up the pencils around the early winter time. I have another few drafted, and hope to do a reconstruction project at some point.
So, that's the old ball game. I am not confident about 2023 being a great season, but I suppose it will be a matter of time and opportunity. |
Kane Faucher
Archives
February 2024
|