On a grey, snowy day, Deb and I paid a visit to the annual London Rock and Mineral show. Shows like these are heavily dominated by vendors who specialize in minerals, jewellery, healing crystals, etc., but there are tables with other stuff as well, including space rocks, microscopic crystallization displays, the local rock club, and the local university's earth sciences department. Vendors specializing solely in fossils were uncommon, and one could encounter a few fossils among the sale items by the mineral specialists as well. In terms of fossils, a good bulk of them are the typical fare of polished Moroccan orthocerids, polished Madagascaran ammonites, eminently displayable Green River fish from Wyoming, and standard trilobites (common Moroccan phacopids and proetids, mostly, and the usual flush of Elrathia kingii from Utah). Some neat stuff like shrimp from Solnhofen, petrified wood, and the like as well. The real highlight was in speaking with two vendors, both fairly aged, who are still collecting, and with one collecting locally. There are certain names of collectors, sites, and species we know as we talk shop. It is a small world! One vendor actually knew Charles Southworth personally, so that was a local bit of history. I didn't buy much, as there wasn't much of interest I wanted to buy (or prices were marked up far higher than what I could acquire them for elsewhere). But, I did buy two things. A sealed, new copy of what is a kind of trilo-bible for NY collecting (with some significant overlap with similar species in Ontario). I already had the digitized copy of this in my rather robust trilobite book and article library, but sometimes nothing quite beats having a physical book. The photo plates are very nice, and I suppose it may be better to drool on paper rather than on a screen. And the other purchase: cephalon of an Eldredgeops iowensis southworthi. I don't usually purchase fragments and partials, but it just so happened after all the conversation about Arkona and Charlie Southworth that I figured I'd pick up the trilobite named in his honour. These ones are quite rare to find in the Hungry Hollow Member (a collecting comrade managed to find a full roller of one last October, the lucky duck!). The sheer size of this phacopid is impressive, even in fragmentary form. It differs from the standard Eldredgeops rana mainly in terms of the highly tuberculate sculpture. I do have a small pygidium of one collected some years ago, but this seemed too special to pass up. The vendor I bought this from extended an invite to visit his shop up the highway, and maybe an opportunity to collect with him.
And that's about it this time. With ongoing labour strife with Canada Post, I have a few items coming that will likely be delayed for some while. So far, I am still waiting on some Milliput for restoration work, and two Russian trilobites to prepare (one a new species of Illaenid for me, and the other an asaphid I already have two examples of, and will probably prep and flip). Until next time... Comments are closed.
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Kane Faucher
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February 2024
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