Earlier in September, I was across the provincial border for a weeklong fossil dig -- and it was quite good timing indeed as it would not be long after that when both Montreal and Quebec City were escalated to "red" zones due to Covid. Fortunately, fossil hunting is already a socially distanced activity. Still, I was able to isolate upon my return. It was a fairly productive trip. Due to obvious reasons, I will not be posting specific sites in name or in photos, nor some select finds I'd prefer to keep private. I will leave this somewhat circumspect to say that I collected in the Neuville and Nicolet Formations (both Upper Ordovician), which covers a fairly broad geographic stretch. In all, I came back with a healthy number of trilobites, crinoids, and other interesting items. It takes a lot of work and a lot of shorelines. My immediate pre-trip, pre-scruffy self. The view from the train on the long travel day. Montreal skyline by the evening. One of the highlights of this trip was to pay a visit to Mario who curates the Musée de paléontologie et de l'évolution. A fabulous and drool-worthy evening was had in viewing just a small selection of the over 70,000 catalogued specimens, drawn from the donations of the best collections in both Quebec and Ontario. There is just too much to post and comment on individually, so here's a slideshow. Prepare for eye candy: As for my own finds, I would class them as very good for me, a visitor, but fairly typical and common for those who collect in the Neuville and Nicolet Formations. Just about any shoreline will have something to offer, but one has to work at it to get anything half decent (fairly standard in most fossil-bearing areas). I'm going to be lazy and not caption everything above, but a typical array of fauna from a few carpoids, crinoids (Ectenocrinus and Cincinnaticrinus), a conularid, bivalves galore, and my favourite, trilobites (examples of Ceraurus pleurexanthemus, Flexicalymene senaria, Cryptolithus tesselatus, Gravicalymene sp., Isotelus gigas, Triarthrus rougensis). The big Triarthrus glabella might belong to a T. beckii, but there isn't enough diagnostic material preserved for me to make that call. Oh, and that lovely book was courtesy of the author himself, whom we met briefly (socially distanced!) in Kingston, en route to Montreal (Thanks again, Phil!). This was how my fossil trip kind of began, finding this Bathyurus superbus in a dump pile in Kingston. It was a good omen, if not another checklist trilobite in my collection. It will need some serious prep of what is left of it. Speaking of, I dabbled a bit with my current batch of finds, Two Ectenocrinus crowns surrounded by a lot of stem action. This is just a start, and practice as I don't generally prep crinoids. Work in progress on this Ceraurus pleurexanthemus. I'm still trying to fish out the right eye and genal, which is currently under a very tough calcitic crust.
So that is about it. A pretty OK trip, and my first time digging in PQ despite having gone so many times (in that interval between my post- and pre-fossil days). So now, due to Covid restrictions, any digs I do will be much more local. This has already been a fantastic collecting year for me, so even if things start winding down I have no regrets... and tons of stuff to prep and draw. And this just in: a Cybeloides plana from the Bobcaygeon Fm in the Ottawa area. Comments are closed.
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Kane Faucher
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February 2024
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