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.

This will be a relatively short post as I begin gearing up for another multi-day adventure out of province. 

As I wait on a few more regional spots, I made a casual return visit to a local spot that is a Devonian salad of southwestern Ontario formations. The only notable trilobite find was a pygidium of Trypaulites calypso. Ludvigsen (1979) tells us that this species is not reported in Ontario rocks, but does appear in correlative strata in both Michigan and New York, which is to say it occupied both basins. 

I performed some preliminary scribing just enough to ensure that the diagnostic details would square with the certainty of proper identification. I have found quite a number of this species in Amherstburg and Dundee Formations, but the nature of the preservation has generally meant that they were either silicified or appearing as a steinkern. In this instance, the ornamentation is clearly visible. One of the key diagnostic traits of this species would be the backward-facing axial nodes that lends it a kind of sagittal ridge appearance, in addition to the number of pygidial pleurae, which has a variability of between 10-14 (see Lesperance, 1975). 

A focused image-stacked photo reveals the very fine granules on the shell. It is fortunate that this was preserved in such good condition, as many of the recorded examples do lack the detailed prosopon. This is not by far a tremendously exciting find, but certainly of interest for its detail.

But this is just the beginning of the end of the season, and autumn is the ideal time to kick it up a notch due to the cooler temperatures. I've already been fortunate this year in having made two extended trips far from home, and I can safely say that this has been the very best collecting year so far despite the ever narrowing prospects for fossil collecting in Ontario. It has taken a lot of diligence and sweat, but I think I may have graduated to "serious and dedicated collector" as opposed to "weekend warrior." The efforts, although not all gainful, have certainly paid off. Stay tuned for what the remainder of this season may bring!

UPDATE: Just a quick and neat find today barely a few minutes' drive from my house, amongst river transport rocks, all Dundee Fm. I made a run to the hardware store to replace a missing brick hammer, and it was the last one in stock. I checked out a new, very small, spot that would only take a few hours to exhaust. Breaking in the new hammer, after no more than ten minutes, a full prone Eldredgeops rana that will measure about 50 mm when prepared was staring up at me from a fresh split. Sadly, some of the shell is missing or stuck to the impression (which I kept), but I can do some light restoration with Milliput.

A pretty robust one! I seem to be able to find trilobites anywhere.

UPDATE 2:
And this just landed in the post on the eve of my journey to la belle province. It was listed as Mucronaspis zagoraensis, but on account of the blunted genal spines I was leaning toward this actually being Dalmanitina socialis, which is also found in the Ktaoua Fm in Morocco. This was later confirmed by my friend and trilobite expert, SM (my thanks!). It's an internal mould, and about 7 cm long with the caudal spine in place, with just a bit of crush damage on the left side of the cephalon, missing an eye.