So it begins! I still have a little over three weeks on campus, but the surprise of early spring weather means rolling in the start of the collecting season. This year is going to be carried out a bit differently. I'll be conducting systematic prospecting and fieldwork, which means exploring new areas and visiting long neglected sites. My fieldnotes identify several potential spots for site visits. Much of my travels will keep me focused on Ontario, and will be trained on trilobites. I have spots that span the Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian that should hopefully result in some spectacular finds this year. My other side goal is to continue adding to my field guide to Devonian trilobites of Ontario. To that end, I will need to explore more spots where Devonian rocks outcrop, which is not all that common in Ontario given that glacial drift is like a blanket that is about 30 - 400 feet thick in most places. My first stop of the spring was just nearby where Amherstburg and Lucas Fm fill has captured my attention since August of last year. On Saturday and Sunday, temperatures were hitting close to the mid-teens. Still, it takes a while longer for the snow to burn off. I set out around sunrise through the woods and to the fill area. The bonus of leaving while the temperature is still below freezing is that the mud is still frozen. It is not so great on site, however, as the rocks can be frozen together and in the ground. But that is what tools are for! Let's dig in. Most of those rocks are rubbish. The focus is on the brownish-grey ones with bituminous streaks and lenticular coral showing. The other types of rock are generally blank or sandy/leached with mostly tiny rostroconch and crappy gastropod steinkerns. The chocolate brown rocks can be busy with bryozoans and brachs (a good sign) or muddy blanks -- you never know until you wrestle them out and try splitting them. Forget about bedding planes in many cases, or cooperative rocks that will split nicely. Some of these are brutally hard and tend to shatter. The other type of gainful rock tends to be whitish-grey and busy with well sorted smaller skeletal material. Both of these kinds of rock are reef rubble or lagoon. I don't bother with the very crumbly peritidal stuff. A decent sized gastropod. I keep these for other people, and to record associated fauna with the trilobites. Fairly typical fauna for this formation -- bryozoans and a few brachs. Nothing I'd take home, but anyone I take out to this spot is welcome to them. Some pretty unremarkable lichid fragments (top two, and the lower left). I keep them for completion's sake, and lichids are generally rare anyway, and that includes fragments. The lower right is likely a Mystrocephala stummi. They are very tiny (0.3-0.7 cm wide) and quite easy to miss. More lichid frags... Plenty of Crassiproetus pygidia, and this platycerid.
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Kane Faucher
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February 2024
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