It's not often that one can find a trove of fossils within one's vicinity-- in my case, within walking distance of my house. So time to spin a yarn and show some pictures. There's a spot I've been returning to for going on six years now, and it has been pretty good to me in giving up its treasures. Nearly all of its material was trucked in, including rocks from the Bois Blanc, Amherstberg, and Dundee Formations. Of course, it stopped being productive by end of last year, and although it is provided me with fantastic pieces of trilobites such as Anchiopsis anchiops, Mannopgye halli, and Odontocephalus sp., among others, it's pretty much tapped out, with some areas being too overgrown now. Nothing left but splinters, mud, weeds, and dirt. Still, I tried to give it a few more chances in the case of weathering or new material being trucked in. Nope. I've found nothing of interest there all year, so pretty much stopped going. Nearby, however, is a different story. My new honey hole is also trucked in material -- too poor to make cement, so it is used as riprap / fill -- and there is a lot of it. Perhaps so much it may take me a very long while to tap it out. Initially I thought it might be local Dundee Fm, and/or Lucas Fm (Anderdon Member) due to the sandy facies. Now, I think it may actually be Bois Blanc material. So I've done about two half-days of recon and prospecting to get a handle on the site and material rather than do a systematic all-day dig. This stuff, pending rock type, can be dense, dirty, fragile, brutally hard, blank, or ridiculously fossiliferous. There are massive dome-like corals amidst smaller corals of all kinds, but in some layers bryozoans dominate. And these are some of the medium sized ones! When I started poking around, I thought to myself that it was just a resigned end-of-visit tapping of a few boring rocks. And then I started encountering some familiar matrix, but loaded with these rostroconch. And then a few nautiloid/ammonoids started appearing, too. But the really exciting trip-maker that turned around my whole day, and has rekindled my interest in taking some walks outside my house is this: Yes, a basically complete (I'll know for sure with prep) Pseudodechenella sp. Not sure of the species just as yet. Finding these, or their byrozoan/coral thicket-mate Crassiproetus, complete is far from common. After finding this proetid, I gawped at it for a good few minutes, shocked by my dumb luck! After, I started finding plenty of pygidia and other fragments. That brings me to the end of day one. On to day two. I needed to recalibrate my expectations so as not to think full trilobites would be popping out of every rock. I was right: I did not find a full trilobite, but something no less sensational. But here's a tour of some of the other finds first. A whole lot of sea bed goodness. Gastropalooza! Long and branching. This amounts to a hill of b...ryozoans. More Crassiproetus pygidia. Not pictured yet is a fairly large one (about the size of a silver dollar for those who remember what those look like). But enough delay. The find of the day, and perhaps the week, month, or year, would be this unattractive fragment: UPDATE: Despite the very similar morphology, I came to the realization that this is not a Terataspis, but more likely a match with Echinolichas. Comments are closed.
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Kane Faucher
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February 2024
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