Completely unexpected, but the last few days have been about 4-5 degrees above freezing, which has allowed the snow to melt. A partly sunny, snow-free day at 5 Celsius happily coincided with my day off, so I went out back to my Amherstburg/Lucas Fms fill. I spent most of my time with one very large piece of armour stone that weighed north of a ton. Persistent sledgehammer + chisel + pry bar meant I could reduce it to chips. It was a generous rock, too, with abundant trilobite pieces from top to bottom. In fact, it had numerous representatives of 4 out of the 5 species that appear in this material. My best find was this Acanthopyge contusa pygidium. Although the rock split was unfortunate, the preservation is actually quite good for this material as I can make out the pustules and pygidial ribs fairly clearly: I also picked up interesting brachiopods and gastropods (not pictured) that will be going into a gift box. Here are some other trilo fragments from the rock that kept on giving. I am trying to perform relative due diligence in collecting these as I may need to consult with some earth science colleagues to unravel a few mysteries about this material. Not a bad haul on a cooler day.
So is this finally it for the season? Perhaps, but pending how steady my final essay grading goes, it looks like there will be another potential dig day next week. And to close out this post, my fossil comrade Malcolm sent me pics of the Eldredgeops iowenesis southerworthi cephalon I found back in the summer. It very much needed stabilization, so I entrusted the prep-master himself. This is stabilized with paraloid as the whole thing was crumbling apart (as is common with Hungry Hollow material). Comments are closed.
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Kane Faucher
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February 2024
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