More photos from Tom Bantel!
More photos from Ron Fine
This month the Dry Dredgers rekindled their partnership with sister club, the Kentucky Paleontological Society, as well as continuing their spring field trip series of visiting fossils sites they haven't been to in a while, by repeating our joint June Picnic/Field trip with the KPS (last time was 2004). It is always great to see fellow fossil hunters, especially when these fossil hunters frequent the same rich Kentucky fossil hillsides..
The day started with a cookout with hamburgers, hot dogs
and some great side dishes brought in by the members. Here are some pics of the
picnic.
There is always show and tell with fossils at these events.
KPS President Dan Phelps showed us his recent fossil pick-ups and offered free
bumper stickers!
Then we gathered for the fossil trip and Dan explained the
sites we were going to visit.
The first site we visited was a road cut where we broke
dolomite to find lots of specimens of the Silurian trilobite Gravicalymene
celebra.
Here are some of the Gravicalymene celebra we found.
This is a close-up of a tail section (pygidium).
Here's a nice example of how breaking dolomite can reveal a
trilobite. The rock below is broken but is shown here with both sides put
together.
Here's the same rock showing the inside surfaces. Shown is the
positive cast and the negative mold of the back half of a Gravicalymene.
Ahhh. Not a lost cause. The front half of the trilobite was
found and can be glued together easily. Very nice.
This is great. One member was just turning over rocks in the
gutter by the side of the road and found that one side had four or five Gravicalymene
casts! Check it out!
Then, a few minutes later, what I think was a different member
(bad reporting on my part), found the negative side of that surface, complete
with the four or five Gravicalymene molds. Sweet!
At our second site we picked up large Favosites
Corals from the Late Ordovician Period.
This next fossil was brought to Tom Bantel and myself for
identification during the field trip but could not be sure of the identification
on the spot. It is from the same layers in Central Kentucky, on a nearby road
cut. So we put the photo online to see if anyone out there can identify it. And
Erich of Austin TX wrote in to point out that it's a Ceraurinus icarus! Thanks Erich. He cites Steve Holand's great
web site, which has a photo almost exactly like it.
And YES! Someone found a Cincinnatian trilobite Flexicalymene
at the second site.
Brachiopods were not uncommon. Here's a Hebertella.
Trace fossils are ubiquitous. This interesting burrow, filled
with pyrite and iron, looks like the animal had no idea where he/she was going.
Here, also, is Greg Courney's video of this field trip on YouTube.com.
Here are more photos of the trip from Tom Bantel!
Our thanks to Dan Phelps and the many Kentucky Paleontological Society members for making this a very memorable field trip. Hope to see you next year, folks!
Back to the Field Trip Photo Index
Return to Dry Dredgers Home Page
The Dry Dredgers and individual contributors reserve the rights to all information, images, and content presented here. Permission to reproduce in any fashion, must be requested in writing to admin@drydredgers.org .