I went to my fossil dig at Trask Bridge Quarry in Rockford today. It's a small, but very spacious limestone quarry(well, it was kind of huge) out in the middle of the rolling northern countryside. It's actually an inactive quarry, so the construction company that owns it lets people do fossil digs there. Fossils date to the Ordivician, in excess of 450 million years old. There were actually a lot of people there, up to 60 people. What was nice is you can drive your car into the quarry and park it there, then go out and dig.

Fossils could be found scattered throughout the quarry, if you pay attention and look at the ground while walking. I found 2 fossilized shells alone from just searching on the ground. Most people don't dig into the stratified limestone walls because it's harder to find fossils that way. Instead, all the fossils are accesible in the mine dumps(very large/high or small mounds of already cut and mined rocks). Really common fossils include snail shells, ammonites, brachiopods, horn coral, other types of coral, criniods, and trace fossils(imprints). Very rare fossils include trilobites(which means, they have been found there but are rarely found).

I have about two buckets full of fossils. I literally just climbed a mound, claimed it as mine, parked my ass on top, and just started looking at rocks. Practically all of what I found was shells, coral, and trace fossils. I have some spectacular specimens though, especially of an amazingly detailed horn coral. Have a wonderful example of fossiliferous limestone, which kind of has everything in it. I'm hoping to take pictures of them, but I'm not sure if my camera will take good close-up pics. I wish I would have brought my camera with me so I could have taken some pictures of the flood plain and the quarry. Some crappy but pretty neat shit, I must say.


Cheers,
Kari's Krap