With Christmas and New Year's celebrations behind us. For most folks January can be an uneventful month, that is... unless you are a fossil collector or just a very active person in life. I'm starting off the 2022 new year with a planned trip to North Alabama to hunt Carboniferous Period marine fossils where the seas covered that portion of the state 300 million years ago! That crazy weather pattern where it rains on the weekends has finally broken... at least for this Saturday. We are expecting a sunny, but very cold day...brrrrrrr! Not to worry though, I will outfit myself with several layers of clothing and boots and with all this rain we've been having it's surely going to be a little soggy too! We're planning to leave at 8:00 am because it's a two-hour drive up there! My goal for that day is to find old shark teeth and crinoids... hopefully I will find one or the other, and maybe an arrowhead. If I do find an arrowhead, sadly a picture will have to do because it is found on federally protected land and will have to stay where I take a picture of it... crazy huh!
Anyhoo, we arrive at the site around 10:30 am and the wind is cold blowing off that lake! It is overcast with the sun popping out on occasion. I make my way over to the area where colonial coral had been found and en route find two fishing lures that got hung up on the rocks by fishermen when the water levels was higher... now I'm the new owner of an almost brand-new fishing lure the other one was badly damaged!
When I arrive at the site I see slabs of stone on the shoreline waiting to be split to see what treasures they hold inside of them! I find a Trilobutt affectionately called by fossil hunters. This butt-end of a Trilobite is the part that is mostly found by collectors, hence it's nickname. I remained at this spot until I ran out of stone to split!
I came across this Trilobutt and just see the rear end (near my thumb) because my eyesight isn't what it used to be. When I get home and get a closer look I see what appears to be a part of the head. Not knowing much about Trilobites I posted it on a Facebook group page for some identification. It was pointed out that it is indeed part of the head and other pieces scattered about the hash plate if you look closely. The thing about ocean floors during that time period all that debris swishing around during heavy currents can dis articulate anything that is fragile including a Trilobite molt or quite possible a dead one? Such a cool specimen to add to my collection! The Trilobutt below was the only other found that day.
A shark tooth wasn't going to be a find for today? I ran out of stones to split, so I started to look around the shoreline and had heard from others that Colonial Coral was near where I was situated. I see this huge stone with recognizable hexagonal shapes but it was too big to even try dig it up and carry out, so a picture will have to do.
My goal is find several small pieces and eventually I get lucky and find two to take home. Below I find this piece, most of it covered in mud so it was hard to see detail or anything about it but knew it was a piece of Colonial Coral? When I got it home and washed all the grime off the stone I was astonished to see all those hexagonal patterns make up the Colonial Coral that was covered in mud. In the fossil world these stones are known as Petosky stones which are mostly found in the Great Lakes area up North. Wow, what a piece to have in my collection!
For another hour or two I didn't find that many fossils other than this living fossil as the fossil world describes as a Decopod crawling around on 300 million year old fossil stones. We call it a Crawfish down here and I've never seen one this colorful!
Gosh, the hours passed quickly and it was time for lunch! My hunting buddies and I met at the truck to do lunch and share our finds. Gosh, everyone had something to show and they were cool finds! After eating they wanted to go and visit another spot so we packed up our gear and headed there.
When we arrive at the site there were a lot of rocks but found one but nothing else spectacular other than this Archimedes with Fenestella wrapped around the spine... giving an image of what the Archimedes really looked like together. Mostly Fenestella is found covering a hash plate with out the screw and the screws are usually found apart from the Fenestella by themselves or on a hash plate as well... I know, confusing right?
The sun had eventually come out and warming up the air around us so I had to shed a layer! We made our way to a spot that would be our last before the sun set. I found myself amongst a patch of rocks and sat my butt down and scanned the ground finding crinoid stems, Archimedes screws (not pictured), Horn Coral (pic#1), Brachiopod steinkerns (pic#2&4), and Blastoids. Blastoids (pic#2) are my favorite of the two and just love finding them and it's safe to say that most fossil collectors love finding them too!
Here is another fossil called a straight shelled Cephlopod, wishing I could add this one to my collection! The impression was on a huge slab and when I tried to extract it, it was already fragile and broke into four pieces. In cases like this, a picture will have to do for this nice specimen because nature will eventually reclaim it.
I also found two stone plates with a mixture of fossils in the above pictures. Blastoids embedded on what we affectionately call hash plates or death plates. This is where debris and organisms that died and covered the ocean floor, over time became fossilized.
As the sun set the temperature dropped and it was a sign for us to leave. I didn't find the quantity I had hoped for but found enough to satisify the collector spirit. I didn't find the shark teeth or whole Crinoids today that I was anticipating, and that is okay... ya can't find them all! Hopefully we will get back up here before the water levels rise again!
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