I have spent countless hours hunting, cataloging and framing fossils as well as scouting locations for them. You'd think I get paid for the time involved in this! I'm just an amateur with no training in the sciences...are you kidding me? I was horrible at math and science in school, hence the reason for becoming an artist. What knowledge of fossils I attained up till today comes from both professional Paleontologists and citizen scientists who were gracious to impart that knowledge to me and have same love for fossils as I do.
What drives me to collect fossils are for the "thrill of the hunt". It's finding a stone that has been locked away within the earth's crust for over a million years. When I split a piece of shale and see a fossilized image of a plant on it, I imagine it seeing the first daylight since it was entombed in the mud over eons of time. Hunting and Scouting involves time so I consider what I'm doing a hobby. I've hunted in 95 degree hot humid weather, as cold as 30 degrees and even when it's raining! It's definitely better then sitting in front of the computer all the live long day. Crawling around rock piles in mines, quarries or rock/road cuts is just pure fun for me, so on occasion when I find something out of the ordinary that could be the next great discovery...it's well worth it!
With that said I have made several cool discoveries that has been recognized in countries like Ukraine and France. Above is a blog banner created by Roman Kishkan of Ukraine: http://carbfospladir.blogspot.com and the second is a banner from Bruno Vallois of France: http://forums-naturalistes.forums-actifs.com/t4310-lyginopt So lookout the next discovery is waiting to be found!
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