The Hunt For Fossilized Plants In An Active Surface Coal Mine

I was able to get off work on a Saturday and got another opportunity to attend another field trip back in 2016. This time to an active surface coal mine in West Jefferson County.

It was a warm, sunny and nice spring day to be outside. Many of the APS members caravanned to the mine early that morning anxious to get the hunt started. The usual routine was to find the foreman who was onsite for us, graciously taking part of his Saturday off to make sure we were all situated on site. With legal papers signed, we were taken to an safe area that contained "spoil piles". There were are no heavy machinery in the area to endanger us although you could hear activity in the distance. "Spoil Piles" contain stone called Shale that didn't have the coal in it and was used as fill or hauled off to another destination. We were free to crawl, climb around those rock piles to our hearts content finding fossils to take home with us, being careful of course! When I got out of my vehicle I was greeted by this huge slab of Lepidodendron (scale tree). Would of loved to add it to my collection! It looks like snake scales had been fossilized all over the stone.

This was a honey hole for me because in those piles contained lots of fern fossils! With all of us scattered about the area, I found this one pile where my vehicle was parked (to the right) that contained nothing but fern fossils! The first picture is one of two fruit flats containing those fern fossils. We were onsite till lunchtime not wanting to overstay our welcome. It was a great beautiful day to hunt fossils putting several fruit flats with finds in my vehicle. Later on in the evening I washed the fossils, took pictures and posted them on my Facebook page.