Barefoot and preoccupied in Arkansas

Fossil hunting locations often lack curb appeal.

Another ditch, another day.

I've been consulting the web page findingrocks.com and while most of the info is outdated or extremely vague, I've managed to glean some productive fossil sites from it.
A combination of a road trip and some findingrocks.com research recently took me on a tour of 

"Arkansas' Least Appealing Ditches"

 (I'm claiming that as a title for a future reality series).
These ditches give access to the Fayetteville shale of northern Arkansas which dates to the Mississippian period (approx. 354-323 million years old).  I was on the hunt for small pyritized ammonoids (a group of cephalopods which also contained ammonites).

Ditch #1

This is an extremely public ditch, flanked by an interstate on one side and a busy access road on the other and, as always when working an area like this, I have to wonder,

"Why the frack are you honking at me?!"

Seriously, drivers, shouldn't you be texting or something?

I grabbed a bucketful of the rounded, disk-shaped concretions that findingrocks.com said might have ammonoids inside.  

My favorite is this rock that looks like a mashed Moon Pie:

Ditch #2

 I know: breathtaking.

When I started searching the ground behind the dumpster I initially thought someone had been shooting skeet...

but the red fragments turned out to be the target concretions. 

I started to hammer at them with my rock pick which attracted the attention of a wandering businessman on lunch break.  He approached, asking what I was looking for and peering into my bucket where he saw a bottle of my rheumatism medicine (IPA) and several unassuming round red rocks.  Five seconds into my explanation of "Fayetteville shale" his eyes glazed over and he went back to work.

I found one ammonoid fossil:

but after cracking several rocks and only finding interesting, fossil-free formations:

I headed over to...

Ditch #3

This is the kind of ditch I could stay in all day:

loads of interesting rocks and a bit of privacy.

I could've even strung a hammock from the sewage pipe for whenever I needed a break from wading barefoot in the leech-infested sludge.

Ok, I exaggerate.

The water looked like normal creek water and the leech-y looking critters never actually adhered to my skin.

Paradise!

Once again, I started looking for rounded concretions but my eye was constantly drawn to the "turtle" concretions which have the appearance of fossilized turtle shell but, well, aren't.

I wasn't planning on taking any of them home until I noticed that one of them was covered with ammonoid fossils:

and another huge one was going to look fabulous on my deck:

...and the stack of rocks that had to get from the bottom of a deep ditch to the back of my truck continued to grow...

The ditch was cut out of soft shale that didn't seem to have any fossils in it until I waded upstream and noticed the character of the shale was a little different: firmer with some visible, tiny ammonoids.  The daylight was waning so I grabbed the biggest chunk of shale I could manage and began to enact my exit strategy.  

I have learned that loading my least favorite rocks first ensures against the culling of my finds due to exhaustion.  That big, beautiful turtle concretion was my impetus to haul every rock in my pile up the steep sides of the ditch and through a field of stick-tights and wild blackberry shrubs.

There was a lot of cursing involved.

It was all worth it!

Lots and lots of rocks to examine and think about.  Slowly splitting the fragile layers of my hunk of shale has revealed perfect tiny pyritized snails, ammonoids, and other shells.  My old camera with the amazing macro setting finally died and these macro shots are lacking so if you can't actually see the fabulous detail on these tiny shells, know that it's there.

I'm thinking of having these jewels set in a three-finger ring.

;-)

Working in the mines

My fossil club, the Fossil Club of Lee County,

 was granted a rare visit to the Mosaic phosphate mine to hunt for fossils 

and since the "snowbird" members of the club had not yet migrated back to the Sunshine State, there were plenty of spots available to go on the field trip.

  What a relief to not have to FREAK OUT 

(as I normally do)

 about whether or not I'd get to go.  Instead, since my participation was guaranteed,  

I could relax and FREAK OUT 

about whether or not I'd find anything.

(fossil antler, Mosaic mine)

Whenever I tell non-fossil friends that I'm going to a phosphate mine,

 they grow concerned, imagining Chileans trapped thousands of feet under ground.

Not that I want to travel to the bowels of the earth in a cage elevator,  but I lose all "street cred" when I explain that I'll just be wandering around in the fresh air and sunshine, 

scanning the ground for shark teeth.

(dolphin vertebra, Mosaic mine)

The difference between an early October trip to the mine and a December/January trip (when I've gone in the past) is...

 #1. the fresh air I previously mentioned is being super heated by that previously mentioned sunshine,  and...

 #2. we're still in the rainy season.

Heavy rains the night before meant that more fossils might have washed out of the spoil piles,  but the dirt road to the hunting area was very muddy; muddy in a way that had me wishing I had 4 wheel drive.  One of the other club members snapped this photo of my little truck in action...

Much better than the picture I posted a couple years ago of my old Ranger stuck on a muddy path in Arcadia.

We usually have to wear hard hats at Mosaic

but this visit was to an area that was no longer being worked so we were allowed to wear our own headgear.  I don't know why, but the night before the field trip, I dug an old, beloved sun hat out of the back of my closet and decided I would wear it while hunting fossils the next day.  

Wine may have been involved in that decision.  

I bought this hat at Eddie Bauer on The Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri.

In 1994.

The hat looked a lot better (as did I) when I wore it to North Carolina in 1995.

Fast forward to last Saturday, 2015:

Not so good.

The hat has obviously lost its will to live so I think I will toss it on the funeral pyre,

 if it ever cools down enough to light my chimenea.

The fossil hunting was fairly good.

Lots of broken megs but a couple are good enough to be keepers, and I found a nice mako, too.

A great variety of fossilized material always make the hunting more interesting.  Pam found a big chunk of fossilized wood and I found some nice pink chert.

A handful of pre-equus teeth rounded out the day (and a stingray dermal denticle on the far left).

We got rained out 90 minutes before our time was up

but I'm so out of condition for Florida fossil hunting that I was shocked to hear we still had 90 minutes to go!  

Maybe they'll let us all pop back in to reclaim our lost 90 minutes?

One can dream...