Orlando Fossil Show: Hot Fossil Action!

So maybe fossil shows are a niche market,

but they are exciting in their own way.

It's cool to see the amazing fossils people have found and since I was helping out the president of the fossil club I belong to (Fossil Club of Lee County), I got to see all of the behind the scenes socializing, wheeling and dealing.  Fun to watch a gorgeous megalodon tooth flip between 3 owners, the price doubling along the way.  

And everybody was happy!

I spent the morning helping out Louis and Leslie with their booth.  

I was thrilled to get to see them without having to drive 4.5 hours each way.  They were in my neck of the woods this time.

I understand the caution sign,

but it might behoove the owners of this booth to set the $2,800 turtle shell out of the reach of curious fossil shoppers.

There were other fossils on display:

Ok, I know I'm going to burn in hell for being snarky, but seriously, didn't she feel a breeze every time she leaned over to examine a horse tooth?

I thought this type of exhibitionism was a fluke but only a few days later, at a local art fair, I witnessed this:

Maybe it's the festival atmosphere that makes the ladies want to air it out, but I'll have mercy on those around me and keep it in my shorts.  

But, as usual, I digress...

Regular readers (both of you) will remember that I traveled to Keokuk, Iowa

in July to collect some of the namesake geodes.  Super easy to find, which I love, but research told me that cutting them open on a slab saw risked damaging unique crystal formations inside.  The tool for the trick is called a soil pipe cutter and for something that doesn't plug in or have a gasoline motor, it is wicked expensive!  Luckily, my problem-solving man was able to borrow one and set me loose with it.

I am not exaggerating when I tell you it weighs about 60 lbs.

I was popping geodes like bubble wrap!

And I'm glad I did it that way because a few of them had large calcite crystals in the interior.

How cool is that?!

Here's one with small dogtooth calcite crystals:

And here's standard issue botryoidal which isn't that pretty but it was the only one of its kind among my specimens:

Most of them are filled with quartz...SOLID QUARTZ, but about half of those had large vugs lined with the most beautiful crystals:

I've been making it a practice to visit my dad in the midwest every 6 months.  It will probably be too cold to hunt geodes for my January visit but I'll be back there next July.

More fun with coral!

Tom handed me a little black light flashlight and I've been testing everything in the house for fluorescence.

The best results, by far, have been the coral from the Withlacoochee river.

It's kind of hard to photograph but you get the gist.

All of the purple in the photos is a reflection of the black light but the chartreuse outline is part of the coral fluorescing. (Hoping spell check isn't letting me down on these terms!)

I love this little one:

Orange amber in the daylight and funky fluorescence in the black light.

I've found bits of fluorescence in some of my Montana baculites but nothing in the Blue Forest wood from Wyoming, but when you're this beautiful:

You don't need any extra help.

Here's a little Wikipedia info about dogtooth shaped crystals.

<<Dogtooth spar is a speleothem found in limestone caves that consists of very large calcite crystals resembling dogs' teeth (hence the name). They form through mineral precipitation of water-borne calcite. Dogtooth spar crystals are not limited to caves, but can grow in any open space including veins, fractures, and geodes.

These sharp tooth-shaped crystals are generally of the magnitude of centimeters long, but anomalous samples decimeters long exist, notably in Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns. A layer of crystalline calcite can be found underneath the surface of crystal points.

The sharply tooth-shaped crystals typically consist of acute scalenohedrons, twelve triangular crystal faces that ideally form scalene triangles. However, modification of these faces is common, and individual crystal faces may have many more than three edges. Calcite crystallizes in the rhombohedral system, and the most common scalenohedron form has the Miller index.

Spar is a general term for transparent to translucent, generally light-colored and vitreous crystalline minerals.>>