Fossiliferous Navel Gazing

Apparently, when I'm not able to hunt for fossils, 

all I can think about are

FOSSILS.

A photo from happier times:

Mike looked at this photo and said, "Why's she smiling?"

Ha!  Why wouldn't she be?!

It might of been raining that day but at least it hadn't rained so much we couldn't get in the river.

A wet winter has kept us stranded on dry land for much of this fossil season.

Oh, hey, here's a little  display of my Arizona brachiopods:

Very pretty.

Sigh...

I have heard many stories of people hunting land sites and finding great things 

but these stories always include the fossil hunter being told to leave, getting a ticket, or going to jail. Please tell me that last one is urban legend!

Regardless, these stories have kept me from stopping my car and looking around.

Until today.

You gotta start somewhere 

so I figured I'd look along some gravelly hills next to a highway.

The first thing I realized is that I need to keep a pair of sturdy shoes in my truck 

for when the exploratory whim strikes.

Foot vs. Cactus

Sooner or later, cactus gonna win.

Here's what I picked up.

Argggghhhh!!!  

I know!  It's nothing!

But those suspiciously rounded rocks?

Git a hammer!

And...

Argggghhhh!!!

I know!  It's nothing!

Sigh...

Oh Ye, of Little Faith

I'm going to change my name to "Robert,"

or some other masculine name, when I'm communicating on fossiling message boards

because I suspect I would get a different response from the mostly male community.

I recently had an opportunity to go to Arizona with a friend and decided to do some

vacation multi-tasking: 

fossil/mineral hunting when I wasn't hanging out with her.

I queried on The Fossil Forum, seeking info for easy access locations where I might find a fossil or two or some petrified wood.  I know we fossilers are a guarded bunch but the men's reactions ranged from condescending (referring back to me as if I weren't on the same message board and stating that my goals were unrealistic) to warnings so over-the-top dire, I suspected they were tinged with the caustic mental remains of a bad divorce.  Know that I didn't post a message stating I was planning on wandering off into the desert in a sundress and flip flops and could you please help orchestrate my demise.  I made it clear I had a small rental car (no high clearance areas), was willing to drive long distances, and had traveled/hiked in the state before so was well aware of its inherent dangers.

One man on TFF came through and messaged me 2 locations with very specific directions.

I am forever grateful.

I also received 2 replies from rock hounders on YouTube, found one low-difficulty site in a book about Arizona's minerals, and gleaned a couple more locations from reading old threads on TFF regarding Arizona petrified wood.  I was often referred to the T-Rat.com site which is filled with a wealth of interesting information about Arizona but not many specifics and since I was short on time, I couldn't do a lot of hunting for areas to hunt.

Here's the scorecard:

6 location goals

1 tiny rental car

1150 miles traveled in 

4 days

2 fails

2 moderate successes

2 wild successes

Winning!

#1 Daisy Mountain

My first location was Daisy Mountain in the Sonoran desert, just north of Phoenix and my goal was geode-like clusters of druzy quartz. I saw this on someone's YouTube video and while they were kind enough to give me the best directions they could, they weren't willing to meet up with a stranger from  the internet and show her the way.  Understood.

I did not find any druzy quartz but I had a fabulous 5 mile hike in stunning terrain.

At one point I thought I had found a shed rattlesnake tail

 but it turned out to be someone's creepy mouthguard:

#2 Camp Verde

Camp Verde is known for glauberite pseudomorphs.  

Allow me to explain it in terms that I was able to understand: the glauberite mineral forms characteristic crystals but over millions of years, the original glauberite is replaced by other minerals, sometimes selenite, sometimes gypsum, etc., and the  replacement minerals take on the shape of glauberite crystals, NOT their own specific crystalline shape.

I chose this location out of the Arizona mineral book because it was an hour north of Phoenix, on my way to other locations, and seemed easy to get to. 

The directions were perfect and not very far from my parked car I found the target mineral, 

and lots of it!

Here's a pseudomorph in hand.

These were very easy to collect, sweeping them out of the loose soil sides of the gully with my fingers, or gently prying them out of crumbly clay with my chisel.

Here are a few of the clusters after a basic cleanup.

Super cool!

#3 Nowhere, just south of Utah

My plan, after Camp Verde, was to continue north and spend the night in Page, Arizona, but I had found fairly specific directions to a petrified wood location by reading through old threads on TFF.  It was a 100 mile RT detour on my journey to Page and took me through some of the most beautiful red stone areas of Arizona.  Once I found the proper mile marker, the directions said to drive through the gate and park about 1/4 mile from the highway but it was immediately obvious that my rental car couldn't handle the terrain so I walked in with my collection bag and got to work.

Petrified wood was EVERYWHERE!

I tried to focus on finding pieces with obvious wood grain and nice color but it was difficult because not only was the wood fascinating but the ground was covered with rounded pebbles in a rainbow of hues, all against a background of orange-red sand.  I could've used a couple of days there but I only had an hour.  It was late in the afternoon and I was about 90 miles from Page, in the middle of nowhere, on a 2-lane unlit highway. I do have some common sense and it prevailed.

Here's my selfie. 

You can see the peaceful, fossil-rich, happiness radiating out of me.

Check out the detail in this petrified wood:

Arizona's petrified wood is from several varieties of coniferous trees and is approximately 211-218 million years old.  The fossils I found are not as colorful as some of the "rainbow" petrified wood you can see on the internet, but I am pleased as punch with what I found.

I got my druzy quartz after all, and it's on a piece of petrified wood.

Fantastisch!

#4 Big Water, Utah

The BLM area of Big Water, Utah was my northernmost destination, about 15 miles past Page, Arizona.  This was one of the locations from the TFF member and his directions were great.  I took the well-graded gravel road slowly and although I did have to cross a "river",  it was only a couple inches deep and I watched another vehicle drive through it before I tried it myself.

Once again, awesome scenery!

The fossils of the area are associated with the dark gray "tropic shale" layer at the base of the cliffs and the BLM allows you to hunt the eroded flats up to the cliffs.  I covered some serious ground and only came away with a handful of fossils but the TFF member said I did OK for a first-timer.

He said the piece on the left is from a type of giant ammonite. The slim tubular fossils in the middle are segments of a long, straight, tapering ammonoid called a baculite.  The fossil to the right is an oyster shell, numerous and indicative of the areas where other fossils can be found.

The minerals of the area were interesting

so I also collected some samples of those.  

It was cold enough, I initially thought these were thin sheets of ice but I think it may be a form of selenite. I found it in sheets, chunks, and "threads".

#5 Paleo Site

The Paleo Site near Kohl's Ranch in Payson, Arizona is a well known fossiling site that is extremely easy to find and access.  The weather for most of my Arizona trip was cold and rainy and my last day of fossiling was no exception.  The problem this presented with the paleo site is that it's best experienced by clinging to a hillside and picking apart the layers of rock in search of fossils.  With temps in the low 40's and steady rain, I couldn't maneuver on the hillside AT ALL, so I hiked the trail to the top of the hill to see if I could find anything.  The ground was covered with brachiopods and in the rain, they looked so shiny and perfect I had a flash of confusion: 

were there live clams up here?! 

Well, of course not. 

 These were fossil "clams" from the Naco formation which apparently puts them in the age range of 300 million years.  I collected enough to make a big pot of "fossil clam" chowder.

#6 Joseph City

Joseph City was way out of the way for me but it was a location given to me by the TFF member and  my last opportunity to collect petrified wood and since it was closer, geographically, to the rainbow wood of Petrified Forest National Park, I was hoping to find some brighter colors.

As before, his directions were very good and I would have been able to drive all the little backroads until I found the exact spot IF IT HADN'T BEEN RAINING IN THE DESERT FOR DAYS.

What a terrible convergence of weather and intent.

Driving on those muddy, slippery, dirt and gravel roads was the one stupid thing I did but the only thing I was risking was hurt pride if I got stuck as I could see the highway the whole time and I was never more than 2 miles away from town.

I gave up after slipping and sliding along 2 roads that quickly dead-ended in 

"No Trespassing" signs.

Back to Phoenix.

You served me well, little Fiat.

Now I just gotta get my rocks home.

Fossil Purgatory

All I wanted to do was get dirty!

And find some fossils in the process.

Finally, the long awaited trip to the Mosaic phosphate mine.

It's been a year since my last visit and I wanted to go again so badly that I begged, and whined, and volunteered, and grumbled, and begged some more...FOR A YEAR.  My gambit paid off and I won one of the 30 coveted spots on the field trip.

But right from the start, it was a frustrating day.

The convoy to the hunting grounds would pass areas of standing water so we were required to wear life jackets in the cars.  The problem was they didn't have 30 life jackets.  I had to wait for the Mosaic employee to escort the first group to the destination then return with the life jackets and escort us in the second group.  It didn't take that long but the minutes were ticking away.

Should've been another day in paradise.

Rocks, rocks everywhere, nor any fossil to find!

(to paraphrase Coleridge)

In other terms: it was slim pickin's!

We are only allotted a few hours, total, for fossil hunting and are excited for the opportunity and grateful for the help of the mine employees who volunteer their time...

but we really want to find stuff and we weren't.

It was announced, after an hour and a half, that we would drive to a different, hopefully better, location.  

As all the cars turned onto the highway to head to the new hunting grounds, half of the cars got cut off by traffic and didn't know where to go.  That's right, I was sitting in the back seat of one of the lost cars.

Om shanti shanti shanti...

A Mosaic employee found us and got us turned in the right direction, but had to run into one of the offices to manage some paperwork before he could continue to lead us back to our flock.

When we finally got there, I bolted out of the car and started scanning the ground like a crazy person.

Here's the sum of it:

Nothing much for the fossil cabinet with the exception of that little deer tooth next to the fish vertebra.  

It helped that I was still riding on the fumes of my coral high.

I had asked Pam if she wanted to dig Alafia coral, fully expecting disinterest, and was happy to hear her reply: "I thought you'd never ask!" 

We warmed up for Mosaic by digging in the Alafia river for 6 hours.

It's such a beautiful and interesting material and Pam knows a flintknapper who, hopefully, will craft a piece of my coral into my very own custom made arrowhead.  Cool!

It ain't easy, but we get it done.

I'm always a little anxious on the ride back, in case I tip over.  Not because of gators but because

I'd lose my coral!!!

There's a teeny tiny bit of fossil material mixed in.

Left to right: tiger shark teeth, a piece of jawbone with a tooth, a couple of small bones, sliver of mammoth enamel, 2 river-worn quarters (offsets our $2 parking fee), an orange-hued piece of coral (how'd that get in there?!), unerupted horse tooth, interesting mystery bone, and another piece of horse tooth.  The bumpy thing at the top is a botryoidal rock that is not done justice in this photo.

Now, back to that piece of jawbone in the upper left corner.

As I was rinsing it off I noticed 2 more roots in the sockets and the molar is worn completely smooth on the top AND underneath the molar, inside the bone, I found the fragile shell of an unerupted tooth.  This is going into the fossil cabinet.

The holidays are past and it's a new year.

SolOpsArt had a nice bump in sales during the gift season but things have quieted back down.  This year I'll add some items with silver like this Peace River mako and, assuming I can develop a few lapidary skills, coral!

Of course.

Them's Fightin' Words!

The old guys told me

that I should find ways to use my fossils to support my fossiling habit.

Thus was born SolOpsArt, my online store at Etsy.com

I decided, as an experiment, to try "boosting" my SolOps page on FaceBook.  The page-boosting process involves all kinds of complicated "per click" costs, auctioned off daily, and blah-blah-I'm-confused kind of stuff but thankfully they offer a choice where they do all the heavy thinking for you.

Done!

So I set a low daily budget and sat back to watch the results.  Sales didn't go through the roof but they increased enough to cover the cost of the promotion plus a little extra.

I learned 2 things.

#1. Many men like shark tooth necklaces but have never heard of Etsy.

#2. Crazies will go after anyone.

In regards to #1, my New Year's resolution is finding a way to reach shark tooth lovin' dudes.

In regards to #2, DELETE THE CRAZIES!

Here's how it went: underneath a photo of several shark tooth necklaces, Crazy wrote,

 "I can imagine how many sharks SolOps killed to make these."  

I replied, cleverly I thought, "Father Time killed these sharks," wink wink nudge nudge.

Crazy wrote back, "Yeah, right SolOps," at which point I exercised my right to DELETE.

Sane people can see the teeth are fossilized but I don't want even a whiff of shark killing to taint my rainbow world at SolOpsArt.

There's always the river

A post-Christmas visit to the Peace River was just the thing to set my mind right.

Broken megs are better than no megs at all.

None of these huge shark teeth are perfect but it's a delight to be somewhere 

where I can find fossils like this.

Some nice tiger shark and hemi teeth.

Turtle shell segments, ray mouth parts, shell cast, sea urchin spine, gar fish scale, etc.

Cool little aspirin bottle.

One of the sweetest, chunkiest glyptodont scutes I've ever found.

Mike says it looks like an Oreo cookie so I Googled "rocks that look like food"...

Weird.

This rock looks like how I imagine a cooked kidney would look.

My most interesting find of the day was initially startling.

This fossil, nestled amidst all the dark river gravel, looked like 2 dog teeth in a bit of jaw bone. Fresh dog teeth.  Luckily, it is actually a split taper tooth with a very light color.  Here's the flip side:

My ex-sister-in-law (but always family) visited from Michigan.

She is a geologist and teaches at a university and came bearing gifts of minerals.

As I added her offerings of pink and orange gypsum to my collection of fossilized coral chunks, she said it was looking like a bower bird nest and we were some of the rare breed of ladies that appreciated a gift of a rock.  Well said!

And in case you've never seen photos of a bower bird nest, here's one of my favorites:

I wish I were so talented!

We Came For Fossils!

But the river had other plans.

Here it is, mid-December, and we are still shut out of the Peace River due to high water levels.  The fossil veterans assured me that this is within the range of normal for the "dry" season but I couldn't help feeling a slight sense of paranoia.  What if they were just telling me that the river was high?  What if I was exhibiting classic learned helplessness while everyone else was scooping up all the good fossils?

Had I been took?!

Driving south to attend the Fossil Club of Lee County's Fossil Fest, 

I decided to take the back roads and eyeball the river myself.  

There is no conspiracy.

I was sufficiently intimidated to see the river rushing under a bridge, only a few feet below the roadway, in an area where it needs to be about 20 feet below the roadway for me to launch a kayak.

So we find other ways to occupy our time.

The Fossil Fest was, as always, a lot of fun.  It kind of feels like a big family reunion to me, where I know some people better than others, meet new members of the fossil family at each event, and wander around eating hot dogs and hamburgers all day.

  

My general rule of thumb is I don't like to buy fossils.

I want to find my fossils so if my collection is on the light side, no worries because every item I have has a personal story behind it.  However, I was lured into the club's silent auction by the offer of oreodont remains.  I only recently read up on these extinct creatures.  They were about the size of pigs or sheep and roamed north America in vast herds during the Oligocene and Miocene, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merycoidodontoidea.

My winnings!

This is a section of oreodont lower jaw.  It's not in pristine condition but every time I hold it, 

its magic transcends the $11 I spent by an order of magnitude.  

I am used to finding individual teeth, not jaws with teeth and while many fossil hunters have found jawbones in the Peace River, I am not one of them.  When I hold this piece of oreodont jaw, the animal comes alive in my mind.  It's amazing!

Other club members have been lucky enough to find their magic at garage sales!

This collection of teeth, including a large, perfect megalodon, 

set the my fellow club member back a mere $20.

Score!

But Nothing replaces the visceral pleasure of digging for fossils,

and thus I found myself on the banks of the Alafia River:

low enough water for us to explore, but uncharted and potentially unproductive territory.

Such risk takers!

I've heard many a fossiler pronounce, when the digging isn't going so well, that they just enjoy being outside in a beautiful environment.  My backyard is beautiful so I don't need to drive 2 hours each way to enjoy the outdoors but truly, camping can be such a pleasant, relaxing experience.  

For the first couple of days.

After that, the grunge sets in, but I digress.

We set up camp at the well-maintained Lithia Springs Regional Campground 

and spent the next 3 days poking around.

The weather and water were both on the cool side and it's time for a new set of waders as mine have more leaks than I can patch (fossiling is tough on gear), but our stretch of the river was gorgeous and we had lots of sun to bolster our spirits.

And we needed some spirit bolstering because we couldn't find any fossils!

Lots and lots of rock but no fossils.  Not even scraps.

I used my fossil screen as an improvised drying rack (yes, I do my winter camping with a space heater these days) but it wasn't as much fun the second day getting dressed in cold, damp clothes to try it again.

We did a lot of probing and dug a lot of test holes on day 2 and towards the end of the afternoon, I decided to settle in an area of shallow rock and put in some "shovel time".

Imagine my surprise!

When you're not finding anything, it's a shock to find a tooth this perfect.

I believe this is from a camelid, maybe a llama, and as always, comments are welcome.

I was packing it in for the day when my hunting partner returned from his explorations upstream with a selection of agatized coral fragments.

What the what?!!!

We had both been tossing around the idea of cutting the trip short but when I saw this I was 

in for a penny, in for a pound!  Couldn't wait for the sun to come up on the third day!

Agatized coral is Florida's state stone and is composed of the fossilized remains of corals that lived in the shallow seas covering the state during the upper Oligocene to lower Miocene (23-26 million years ago).  This material was used by ancient humans to create beautiful stone tools and is used in modern times for jewelry and as polished specimens for collectors.  Looks like I'm going to have to learn how to use a lapidary saw because I can't wait to see what's inside some of these beauties!

I credit my friend for finding the location, but

I found the lunker!

Ignore the 3rd day camping hair and check out the segment of fossilized coral I'm holding!  This was far and away the biggest piece we found but all the pieces are stunning.

First, a couple of detail shots of the lunker to show the visible coral structures:

Here is a smaller piece with a covering of quartz crystals known as druzy.

I dug until I was worn out and had enough material that I needed to make sure my kayak was properly balanced.

The coral on my seat ended up in the stern crate.  Would've made for a rough ride back to camp if I hadn't moved it.

 When I got home I improvised a light table to show off the translucency and color

 of some of the thinner pieces.

Good stuff!

Finding a new and different kind of fossil was such an energizing experience.  I let my imagination run while I was digging, pondering how all this fossil treasure wound up in that spot.  The Peace River water level is dropping but I think one more trip to the Alafia might be in order.