Headed southbound on US-15, there is a Pennsylvania welcome center with a glorious view. Where you enter the ramp, there is a steep hill (this is a mountainous region after all), and here you can find some trace fossils of shells and crinoid segments as well as something else that I’ve not yet identified. I will promise you, this is not a good family location. The bedrock here is like a super-flaky shale-esque red mudstone and is prone to slide out from under your feet. I’m pretty sure I was a mountain goat in a former life and I fell on my butt and slid a couple feet, scraping my hand up in the process. So, long story short, I do not recommend coming here for trace fossils.
That said, here’s what I found.
If you know what this is before I figure it out, please let me know!
Thanks,
THT
Where to next?
On I-90 eastbound there is a service area. I can’t find a town name for it, but it’s just south of Rochester and just west of Henrietta. Right as you enter there will be limestone rocks on the right used for drainage purposes. At this location you can find marine fossils such as corals, pelecypods, and crinoid segments. There’s a good chance this material comes from a quarry just off I-90 between Rochester and Buffalo, NY.
I took a couple coral specimens since they were the nicer pieces that I found. One is penetrated with a low quality agate that’s common throughout the limestones here and the other is well-detailed and full of druzy quartz crystals.
This lovely piece is full of quartz crystals.
I used a makeshift macrophotography lens to get this close up (magnified 5x).
Here’s my makeshift macrophotography lens
For the sake of documentation, I did see a piece of limestone with two small dustings of pyrite.
Where to next?
On Highway 401 eastbound just before getting to Woodstock, there is the Woodstock Service Area. This is a veritable museum if you like horn corals. I even found one that’s as large as my hand, although, unfortunately, I can’t bring it home. It, and many others, are on the large boulders that this rest area uses as borders going around its parking lot. These fossils most likely come from the nearby quarries, possibly Arkona, a major location for marine fossils (I’ve seen some amazing crinoids and trilobites from here). Anywise, along the grass area on your way into the rest stop is where you can collect. There are a few places where quarry stone has been tossed aside and you can check down there. I saw mostly horn corals, though I also found a bit of a crinoid columnal, and a few shells, one or two brachiopods and the rest pelecypods.
This is the largest horn coral I’ve ever seen.
This is a colony of colonies. Lots of hc’s all hanging out together.
Here’s a great little hc with beautiful detail. With a little prep work, I think I can make it stand out nicely.
This broken fella shows with great detail how these coral colonies grow.
I returned to the Flying J location I detailed awhile back. There have definitely been other people there since my first visit. Let me know what you find. Also, if you know other places to go in the area, or anywhere North of Mexico for that matter, send me a message. I’m always looking for somewhere new to hunt.
In the meantime, I picked up some brachiopods, specifically spirifers, bryozoans, and, of course, more crinoid columnals.
Once I get a gas powered saw with a diamond blade I’ll have access to some larger specimens in boulders where a hammer and chisel just won’t do. This one, for example:
This bivalve has been replaced with calcite crystals.
Where to next?
There is a Love’s Truck Stop near Devine Texas and it’s surrounded by rocks, many of which are agates–chocolate agates to be specific. Some are of half decent quality and show nice banding.
Here are the three I picked up.
These will look nice polished. (I’ve shown them wet to bring out some of the detail).
Where to next?
One of the things that I find makes me really happy is finding fossils and minerals in the middle of a city, especially an older city like Montreal. Yes, I know that neither geology nor ancient life chose to leave their “bones” along modern day borders, but to find, say in this case, traces of life from 422-460 million years old, having escaped decaying into dust, having escaped destruction by erosion for about 10% of earth’s total existence, and then having escaped the concentrated destruction of the land with over 300 years of urban development is mind boggling. I found thousands of tiny fossils yesterday morning and I’m still stoked.
On Dollard-Desjardins, which is near exit 87 of HWY-40 when heading east, there is an empty lot that is on the corner of Dollard-Desjardins and the access road you enter when taking the exit. I only had time to search the area near Lamiver (the business next to this lot), but there are many small fossils here. The largest brachiopod I saw was only about .5 cm. More excitingly though, I found a crinoid that shows stem (column) and body. A crinoid, btw, is related to starfish and both are echinoderms (echinodermata meaning spiny skin). I’ve only found the columnal segments before, so finding a body is a big deal for me, even though it’s not in great shape. Also, I found some low quality red garnet crustations on a cryptocrystaline silicate matrix, or, in other words, a common, dirty rock of little interest with garnet.
Here you will see (if you stretch the pic out…) a zygospira brachiopod. Below is my attempt at macro-photography using my phone’s camera and a 15x loupe.
There are two crinoids here, but only one shows hints of its body at the top of its stem.
A dirty old rock with garnet.
Where to next?
Even though it’s April, it’s cold enough that my eyeballs froze and I could barely see properly. It almost seemed like I was trying to look through tears. Having said that, I did find a coral fossil that was on a limestone “boulder” (or at least a rock bigger than I cared to carry). I was able to detach it frome the matrix with a 3lb hammer and a chisel pretty easily. There are a fair amount of these rocks so there are probably more fossils here. Again, frozen eyeballs.
Here, by the way, is at the end of Deschambault St. There’s a little path that leads to the Seine River and at the river there are limestone rocks under the railroad bridge.
When returning the coral to the truck, my eyes defrosted and I could see that some of this coral had little cryatals, likely calcites, that had formed and covered a section of it entirely. With a magnifying lense I was able to find a little bit of pyrite on it as well.
It’s not much to look at with the naked eye, but it’s much more interesting magnified.
Where to next?
