Readers Respond: The First Fossil I Ever Found

Responses: 26

By Andrew Alden, About.com Guide

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I had bought fossils, then took the kids to upstate NY on the West Cananda River. We spent a day digging up Brachiopods, Crinoids, and Trilobites. Every trip since then has paled in comparison. We just found a bed of cephalopods/belemnites in Maine two days ago.
—Guest Walter S

I attended Girl Scout camp in 6th grade on the shores of Cayuga Lake, in the Finger Lakes of N.Y. We found horn coral fossils, 1 to 1/12 inches long at most. We also looked for lucky stones - ones with holes through them. Although Taughannock State Park is only a few miles away, I never found any coral fossils there, but there's lots of flat rocks for skipping.
—Guest Virginia P.

i would dig in an old country road where i would find bigger than a hand snail-like fossils with rings and rings forming the fossil i had quite a few of them i would hate when mother would say let's go i know there were more for me to find. i loved my own world to this day i only have 2 left i don't know what happened when i moved and wish i could find them again... now the roads are paved. i hope to find another road so i can share this experience with my granddaughter.
—Guest missy ann

Is this coincidence - found yesterday and the newletter today? Not my first, but second one, a polinices in a siltstone, up a scree slope outside Portland, Oregon. Isn't it the wonderment of holding a shell from the Oligocene, right in the mud where it fell? -Guest Jim M
—rfault

My first fossils came from -- the gravel driveways in my neighborhood. My mom didn't understand why I would bring home the stones from our neighbor's drive.
—Guest Joe Powers

My first fossil find was not in the field. When I was 13, I got a secondhand aquarium outfit and included was a rock loaded with huge crinoid stems. As soon as I got a driver's license, I started looking for the spot where that rock came from. I never did find it, but I did get hooked on geology! But my most memorable find was on my first wedding anniversary, a mosasaur skeleton. BTW, going fossil hunting that day was HER idea!
—Guest Kenneth

Folks, No ammonite; no T-Rex; just fossil wood and leaves from Sonoma Mountain, CA. A fellow grammar school student showed me a private property site where Sonoma Volcanic ash had covered a Pliocene forest. A small cut in the hillside exposed a couple of fossil tree trunks and abundant leaf imprints. There was Sequoia needles and live oak leaves, just as found living locally today. The surprise occurence was fossil examples of "Persia sp." (Avocado) that should that the climate here was milder about 3-4 million years ago. Thirty years later I brought a UC Davis paleobotanist Dan Axelrod to the area, but I could no longer locate the fossil site. That was embarrassing. Geologist Jim Berkland
—Guest Jim Berkland

For a week each of two summers when I was in grade school my family and some cousins camped near the eastern edge of the Bob Marshall wilderness area in Montana. Each visit we encountered two petroleum geologists who were surveying in the area. They told us stories of camping by lakes full of fish, and of encounters with grizzly bears. I think one of the fellows carried a big pistol. One day the geologists invited all us kids on a field trip. We climbed up a steep ridge, and the geologists began showing us fossils in the rocks. I recall seeing and being told the names of brachiopods, belemnites, and crinoid stems. They helped us find and identify samples to take home. The geologists also showed us that we could break the rocks and smell the odor of crude oil. I'm sure I had seen a few fossils before and always loved reading about dinosaurs and paleontology. But that was the first real fossil hunt I experienced. I think it was the most ideal introduction possible.
—Guest E Logan

As a boy, my dad brought home some marine fossils from the Mojave Desert. I was so intrigued with that prospect of sea creatures in the desert. I can only identify that moment in my youth as the time that I was hooked on geology!
—Guest Wayne Ranney

My dad and I took a trip up Mt. Diablo in the spring when I was 7 or 8 years old. We visited the top, and checked out the view. He parked the car along the side of the road at a turnout, about half way down the mountain. Much to my amazement, he showed me that there were seashells in the hillside. This was the 1960s, and plate tectonics was still a new idea. It was my first geologic moment-"SHELLS? Like from the ocean? HERE??" I remember touching them with my finger- but we did not take any with us since it was a park. Still, I can see them (probably scallop and turritella) in my mind to this day.
—Guest Carol

My first fossil was that of a brachiopod. I found it along the shore of Cayuga Lake...it was an omen of things to come.
—Guest Dave V

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Andrew Alden
Geology Guide