From the article: Finding Fossils
Maybe it was a shell or a shark tooth. Maybe it was a GIANT DINOSAUR SKELETON! Whatever it was, it surely left an impression on your impressionable young mind. What Was It?
I thought everyone had seashells
- Growing up in San Jose's east foothills on an Apricot ranch, I just thought that everyone had seashells in their orchard. When my daughters were in preschool I offered to have their class come up and hunt for some as well. Over the past 20+ years I have had over a thousand children and a few adults hunting seashells in our orchard. Working in an elementary school library has the perk of endless groups of kids with which to share the love of rocks and fossils.
- —khokie
Later in life
- As a kid, my friends and I spent countless hours at a local hardened clay deposit site, but never found a thing despite the numerous summers we went back. Many years later, middle-aged and with three kids of my own, we were sitting on the banks of a little creek near the upstate NY cabin I had just built. There, in between my feet I saw a slab of slate with literally hundreds of fossil imprints of scalloped bi-valves! Further searching in subsequent years turned up other fossils, but nothing like that first one, which I now proudly display on my desk.
- —Guest Vince P
Bud
- I was interested in anything related to geology such as rocks, minerals and anything related to science. I wanted to find fossils, but I had not found any at that time. Due to my interest in geology, an old woman we visted when I was around 9 or 10 gave me a perfect speciman of a Trilobite. I treasured that Trilobite like it was a million dollars. Today, after having gotten a masters in geology as well as having worked as a petroleum geologist, I still keep that Trilobite in a favorite spot in the house for everyone to see.
- —Guest Bud Weiser
Beginners Luck
- My first fossil find was a brachiopod. It had weathered out of a sheet of slate, and was absolutely beautiful. My friends and I spent hours looking for fossils in the an area behind my grandma's property. It was an area of classic slate layers, shaded from gray to black. We found a number of fossils there,and left all of them in the rocks. My brachiopod remains my inspiration to visit sites all over N. America to sniff out fossils and imagine when their owners lived and loved so long ago.
- —1.lannie
Maerilobitrble Mts. T
- During my first geology field trip at San Bernardino Valley college and our first stop was to the fossil outcrop. I found an almost complete Bristolia bristolensis.... and I was hooked. Since then I've taken teachers and students there for 40 years or more.
- —Guest Rick
Crinoids in black shale
- It was on the beach at Long Point, Ontario looking for the ideal skipping stone. For a number of years these particular stones showed up in the gravelly bars; flat and pitch black, worn smooth in the sandy bottom of the lake...with pure white crinoid stems in cross section with a perfect black star in the center. Even my mother started collecting them. The things we remember from 50 years ago.
- —Guest the_nthian
Misinformed 5th grade science teacher
- While in the 5th grade, our science teacher would take us all out to examine whatever we were discussing in class. I noticed a stone that had imprints of small compound leaves in it. I said, "Wow look at this! I found a fossil!" He said, "That's not a fossil. I'll show you a fossil back in class." When we all got back to class, he showed me what he was claiming was a fossil. It was one of those scratch away children science toys that you would buy at a museum. I didn't argue with him, but I knew he was wrong and that I had the real thing. Unfortunately, I don't have it anymore.
- —Guest Bill Spies
My story here!
- http://geotripper.blogspot.com/2009/05/my-first-fossil.html
- —Guest Geotripper
First Found Fossil
- 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
Also at the lake
- 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.
fossil
- 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
Polinices in Oregon
- 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
Close to Home
- 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
Not in the ground
- 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
Pliocene forest
- 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
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