Aspies For Freedom

I have an interest in collecting fossils. A few months ago I found a jellyfish behind my house. I always wanted to dig for fossils out west, perhaps on a vacation someday I will.

I used to dig for fossils, there are some great places near me to do that. Its very fascinating to find sea life fossils on a mountain.

http://www.llangollen.com/
The Panorama

Worlds End and The Panorama, a spectacular and dominating outcrop of Carboniferous Limestone from Worlds End and Eglwyseg to Trevor is stunning. Great outcrops of limestone providing walkers and climbers with ample scope to escape civilisation for a while. You can also drive along the single track toad and park up - take a picnic for a wonderful peaceful day out.

The frost eroded limestone is littered with coral and sea shell fossils confirming this raised mountain was once below sea level.

I'm interested in fossils too, though I haven't been out looking for them for a few years.

The last time I went was to the Ludlow Bone Bed, where I camped in the woods near the exposure. I didn't find any jawless fishes, as I'd hoped, but did get some super graptolites.

I've walked the coast between Charmouth and Lyme Regis about half a dozen times, and cracked open a fair number of geodes to see if they had any ammonites in them. The Blue Lias is my favourite fossil bed, as the Jurassic seems friendly and familiar compared with the uncertainties of Silurian times at Ludlow.

I  went to an Eocene exposure north of Frinton-on-Sea, where I found all sorts of petrified wood preserved in pyrite.  And I have been to the Pleistocene clay of the Cromer Forest bed, where I hoped to find elephantus antiquus, mastodon etc but found only some very small mammalian bones from a mouse or shrew.  :oops:

Central New York state is great for sea fossils from 300 to 350 million years ago.  I found some petrified wood on a hilltop in New Mexico once, it was an almost intact tree limb.  The badlands of Alberta Canada are also a hot bed of Dinosaur bones, go further south to Montana for the same thing.

Here in Maine, we're not far from the Gemstone quarries where Tourmaline, Pink Quartz, Amethyst, Beryl, Aquamarine, and beautiful pieces of smoky quartz can be found without much effort.  There's even Gold Panning in the Sunday River up near Bethel Maine.  Some nuggets still turn up from time to time.  Though mostly whats found is gold dust.

We drove by a roadcut in New Mexico that was made thru a 1-2 million year old Ashflow and saw huge chunks of Black Obsidian.  (volcanic glass)
I didn't stop at the time and now I wish I'd had.    But, we visited a place called "Tent" or "Teepee" rocks and I collected a small bagful of obsidian.

Peace

We looked for fossils when I took geology in college (in Colorado)--very cool. So many species that once lived are now extinct, as, probably, humans will be in the hopefully very distant future.

Recognise this?



Androgynoceras from Charmouth. I've only visited there once, recently. Normally I look for stuff in the Westbury Formation, or Blue Lias on the Somerset coast.

Here's a Ceratodus toothplate from the Westbury Formation (late Triassic):



Yeah, I like looking for fossils and taking pictures of them.  :oops:

I'd have guessed it was from the Green Ammonite bed at Seatown.

Super Triassic piece: of course there was no NHS dentistry and fluoridation in those days.  :smile:

I wanted to study Geology at A level after getting a B at O level but the Geology teacher said no.

There were no girls in his A level class .... but hey it was the 70's. I didn't push it because I guessed that it would just be too difficult for me. (trying to cope with a subject with a teacher who didn't want me to be there not the actual geology which I found very interesting )

A couple of years ago I spoke with someone who did get into the class and he expressed surprise at what I told him. He said that they used to have a great laugh playing cricket in the class at times.....

Don't get me started on not being able to take woodwork as a subject .....

(Sorry off topic)

That's damn cool.

Unfortunately I've never lived anywhere that was particularly good for finding fossils.

I got a fossil hanging from a chain around my neck. It's an ammonite.

I LOVE those things.  I am majoring in geology in college.  Sadly, the only places where I can find work are Texas and Oklahoma.

Tim

I'm also interested in geology and palaeontology.

(I go fossil hunting on holiday).

I collect fossils and rocks... My favorite fossil is a piece of dinosaur eggshell I have (don't know what genus or even what time period it's from though). The only fossil I've found is a piece of petrified wood I found sticking out from the ground when I was hiking one time. I also collect rough opal.

Has anyone here ever been panning for gold? I live a couple hours away from the mother lode that sparked the gold rush of 1849, and I go panning up there sometimes. It's a lot harder than it looks.

Yeah. You can pan for gold in Bendigo. And Ballarat. And the Shotover River near Queenstown, NZ still has one of the richest alluvial deposits of gold in the world. It's probably easier when there's more to be found. But generally you're looking for dust.

ahhh this brings back memories. I used to go on fossil hunts all the time with my dad when he was in grad school. We were always looking for plants though, because they were all paleobotany students. I ended up with some interesting plant fossils and he's still got tons of them in big boxes.

I was in the local gem club for a while and have been interested in collecting pretty stones since I was very small. A friend and I found what we thought were fern fossils but we were told they weren't fossils - just stones where something had leaked onto them and made a fern-like pattern.

I do have lots of pieces of fossilised wood though, and my stepdad has a huge piece as a doorstop plus lots of smaller pieces in buckets.