Fossilized Embryo of Flying Reptile

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I live in an area that's known for fossils, and about a year ago I realized that I really didn't know much about them. Intending only to learn the basics, I visited a few web sites, went fossil hunting a bit, and found myself totally immersed, almost obsessed with fossils and what they can teach us.

Amateurs can and occasionally do make major contributions to paleontology, so if you have an interest, jump into it! It's one of the most fun hobbies, as it includes so many different things, like morphology, geology, hiking and climbing, studying maps, reading scientific literature in university libraries, etc. My wife is also enthused with it, and we spend a lot of days going to various sites and doing extensive searching. It's a good excuse to go out to a scenic spot for a picnic, too!

This map can give you some idea of what strata is exposed where you live. There's plenty of online info for beginners (unfortunately, there's not much true scientific literature online), and I can't help but recommend this hobby.

No, we've never found anything that would likely interest anyone here, but my sweetheart found a nearly-complete excellent condition Acidaspis cincinnatiensis trilobite, a species that is very rare and almost never found in complete form (perhaps only a dozen such specimens found ever). It's from the Ordovician Period, about 440 million years old (dinosaurs are from a much more recent time). We've each found whole excellent specimens of Flexicalymene but that's no big deal. A few weekends ago we got to participate in a trilobite hunt at a site that's world-famous and not open to the public, and thought we didn't find anything to speak of, it was a real adventure.

I'm just a beginner, but it's a pretty neat hobby that costs almost nothing to get started in, and I recommend it to anyone curious!

 

nice article thx for sharing

 

MidnightMoonlight, do you perhaps any pics of thoes fossils, if you do, please post, if you don't would you mind taking some, i am in love with fossils. they hold the key to our past.

thanks

 

Thanks for the book recommendation; I usually keep an eye out for textbooks at Half Price, and have found a few that are decent.

I know what you mean about mind-bending. The time involved, for geologic processes, is just so far beyond what we can imagine that it's still fun to try. To me it underscores the utter unimportance of humanity in the big picture, and makes us seem all the more sacred.

Around here, the rocks are made of fossils, and to find a fossil, just reach down, wherever you happen to be, and pick up a rock. But we've gotten a bit particular, and seek out the really good spots mostly.

The squidcritter? We find a lot of those (cephalopods). I've been less interested in those, as I think they're harder to identify to species, so I've mostly worked on learning the brachiopods. They're preserved a lot better than bivalves/pelecypods/clams, for instance.

 

Soooo neat. Pterosaurs were always my's favorite.