The rain held out for the field trip that marks the Dry Dredgers' 60th anniversary. The field trips look much the same as they did back in 1942, except that you'll now see women out on these road cuts in slacks instead of dresses and ties are now optional for men. (Aren't we nice!) As is true for most of our field trips, the rain did not begin until we left. (or visa versa.)
The site was the popular road cut in Southeast Indiana. The turn out was pretty good considering that the threat of rain was nearly a certainty. I counted more than a dozen cars and from 20 to 30 people.
The pickings were excellent, as the spring rains had washed new layers of fossils to the surface. This is a huge road cut with several terraces on both sides of the road. It covers the entire Waynesville and Liberty Formations and includes the upper Arnheim Formation on the bottom of the cut and the lower Whitewater member at the top of the cut. Found were tiny Flexicalymene and Isotelus trilobites, from the same layers that are exposed at Caesar Creek, many various brachiopods, and a very nice coiled cephalopod.
Here are some pictures of the site and the collectors.
And now, here are pictures of some of the nice fossils found that day....
The best find of the day, perhaps, was of what appears to be a very large coiled Cephalopod in matrix, found by Jayne Dye, a pediatrician from Lancaster. The pictures below show a few different angles of the specimen on the side of a rock. Great find, Jayne!
Another member found several Phragmolites dyeri, a monoplacphoran, shown
below in the palm of her glove.
In the trilobite layers were found Flexicalymene retrorsa and Isotelus
maximus; both the size of pebbles.
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