Amateur fossil collecting

Hello

I have heard that there is a trilobite bed located somewhere in the White Mountains of California, east of the Owens Valley. Does anyone have any knowledge of this?

I'll track it down eventually with the aid of USGS maps but I was hoping to save a bit of time and trouble.

Also, is there a more appropriate forum for posting such a query?

Thanks in advance.

- Robert

I find my fossils mostly by accident. Only on a couple of occasions have I known where I was going or what I would find. I look for sedimentary rock exposures and then check them out. This method makes it more exciting than just going to a known site and collecting known specimens. The basic technique here is to wnader around, enjoy the outdoors, and maybe you'll bump into something. If you don't then you still got some fresh air and exercise.

The Tyrrell Museum has a program in which you pay about $650 and you can be part of an escavation crew for a week. That sounds attractive. The fee includes room and board. The proceeds go towards funding the dig. The museum is located near a rich deposit of dino bones up in Alberta Canada. They are escavating full, articulated dinosaurs. People interested in this should look at the Tyrrell Museum web page.

When my son is older I hope to take him on a trip like that.

Tom A web page for amateurs by an amateur... <http://www.mindspring.com/~sminstruments/fossils/>

The locality you're referring to likely lies up by Cedar Flat near Westgard Pass, east of Big Pine, California. That entire area contains impressive accumulations of the Lower Cambrian Poleta Formation, from whose carbonate intervals lowest in the stratigraphic section abundant archeocyathids occur in primitive reef form (some paleontologists, though, reject the idea that archeocyathids formed true reefs, as we understand them today) .The fine-grained, greenish-brown, slightly metamorphosed shales that lie just above the contact with this archeocyathid limestone sometimes bear small trilobites and helioplacoid echinoderm debris, but specimens are no longer plentiful due to the fact that the Cedar Flat region has been used for decades by various universities as a base camp for their Summer Field studies; students and professors usually find most of the goodies here. The definitive reference to obtain is USGS Map GQ-529, by C.A Nelson, (1966) Geologic Map of the Blanco Mountain Quadrangle, Inyo and Mono Counties, California. One important point to remember, though, is that the fossiliferous area lies within the Inyo National Forest, administered by the U.S. Forest Service. You may need to secure a special use permit from their field office in either Big Pine or Bishop before visiting the fossil-bearing outcrops.

Whew. . . the White Mountains (and the Inyos. . . and the Silver Peak Range. . . and the Last Chance Range. . . in fact, an awful lot of the Great Basin ranges all the way to Las Vegas) contain Cambrian and Ordovician sections with trilobites, sometimes plentiful. I don't know of any specific trilobite beds in the area, but imagine you could find 'em in a lot of places. Look for outcrops of Cambrian age on regional geologic maps

the fee is currently $800 a week

In Canadian dollars.

Tom A web page for amateurs by an amateur... <http://www.mindspring.com/~sminstruments/fossils/>

Is anyone interested in Pleistocene remains in Chihuahua, Mexico?