If you want to get a feel of what it is like digging for dinosaur fossils, here's a good video clip from PaleoAdventures collected at the "Tooth Draw Quarry" in South Dakota.  Besides being one of our primary suppliers of Hell Creek Formation dinosaur material, PaleoAdventures runs a lot of great dig tours and educational programs. 

Last August I had the exciting opportunity not only to make my first trilobite collecting trip to New York, but to collect the famous Walcott-Rust Quarry.  The Walcott-Rust Quarry (WRQ) was discovered in 1870 by a 20 year old Charles Doolittle Walcott.  Yes, the same Charles Walcott went go on to become the head of the US Geological Survey and discover many other famous sites including the Burgess Shale.  Along with William Rust he commercially collected the quarry for several years selling specimens to both tourists and major institutions.

WRQ has an exceptionally preserved trilobite fauna of at least 18 different species of trilobites along with diverse echinoderms, brachiopods and bryozoans.  Many of the trilobites found within the limestone layers are preserved perfectly 3 dimensional with no compactions at all, so they look like they are ready to crawl off of the rock.  One layer has even yielded specimens of Ceraurus, Flexicalymene and Meadowtownella with preserved appendages.

U-Dig (www.U-DigFossils.com) is a private, fee-dig trilobite quarry near Delta, Utah.  It contains one of the most prolific trilobite assemblages in the world.  I dug my first trilobite there more than 15 years ago, and countless others have been introduced to the world of fossil collecting at U-Dig.  It’s a great place for pretty much anybody to find their own fossils including families, kids and people who’ve never collected a fossil.  For a hourly fee, they supply tools helpful guidance, unlimited rock to split and you get to keep everything you find.

For the previous week I had been in search of rare trilobites in the deserts of Utah and Nevada.  The process involved days of moving heavy overburden and cracking hard limestone with a sledgehammer. I had been going on three or four days straight of not finding a decent complete trilobite, so not only was my body feeling a bit worn out, but I was getting pretty frustrated.  I decided that take a day off and “rest” by visiting U-Dig to split some nice soft shale.  Plus, I was basically guaranteed to find some complete trilobites even if they were just common species.

I get the chance to head out in the field pretty frequently to collect fossils myself.  Before starting FossilEra I would take maybe three or four collecting trips a year, but now the job gives me a good excuse to do it a little more frequently.  I thought it would be fun to chronical some of my collecting trips on this blog to give people an idea of the type of work that goes into finding specimens like some of those being sold on this site.   

Last April I got an invite from Dan Cooper (a true legend in the trilobite world) to join him and a group of about a dozen other trilophiles down on his lease in the Haragan Formation of Oklahoma.  The Devonian aged Haragan Formation, produces arguably the most beautiful and highly detailed trilobites in the United States.  It has been famously collected by Bob Caroll for over 3 decades at “Black Cat Mountain”.   Dan’s lease was basically one hill over from Bob’s lease at Black Cat Mountain.  See Oklahoma trilobites for sale on FossilEra, many collected and prepared by Bob.