The 2010 Trilobite trip was successful in that everyone came home with some decent trilobite fossils. It wasn’t quite as successful in terms of sleep though!
On Friday, David and Mark went to Amboy to prepare and blaze the trail for other arriving fossil hunters. We used some red survey flags to mark where we were supposed to turn. It certainly helped – even we were saved from the wrong dirt road from time to time!
Then we both took the time to climb the Amboy Volcano – an extinct lava and cinder cone near Amboy. It took us about two and a half hours to get there, climb to the rim, and come back. Getting there took the longest portion of time, but once we were on the rim we could plan a shorter trail back to the car.
Friday night Justin joined us. The next morning we went out to the dig site. By noon we were joined by Tegmine and Jen. Several other people had canceled at the last moment, so it was really just us.
We found the secret to bigger fossils was to look through the pink shale – this stuff is seamed with darker lines through it, as you can see from the photo. It doesn’t look quite like this when you first dig it out of the bed -
it’s darker, and you see it from the edge, which is darker still. It only seems to get this pink after it dries out a little in the sun.
On Sunday, the gang had enough. Sleeping on the hard ground, even with a pad under the sleeping bag, just wasn’t cutting it. The land around Marble Mountains is covered with fist-sized rocks, and if you sweep them out of the way you discover more fist-sized rocks underneath! The best sleeping bag pad cannot cope. Next year we promised we would bring either cots, or thicker pads, or inflatable mattresses.
Still, we came away with some good times, and some lovely fossils – mostly cephalons dropped during molting. As we work them out of the shale at home, we will post photos. And if anyone has a full trilobite, we’ll certainly post it here.
CVAAS has also received several emails from people who are interested in repeating our trip to Amboy, or joining us on our next expedition. Our next trip to Amboy will probably be on Spring Break 2011, however we are looking into making a trip to another fossil dig site. Details will be published as we learn them.
