I have set this posting for exactly 10 years from the first posting on Blogger at 9:18 AM Eastern time July 9, 2008. My motivation was to learn more about fossils and the Internet. Since that time I have succeeded in both these areas while at the same time realizing how much I still do not know.
While I am not quite as active as I once was in paleontology and I have somewhat exhausted the sites of fossils to find in Louisville. My activities now are more to visiting museums with fossils to see. In the next 10 years I hope to visit most of the famous museums in the United States and hopefully some more in Europe.
A lot of people have helped me along the way with identifications and images. Here are just a few I would like to thank: Kenny Popp (my cousin and fossil hunter extraordinaire), Herb Miracle (Louisville collector who has been a lot of places, find him on The Fossil Forum), Alan Goldstein (naturalist at Falls of the Ohio State Park, one of the most knowledgeable people in Louisville on its fossils), Dave Hayward (a great collector of fossils and super helpful with identifications - see more below at #6), Howard Allen (a Canadian petrologist who helped early on with my identifications with this blog), Mark Palatas (Louisville fossil dealer and one of the best authorities in the world on Paleozoic shark fossils), Paul Olliges (local volunteer/guide at the local state park and organizer of small meetings about fossils), Dr. James and Barbara Conkin (for hosting fossil meetings and writing local guidebooks), members of local fossil clubs I have been a member Kyana, Dry Dredgers and MAFIC, and all my readers who have motivated me on to keep posting information about the world around us. Thanks!
Looking at the stats for this site over its lifetime at its host blogger.com, as of this writing all time views for the site are 942,162. This is my 1,900th post and Google Photo shows 5,609 pictures stored for this blog. The following posts have been the most popular by number of views.
#1 Paleontology and Dinosaur Hunting Radio Show on January 4, 2011
This post was about author Homer Hickam and paleontologist Jack Horner who visited Kentucky to give a lecture on dinosaurs. Some of my better dinosaur pictures were in this post including two I took of replicas displayed at the Louisville Zoo.
#2 Dinosaurs Alive! at Louisville Zoo on January 23, 2010
Some nice images of dinosaur replicas found at the Louisville Zoo during a special exhibit. I spent some time Photoshopping some of the fences and signs out of the pictures to make them look a little more realistic.
#3 Determining Specific Gravity of Minerals on February 10, 2011
The entry did not have to do with fossils. For years, I volunteered at the Louisville Science Center (now known as Kentucky Science Center) showing visitors science related things (geometry, magnetism, electricity, DNA, solar energy, gravity, etc). The center houses items from the older Louisville Museum of Natural History and Science which include a very old American mineral collection. It seemed a like a good idea to develop an exercise about determining specific gravity so I made this. It was not used by science center so I published it here so maybe someone could get some use out of it. Since made this list it shows some people looked at it.
#4 Devonian Horn Coral - Tabulophyllum zaphrentiforme on February 17, 2009
Finally, a posting about a local fossil I found in Louisville. This horn coral while not large about 5 mm in length is a quite popular page on the site. I can only speculate but I think it is used by a teacher(s) for a natural science exercise judging from the comments left. I am glad it can help out with educating the public about our geological past.
#5 How To Be A Dunkleosteus on December 11, 2014
So I got caught up playing cell phone games (Jurassic World, Walking War Robots, Hungry Shark Evolution) that my nephews kept showing me. The Hungry Shark Evolution game had quite a few fossil creatures show up in it (Megalodon shark and Dunkleosteus arthrodire). So I posted some images from the game, I am guessing people playing the game showed up looking for hints/strategy about getting these creatures.
#6 St. Clair Pennsylvania Fern Fossils on April 19, 2010
This is a really nice fossil my friend Dave Hayward gave me. Dave is one of the most intense fossil collectors I have encountered since taking up this hobby. His passion to collect is amazing. He has a blog as well Views of the Mahantango about fossils that was active 2010-2016. This fossil is a beautiful example of what can be found in St. Clair, Pennsylvania, USA. It is so nice that I was contacted by the architects that created a new section of The Dallas Arboretum who wanted to use an image of it for their exhibit. See this link Fossils at The Dallas Arboretum from November 18, 2013 to see how that worked out.
All for now. Happy fossil hunting...
