28th Annual Digging the Past Event

 

Yesterday I volunteered at the Falls of the Ohio State Park (Clarksville, Indiana USA) where I spent about 5 hours setting up, identifying and digging up Silurian fossils for visitors to the park. Most of my time was at the Waldron Shale piles containing Silurian period fossils. The main building was closed due to the air conditioning system being replaced. It has been hot this last week and as a result there was a very light turn out, maybe the fewest number of people I have seen since I started volunteering at this annual event.

The heavy rain the night before revealed a number of fossils on the surface but it was extremely muddy and I almost lost my shoe several times getting stuck in the mud. After splitting some of the shale rocks, I found several Eucalyptocrinites crinoid cups and a holdfast, and brachiopods which I gave away to visitors. One visitor found two trilobite pygidium imprints of a Dalamites and Arctinerus.

 

These next images show Fardenia brachiopod fossil imprints.

All in all a somewhat nice day. It was in the 80s F in the morning and was getting hotter by noon. Working in the shale piles was muddy. I did not get to check out how the mineral piles or Devonian period fossil piles were going. The Devonian one was very mucky and wet.

Digging the Past Event 2015

Today, I helped out with the Digging the Past event at the Falls of the Ohio State Park. The weather was nice. A lot of visitors showed up despite the main building being closed for renovations and there is so much construction in the area involving the new Ohio River bridge. The park employees estimated about 500 cars showed up with about 1,500 visitors. I did not see many fossils being found in the Silurian Period Waldron Shale pile (mostly brachiopods and one Trimerus trilobite pygidium). The Jeffersonville limestone pile was seeded so people were bringing me some Devonian brachiopods to ID and some corals. I did see some button corals from the Speed Limestone as well.

Mostly I stayed by the washing station of the mineral pile and identified fluorite, barite, calcite, and such mineral specimens. I saw a few nice cubed pieces of fluorite early on but no blue or green material. The biggest find I saw a piece of galena. Myself and the naturalist at the Falls have never seen a galena specimen in the pile so that was quite a rarity. Also someone found a nice purple fluorite piece on a orange matrix. I do not recall seeing the orange matrix before either.

I helped a fellow volunteer with some stability issues on flying his quadcopter but a park employee came over told me to stop flying as it was against the rules. So I learned something new today. As stated on the DNR web site, "Motor Driven Airborne Devices: Motor-driven airborne devices (RC airplanes) should be operated in designated areas only or with clearance from property management. Drones are not currently permitted on DNR properties."

All and all, it was a good day and hope the people attending had fun and learned something about fossils and minerals with their visit to the Falls of the Ohio State Park.