Digging Fossils

 

 

Ulrich's Fossil Gallery.

We got up, had breakfast and headed for Ulrich's Fossil Gallery for today's dig. Heading out of town we saw several yellow-bellied marmots. 

We arrived at Ulrich's a little early. The guides showed up a little later, as did a few other fossil hunting groups. We then drove up to the quarry and saw one pronghorn antelope on the way. At the quarry we given a demonstration on how to split layers of lake sediment/rock and look for fossils. Then we went after it!

 

Getting ready to pry two layers of rock apart.

 

The rock is laid down in layers of varying depth. You look for a natural seam between layers, hammer in long, thin blades and pry the layers apart hoping to find fossils. The rock is mostly limestone and breaks pretty easily and creates a lot of dust. By the end of the day, we looked like we had been working in a bakery.

 

Here, we found a fossil and are working to remove the adjacent upper layer, so we can get this fish.

 

Connie is splitting off the upper layer of this slab- that layer was thin and had no fossils.

 

 We worked through the morning and were lucky to have an overcast day, so it didn't get very warm. The work was surprisingly tiring, but I think this might have been exacerbated by frustration. There were a lot of fossils, but it seems like the best (and largest) were on natural seams and often broke or had missing tails or heads. Anyway, we got quite a few fossils that we were happy with, although none of them were particularly large or unusual.

 

 

One of our fossils.

 

 

We returned from the quarry with one of the guides and saw three pronghorn antelope along the way. At the gallery, our guide trimmed off excess stone, using a diamond blade and a circular saw and gave us newspaper to wrap out fossils with and a box for protection as we travel.

 

We returned to the motel, relaxed, ate lunch, and showered. I napped a bit while Connie read. Around 5:00 we we out for dinner to the Caribou Cafe. It reminded me of diners we ate at in the 1960s. The food was good, nothing special, but we wanted a simple warm meal and got it. 

 

 

Sign for the Caribou Cafe.

 

We returned to the motel to read and write. All in all, it was a very nice day.