Hunting for Trilobite Fossils with a Geologist in Western Utah 

I enjoy your very thorough description of the geology

@@petercomeau703 Thanks so much. Glad you like my content.

Awesome. Glad you enjoyed it.

Generally same age. Middle Cambrian.

It was the Succor Creek formation. I found where I had sought identification help from Fossils Forum.

Thank you!

Great guy. I learned a lot and enjoyed his company.

Ha. Camera skills are usually shoddy at best, but thanks for the encouragement.

Shales in that area. There are other exposures with limestones/dolomite that have fossils not far from the Wheeler Amphitheater

Good question and I don't think there is a specific answer. Shale is made of mud sized particles for the rate of deposition is slow compared to other environments. Likely several millions of years.

Fossils are usually replaced with other mineral material. Sometimes aragonite, sometimes silica. Replacement material makes them a bit harder and more resistant than surrounding rock.

A masonry hammer. You can find them either in the hammer section or the masonry section of most Lowe's/Home Depot stores. Cheaper ones can be bought online. Estwing is the best in my honest opinion.

This is not all to say that you can't just use a basic hammer to do this. Any old hammer will work given you use it in the manner used for geology. Buuuuut...... since we're on the subject, let me throw down some things I've learned over the years that have helped me in my journey of learning geology and exploring the best and most exciting things in the geology of the area in which I live. That's right, no matter where you are in the world, the geology of the rocks around you is amazing and it's just waiting to be found, identified and interpreted. Go check out the environment around you! And while you're there, you can learn about the animals, plants, weather and much more! Even what it used to be like there millions of years ago! Oh, let me add that you can get masonry hammers with different types of prying ends. I have a few of them; *One just comes to a long point, great for making a large impact on a small area and digging rocks out of the ground. *Another has a flat, prybar type of end to it and it's great for, well, prying at layers of rocks to separate them to reveal large portions of the tops of layers where you can find fossils and pockets of minerals and for prying up on and lifting larger rocks up to be able to see underneath them and it's great for digging out around rocks, but not so much for digging straight down or into a hillside or roadcut. *The last, that I use anyways, is the basic claw hammer. Now, you don't want a rinky dink cheap hammer you bought at Walmart. You want a framing type claw hammer. The claw is not as curved, so you can use it for larger things instead of just nails. The claws can also be placed around an object that you're trying to pry at/out and be placed on both sides of it for equal leverage to keep from breaking a sample vs just one large flat-bar type end as with some of the pry-bar type hammers. Now for the handles. I generally like the type that have shock absorption in mind. Now, you're not going to get badass handles like with higher end things, but some hammers do have great handles that make working with them much easier. But, everyone is different and what I think sucks may be the bees knees for yourself. I can suggest a hammer that doesn't have hard plastic as a handle. Soft plastic or rubberized plastic handles are better, but pure rubber handles suck and never stay on right, though you may like them. If you can get a handle made from something similar to leather then you're going to be able to grip better, especially when wet and it handles shock absorption quite nicely and tend to stay on better than most rubberized handles. Though many many disagree with me on this. I am talking about these after having a few decades of experience swinging hammers. But I am me and you are you. What I do and like doing and what feels right to me may differ from your preferences and what jives for you may not be my cup of tea. So go out there, start fiddling around with the hammers at you local stores and see what feels right for you and go out and experiment with them and see which works best for your type of exploration and keep the others around for friends and associates to use if they decide to go out looking for stuff with you but don't have their own hammer or don't have the preferred type. Good luck with your finds and if you want, you can share what you find here for use all to see and for us to see what types of hammers you got for yourself! I'd love to hear back from anyone who reads this and decides to take any of my advice at all and I'd be more than willing to help you through the choices of picking a new hammer and hearing about what you find! I tend to find tons of marine fossils, like Trilobites, Brachiopods, Crynoids, Corals, Bryzoans, Arthropods and other invertebrates. I even find fossilized wood in the sandstone around here in central and eastern Kentucky! Also, tons up on tons of quartz and calcite geodes here in central Kentucky, some up to or over 50lbs+! You never know what you'll find, so go see and find out!!!? 😃🤘

They have hammers and chisels for you to use at quarry.

These guys are from way way way way way before Lake Bonneville.

Fossils are marine. Deposition of marine limestones also is evidence.

@@shawnwillsey I will pay you

It is me beating on a very hard gneiss (high grade metamorphic rock). That's about as hard as they come.

gneiss comeback

Awesome, thank you! Your kind contribution will help me make more videos.