Trips to Batavia, NY to Collect Fossilized Stag-Horn Coral

Kirk has brought quite a bit of material down to the club over the years (thank you, Kirk, we do appreciate it), and the most recent batch was a couple of 5-gallon buckets full of Stag-Horn Coral, the smaller chunks of which we put into the Discovery Blocks for the kids at our Show this year. He kindly offered to take club members along with him to collect more, and on August 13th, he took Val and Ed with him – and both Val and Ed sent me some photos of the trip, so some of these photos are theirs from that trip. Then on August 27th, he again went up and took a few more people – Dale and myself, and both Val and Ed thought it worth going again, and our friend Frank from Utah (who mails us rocks), so this time we were 6 in total.

Harriet, Kirk, Frank, Dale, Val, Ed

It was dry enough that we could drive right back to the stream this time, and it turns out that was lucky, because we found tons of stuff – way more than I’d want to have to carry across a field or two. In fact, it didn’t take very long to fill up a bucket! The fossils were literally everywhere – crouch down, and start picking them up!

Or if your knees are bad, use Ed’s method – you can gather quite a few before you have to get up and move.

We found everything from ¼” size, up to really big stuff like this find of Frank’s.

It was a beautiful day and a beautiful spot, though I imagine it might be a little more challenging to walk along here, let alone collect things, in April than it was in August!

We were there less than 3 hours, and filled about 2 buckets apiece, I think. Wow! Talk about easy pickings! Kirk, there isn’t even room in your buckets for all those!

Here are a few of Ed’s from the first trip after clean-up – this is the fossilized Stag-Horn Coral.

But we all had a good time, and got some great stuff, and the rest of you will have to talk Kirk into another trip up there!