| REGISTRATION INFORMATION: To register, please email Cathy at cathy@fossilandnaturetrips.com or call 610-209-0758 or 610-647-7926 Checks should be made payable to Cathy Young and mailed to: 236 Valley View Lane Berwyn, PA 19312 Sorry, we are currently unable to accept credit cards. Thank You!! |
| Pamunkey River Fossil Trip & Fossil Collecting at Stratford Hall Saturday, July 19th and Sunday, July 20th, 2008 Dr. Lauck Ward, Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology and leading authority of molluscan biostratigraphy of the Atlantic Coastal Plain, will lead us on this fabulous weekend adventure in Virginia. Saturday, we’ll ride in boats on the Pamunkey River, stopping many places along the banks collecting fossils. The stratigraphic formations that we will be able to collect from are: Nanjemoy (lower Eocene), Piney Point (middle Eocene), Old Church (upper Oligocene), Calvert (lower Miocene), Choptank (Miocene) and Eastover (Miocene). The river is famous for having so many formations exposed in such a small area. It is the only place that the Piney Point and Old Church Formations are seen in natural exposures. We should be able to find shark teeth (including megaladon), whale teeth and bones, crocodile teeth, manatee bones and beautiful fossil shells. This area is supposed to be full of amazing fossils! Then Sunday, we’ll collect fossils in the morning on Stratford Hall beach. The beach is closed to the public, but Dr. Ward is able to take groups onto the beach. This site is Upper Miocene age (6 to 10 million years old). Shark teeth, whale bone and turtle shell are mainly found here. Occasionally even a megalodon shark tooth is found. You can also find fossil shells here, like Chesapectens and Ecphora. This trip is very limited to the number of people who can join us, since we can only fit a certain amount of people in the boats. So – if you can join us, you must e-mail or call me as soon as possible. It’s a first call, first serve basis. We recommend this trip for ages 10 and up. Cost: $125 per person. Cost does not include car transportation to the meeting sites, food or lodging. It does include the boat transportation. North Carolina Gem and Mineral Collecting Trip Saturday, August 9th through Monday, August 11th, 2008 Join us for 3 full days of gem and mineral collecting. Karen Snow, past president of the Philadelphia Mineralogical Society and co- author of Gem Trails of Pennsylvania and New Jersey will lead this wonderful trip. We’ll have Orientation on Friday evening, August 8th at the Cartoogechaye Creek Campground in Franklin, NC. Saturday, we’ll head to Buck Creek, and collect pyrope garnets, unakite and horneblende. We’ll also visit the Franklin Gem and Mineral Society Museum. Then we’ll head for the Cowee Valley Ruby Mine. This site is a commercial mine. We will buy buckets of sediment and screen them. The cost is about $5 or $10. However, the mine puts only native stone in the buckets. We could find rubies, sapphires, garnets, moonstone and rutile. Sunday, we’ll head for Spruce Pine. Between Franklin and Spruce Pine, we’ll go to another commercial mine and look for rhodolite garnets. Then we’ll head to another mine to collect apatite and kyanite. The apatite in this location can be fluorescent. Next we’ll go to the Ray Mica Mine. There is a charge there of about $3 for parking. We should find beryl, schorl (tourmaline), muscovite, 3 kinds of feldspar, apatite and maybe even aquamarine. Monday we’ll visit the Museum of North Carolina Minerals, and go to a mine dump. We should find beryl, schorl (tourmaline), smoky quartz, garnets and aquamarine. If we have time, we’ll also go to another site with fluorite. Cost: $125 per adult, $50 per child under age 18. Cost does not include car transportation to the meeting sites, food or lodging. It also does not include the cost for buckets of sediment at the Cowee Valley Ruby Mine, parking fee at the Ray Mica Mine or the fee to visit the Museum of North Carolina Minerals. Upper Potomac River Fossil Trip & Fossil Collecting at Stratford Hall Saturday, August 23rd and Sunday, August 24th, 2008 Dr. Lauck Ward, Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology and leading authority of molluscan biostratigraphy of the Atlantic Coastal Plain, will lead us on this fabulous weekend adventure in Virginia. Saturday, we’ll ride in boats on the Upper Potomac River, starting at Fairview Beach, stopping many places along the banks collecting fossils. We’ll start on the Maryland side, end up in Purse State Park, and cross to the Virginia side. We will be collecting in the Cretaceous, Aquia Formation, Piscataway and Paspotanza Members. We should find lots of sharks teeth, crocodile bones and teeth, and the internal molds of turitella. Then Sunday, we’ll collect fossils in the morning on Stratford Hall beach. The beach is closed to the public, but Dr. Ward is able to take groups onto the beach. This site is Upper Miocene age (6 to 10 million years old). Shark teeth, whale bone and turtle shell are mainly found here. Occasionally even a megalodon shark tooth is found. You can also find fossil shells here, like Chesapectens and Ecphora. This trip is very limited to the number of people who can join us, since we can only fit a certain amount of people in the boats. So – if you can join us, you must e-mail or call me as soon as possible. It’s a first call, first serve basis. We recommend this trip for ages 10 and up. Cost: $125 per person. Cost does not include car transportation to the meeting sites, food or lodging. It does include the boat transportation. Fossil Collecting at Calvert Cliffs and Purse State Park, MD Saturday, August 30th and Sunday, August 31st Jayson Kowinsky, AKA fossilguy.com, a high school Physics and Astronomy teacher in Pittsburgh, will be leading a trip to Calvert Cliffs. Jayson is a very experienced collector along the Calvert Cliffs and Potomac River. He is a member of various fossil clubs, including the Aurora Fossil Museum, where he writes a regular “Common Finds” column in their newsletter. The Calvert Cliffs of Maryland is part of a large collection of fossiliferous exposures, called the Chesapeake Group, that encompasses exposures around the Chesapeake Bay. The Calvert Cliffs run for roughly 24 miles from near Chesapeake Beach to Drum Point on the western shore of Maryland in Calvert County. These 15 million year old cliffs contain an amazing Miocene fauna. More than 600 species of plants and animals have been found here. Among these are a wide variety of marine animals such as porpoises, whales, seals, sea turtles, sea cows and crocodiles. Also, parts of land mammals are occasionally found, the most common being the peccary, a pig-like animal. Even more interesting creatures have been found, such as mastodons, wooly rhinos, and camels. The cliffs boast an extremely diverse sea life, from countless genera of sharks and rays (including the huge sharks, C. megalodon), to many kinds of fish. We will meet Saturday morning at Brownies Beach. These Miocene cliffs contain the Calvert Formation. Sunday, we’ll head for Purse State Park on the Potomac River. Our leader will be Frank Young. Frank has been a member of the Delaware Valley Paleontological Society for 14 years, and has collected fossils at this site for several more years than that. Collect fossilized sharks teeth, bones and shells along the Potomac River. This site is Aquia Formation, Piscataway Member. Cost: $80 per adult and $30 per child under 18. Cost does not include transportation (we meet at the sites), food or lodging. For more information, or to register for these trips, please e-mail Cathy Young at cathy@fossilandnaturetrips.com or call 610-209-0758. Find out about our trips even before they are put on the website. Just e-mail cathy@fossilandnaturetrips.com , and we'll be happy to put you on our e-Newsletter list. We send e-Newsletters about every 2 weeks, informing you about our newest upcoming trips. |
Event Information:
Mid-Atlantic Fossil and Nature Adventures
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