Jen here –
I recently went on a fossil collecting trip associated with a FOSSIL Project workshop on digitization and imaging of fossils. To preface this, whenever you are looking to go fossil collecting you should make sure to be aware of the laws and rules in place in your town. The spot we were heading to abuts private land so one of the coordinators made sure to reach out to them ahead of time to request permission and explain what we were doing. To give back to the community, we also cleaned up the creek while we were looking for fossils. There is always trash or debris and this is an easy way to give back to the community you are hunting in!
In Florida, you have to prepare to be out in the heat. Surprisingly the creek was pleasant and we were pretty shaded for most of the day. I wore a UV protectant shirt, shorts, sandals, and a hat. Insects can really get you, so it’s also best to know what to prepare for and use lotion or bug spray to prevent any spread of disease.
I was mostly observing and helping facilitate this trip but I was excited to see others getting really into the fossil collection. This location is in the Coosawhatchie Formation which is Miocene (~23-5.3 million years ago) in age. It overlies the Eocene (~56-33.9 million years old) Ocala Limestone. The Ocala Limestone fossils are very different from the Coosawhatchie so they are pretty easy to distinguish from one another. Most folks were finding shark teeth, ray plates, clams, snails from the Coosawhatchie Formation and things like small echinoids and large benthic foraminifera from the Ocala Limestone. Specimens from the Ocala Limestone were often a white-cream color whereas specimens from the Coosawhatchie were very dark.
We also spent some time observing the local insects and sharing education apps for identifying fossils and modern life! Workshop participants were from all over the country so there was some regular chit chat and getting to know one another. I had known several participants for some time from various online platforms so it was really great getting to meet them in person! If you want to check out what the group was up to here is the myFOSSIL group that everyone was posting in: Imaging and Digitization for Avocational Paleontologists Workshop
I was also helping my friend and collaborator, Rich, with a study. He was interested in thinking about participant dynamics at workshops and field trips. So we had a matrix and were recording interactions between participants at the workshop and facilitators (/people running the workshop). He then also gave everyone a survey to see how people’s perception of who they interacted with matched what we observed. They were pretty close but perceived interactions were higher, which could be due to a variety of things. It has been really fun getting into some of these observational studies!
Check out the summary blog post on myFOSSIL about the event: Imagining and Digitization Workshop
