SUNY Fredonia and University of Pittsburgh at Bradford students.
Ten students from Dr. Thomas Hegna's Paleontology class took a field trip recently to two famous fossil sites in New York State.
Dr. Hegna noted that both sites have played an historic role in the history of paleontology, and are exceptional because, unlike normal fossils sites where you only find shells or bones, these fossils sites can preserve the soft-parts of the organisms that usually decay away.
The first site is called Beecher's trilobite bed — an Ordovician site (≈460mya) near Utica, NY, that has unlikely trilobite fossils where the soft-parts have been replaced with “fools gold.” The second site, near Trenton Falls, is called the Walcott-Rust Quarry. Like the previous site, Hegna noted it is Ordovician in age and contains a diverse set of marine fossils. The most famous fossils from the site are trilobites which have their soft-parts preserved in calcite.
SUNY Fredonia fossil hunters included Nathanial Dotts, Ava-Claire Boring, Emma Johnson, Jacob Salisbury, Beck Benson, Conner Minkowitz, Nicky Flores, Felix Fennel, Jasper Bateman and Sam Post. On the trip, the students were joined by a small group from the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. Hegna noted, “Everyone left with fossils.”
The trip was made possible by the Sue Mara fund for Experiential Learning in Geology and Environmental Sciences established through the Fredonia College Foundation.
