Birmingham Paleontological Society

We collected in Cherokee County, Alabama, in the pebbles and shaley outcrops around a lake, which was low for the winter, exposing a wide shoreline. An outcrop of the Middle Cambrian Conasauga Shale of the Coosa Valley is at this site, and numerous trilobites were found. A number of members went scouting for new sites in the area.

BPS members took a long road trip to roadcuts in Colbert County on August 25, where everyone found a good selection of blastoids, brachiopods, trilobites, and other Mississippian age fossils at two separate collecting sites.

Afterwards, we relaxed and cooled off in a creek on some propery owned by one of our members.

BPS members went to a Clarke County site where whale fossils have been found in the past, but none were found on this day. We also collected at a privately owned quarry in Washington County, Alabama, where numerous echinoids, sand dollars, and foraminifera were found.

Forams with a sand dollar showing in the matrix.

Numerous sand dollars were found in this quarry.

Several times during the summer, members collected in north Jefferson county, in an area being cleared for a shopping center.

This month BPS members took a long weekend, from June 15-17, driving to several quarries near Wilmington, North Carolina where Ashley had made arrangements to collect. There were numerous shells found at these sites, many in almost perfect condition. If one didn't know better, they could be mistaken for recent material.

(Photos courtesy Vicki Lais)

On June 9-10, BPS members spent the weekend in Loundes County, Alabama, where they found Cretaceous fossils. Numerous fossilized crabs and shark teeth were collected on this field trip. The crab nodules and exogyra below are from a resident near the site, who helped us gain permission to collect on the property.