Drill & Blast

Fossils and finds at Lafarge Quarry

A Lafarge quarry in Michigan is in an area of the US that is ripe with fossils. The quarry itself has been in operation since 1907 and is generally not open to the public but for quite a few years PaleoJoe has been able to take his groups for a dig.

PaleoJoe’s groups are just every day families who want to fossick around, find some fossils and take them home, and that’s exactly what they do. They walk around the heaps of discarded boulders, the loads of dirt and gravel, then get out their hammers and chisels and set to work.

Many just use their hands to retrieve shells and corals while hunting for the elusive trilobites and fishplates of protitanichthys rockportensis, some of which have been found in the quarry.

PaleoJoe moves from family to family, picking up fossils and explaining what they are. He fields an endless stream of questions and identifies fossils.

The backdrops for his group tours are the 100-foot high walls of the quarry that expose the many layers of material that have been deposited to form the ground.

PaleoJoe is the author of seven books for children and two for adults, who has curated museum exhibits and visits schools and libraries sharing his knowledge, and won numerous awards and honors.

Source: The Midland Daily News (US)

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