Hunting for Trilobite Fossils with a Geologist in Western Utah

[@shawnwillsey]

You can support my field videos by clicking on the "Thanks" button just above (right of Like button) or by going here: www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=EWUSLG3GBS5W8

[@petercomeau703]

I enjoy your very thorough description of the geology

[@shawnwillsey]

@@petercomeau703 Thanks so much. Glad you like my content.

[@davidk7324]

"There’s just as much wonder in the ground as there is in the sky." Bears repeating. Thank you Shawn. This was a special treat.

[@Riverguide33]

“There’s just as much wonder in the ground as there is in the sky”. 👍

[@StereoSpace]

I recall reading somewhere that the Ute words for trilobites translated as 'Water bugs in stone houses'. Strangely accurate.

[@mandycleezehappyhour4238]

OMG, thank you(!!!) for sharing that map explaining where on the globe the continent was 500 Ma ago. All too often, even highly popular and respected science shows never ever adequately explain where the pre-North American continent was over the millennia. Most of the time they stop at , "it was a tropical climate'....without explaining the physical locality of the mass. And you proved that it's not difficult nor does it take a long time to clarify. Crystal clear, unambiguous explanation. Thanks again! P.s. I need to find a trilobite! Gotta make a trip to that part of Utah!

[@Rachel.4644]

This is so awesome! Thanks Shawn.

[@GrandmasterBBC]

I can't think of anything more fun than spending a day at that quarry. I'm putting that on my list. Thank you for the outstanding video!

[@edithmatheson1828]

Very nice interview. Thank you both.

[@mawi1172]

You're so cute. Shawn. "Looky here.". I don't hear kids say that anymore. I love your show. Please keep it on for us oldies.❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@caseyjones8203]

We have an excellent area in south central Oklahoma that is fascinating to explore before the dinosaur and land vegetation. Trilobites, gastropods, bi valves; and branch corral just scratching the surface.

[@stevewhalen6973]

Thanks! It's not hard to imagine modern insects evolving from these ancient arthropods.

[@ericm8811]

Hey Shawn Willsey! Thanks for the very nice trilobite hunting vid. Greetings from the north shore mountains of Vancouver British Columbia Canada! Ride ride ride!

[@burpleson]

This is great. I may order some shale for my grandkids.

[@hestheMaster]

A great fossil hunting adventure Shawn! You are not that far from Swasey Peak and the Tatoonie Sand Dunes ( not from Star Wars movies which was filmed in Tunisia) which are the last remains of the bottom of the ancient seas trilobites were in! The central western Utah desert has a lot going on!

[@remorrey]

Thanks Shawn for this video. It's now on our bucket list. Your Fossil Butte video inspired a great outing for my son and 2 grandsons this past Saturday. Loved the experience. In 2 hours we found many fish. Played your video on the way home as a nice summary of the day.

[@shawnwillsey]

Awesome. Glad you enjoyed it.

[@KenK-g4o]

Thanks for the memory jolt. I collected trilobites here in 1971 before there was any commercial endeavor. There were no signs to guide you there The only thing we knew was turn west from Beaver and drive until you found a dirt road and turn right. Even then there were a dozen or so people out tapping rocks. You are so right about it being addictive, you keep thinking the next rock will have a better fossil.

[@oldtop4682]

Last time I was out that way was almost 50 years ago. I brought back a couple of great fossils. Went a ways away and hit the geode beds, and Topaz Mountain. Utah is truly blessed with geology (and archaeology too). Miss my home state, and hope to retire back there next year. Lapidary work got me into geology, and it still my first love. Thank you for your channel!

[@Danika_Nadzan]

Thanks for another great geology road trip! There were some truly spectacular trilobite fossils there...I can see why it's addictive.😊

[@7inrain]

One could get jealous seeing how easy it is to find trilobites in that quarry. From some scientific papers covering the Devonian layers surrounding my place I know that some trilobites must be buried here. But so far I've been unlucky. Thanks for the video.

[@GregInEastTennessee]

That is really great! I've put it on my "next time" list. 😀

[@VegasCyclingFreak]

Wow this is an amazing place. Trilobites are one of my favorite fossils.

[@clintonturner5545]

The second time I saw a trilobite was in the fifties when my father and mother took me to see Ramon Burr movie Godzilla. It was in black and white. We always went to the movie at night and on foot. We didn't have a car back then.

[@agmartin2127]

Nice interview with the U-Dig person... Will stop by there the next time we're headed west from Western Colorado. There is a mountain just north of our old hometown of Crested Butte called Treasury Mountain. You walk up and up, then out of nowhere, dozens and then thousands of Pennsylvanian era fossils appear beneath your feet. Yet another great video... Tony, Carbondale, Colorado

[@ronjlwhite8058]

Thank you for sharing your experience with us!!! Love the channel 100%

[@CricketsMa]

Shawn, I wish you had been in my life when I lived in Utah! This is a must see!!

[@00Mandy00]

This brings back great memories.

[@LouinVB]

In the early 1980s I lived in Salt Lake City. I used to camp out near Antelope Springs & collect trilobites throughout the House Range. There were no businesses or commercial claims anywhere in the area. Over a weekend we'd easily collect a couple of 5-gallon buckets full of nice specimens mainly from surface picking.

[@phyllisbonner8900]

I love fossils. Thanks for sharing this info. With us

[@davidleadford6511]

Used to find a lot of Trilobite fossils near Pocatello too as a kid.

[@SCW1060]

Thanks Shawn. I'm also a well self taught amateur Geologist too and and thanks to Nick Zentner I've learned so much. I love fossils to especially with my last name Wheeler lol

[@Laserblade]

Great episode Professor, thank you! I wonder how this shale deposit relates to the Burgess chronologically?

[@shawnwillsey]

Generally same age. Middle Cambrian.

[@jameshall4385]

I love that place. It was so much fun. Its been a few years since we have been there. I definitely want to go back

[@grandparocky]

Thank you Shawn very well done!

[@RogerMatheny]

Great video!!.. I've actually met Brent back in Mississippi, he is extremely passionate about finding fossils. There is a creek in NE Mississippi that had an abundance of things to find, shark teeth, oysters, fossilized wood, and more.. he talked about wanting to find trilobites then. I'm happy to see he is doing well at it!..

[@shawnwillsey]

Great guy. I learned a lot and enjoyed his company.

[@edwardhanson3664]

This is great, Shawn. You should talk a bit about the deposition environment, why the shale is black.

[@mindysdad3110]

Native American trilobite jewelry, wow!

[@hunt4redoctober628]

Fascinating place Shawn! I've spent a lot of time in North Wales UK, mapping some of the Cambrian rocks. Never found a trilobite yet but plenty of graptolites and brachiopods.

[@mirandamom1346]

We brought our daughter there when she was 4. Good times.

[@billroberts9182]

Cool. My grandkids need a trip there!

[@GWNorth-db8vn]

So jealous. I grew up with identical looking shale from the same period in S. Ontario, and all we got was little snails, brachiopods, and millipedes.

[@Ari-jj9op]

"There's just as much wonder in the ground as there is in the sky." In every way, Brent.

[@jackbelk8527]

One of your best! Is Fossil Butte, west of Kemmerer in the works? Great fish found there in commercial quarries that's great fun for the family.

[@shawnwillsey]

Hi Jack. Fish, fish, you got your wish: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eWa3oI2brN6alZY

[@williamedwards1528]

Trilobites existed for almost 300 million years, much longer than the dinosaurs. Amazing!

[@garypasko5314]

Was there about 12 years ago and there was an old man and his dog running the place. They're both probably deceased, but I mentioned New Dig to him and he nearly threw me out of his quarry.

[@lauram9478]

❤

[@66kbm]

Great video. Thanks.

[@craighoover1495]

Thank you! I will never forget finding leaf fossils in shale way out in the sagebrush desert of Southern Idaho while working on a biology project. I collected what I could find and eventually tried to find similar specimens at the Smithsonian. I was successful. I think parts of what I collected was gifted to Boise State and it's geology collection. I still have one piece. I can't remember the name of the formation. The leaves were of willow and maybe alder.

[@craighoover1495]

It was the Succor Creek formation. I found where I had sought identification help from Fossils Forum.

[@kimberlyhinson4252]

Very interesting!

[@RobertGotschall-y2f]

I've collected trilobites N Las Vegas the professor called it Pioche Shale.

[@1PITIFULDUDE]

GOOD STUFF!!

[@Josh1888USU]

Interesting, I will need to make the drive out there sometime. I'm from Preston myself so would be interesting to hear who Brent's friend from Preston is. Small town so we likely know each other. Fossil Butte is nearby as well, but this place looks good and only about a 4 hours drive away.

[@loisrossi841]

The tribobite was my favorite as a young persob

[@Anne5440_]

Very interesting. The majority of fossils I've found are leaf impressions in Washington. Although I found a fair size rock in VA that was full of small clams. I've drug it around all ly life. I got to go on a paleontology dig once in college. That was a lot of clams, turtles, and fish bones. My interest is more in paleoanthropolgy, so of course, I've only visited a small number of digs. R My real training was cultural anthropology. The geology came later and remains at a lay persons level. Of course, you know my passion is volcanoes. This would be an interesting place to visit. It would have excited my mother, who would have liked to find a trilobite.

[@francoutah]

Thank you, Shawn. What kind of sediment/minerals are those fossils encased in? Safe travels mate!

[@dmbeaster]

Shales in that area. There are other exposures with limestones/dolomite that have fossils not far from the Wheeler Amphitheater

[@davec9244]

thank you

[@sirius334251]

Found a beauty at Presqu’île Provincial Park near Brighton, Ontario.

[@tonydagostino6158]

One of the best books for all things trilobite is "Trilobites of the World" by Pete Lawrance and Sinclair Stammers from Siri Scientific Press. It's handy-sized, with over 1000 pictures, many in color. I have a dog-eared field copy and a shelf copy. Trilobite eyes are the coolest things

[@nothanks3236]

We have a few trilobite sites of roughly the same age here in Georgia, only problem is pretty much all of them are on private land and the landowners have zero interest in allowing digging. Fossil hunting east of the Mississippi is such a chore compared to out west where there are sites like this one all over where you can just rock up in the morning and be finding samples five minutes after you start looking.

[@cschwad559]

Hey, Shaun , I know a great place to find trilobites in Montana. Just 5 miles west of Drummond, Montana, north of old highway 10 is a place called Rattlesnake gulch. Up there, in the shales is where they are. The ones I’ve found are little.

[@outsider2222]

Thanks!

[@shawnwillsey]

Thank you!

[@joshwadley6521]

Algorithm bump, another great watch!

[@stevew5212]

cool and informative video.

[@barrydysert2974]

"Walking a little crooked." 🤔 No shade, but that seems to sum it up !:-)

[@BC_Cutler]

I traveled to this area several times as a teenager to visit a cave that's just around the corner from the U-dig site. I spent a lot of time on these trips hunting for trilobites and I don't think I ever found a specimen as nice as the one you found in your video. These trips were also when I first became fascinated by the nearby Notch Peak, which is where I went to watch the recent eclipse. Quite the fun experience! :) One question I have though: when looking at the geologic map it says the Wheeler shale is "about 460 to 900 feet thick". How much time does it take for that much sediment to be deposited? I had the same question while standing on the summit of Notch Peak and looking down on those thousands of feet of sedimentary layers. How many millions of years does it take to deposit that much sediment???

[@shawnwillsey]

Good question and I don't think there is a specific answer. Shale is made of mud sized particles for the rate of deposition is slow compared to other environments. Likely several millions of years.

[@miqsh70]

This guy is good with camera he should have a yt channel. Spread the science! 😊

[@shawnwillsey]

Ha. Camera skills are usually shoddy at best, but thanks for the encouragement.

[@GregHine]

‘Been there. Done that. And it’s a great time!!! Make the stop. Do it! Best to bring a geologist’s hammer (is that what it’s called?).

[@chaoticchem]

A masonry hammer. You can find them either in the hammer section or the masonry section of most Lowe's/Home Depot stores. Cheaper ones can be bought online. Estwing is the best in my honest opinion.

[@chaoticchem]

This is not all to say that you can't just use a basic hammer to do this. Any old hammer will work given you use it in the manner used for geology. Buuuuut...... since we're on the subject, let me throw down some things I've learned over the years that have helped me in my journey of learning geology and exploring the best and most exciting things in the geology of the area in which I live. That's right, no matter where you are in the world, the geology of the rocks around you is amazing and it's just waiting to be found, identified and interpreted. Go check out the environment around you! And while you're there, you can learn about the animals, plants, weather and much more! Even what it used to be like there millions of years ago! Oh, let me add that you can get masonry hammers with different types of prying ends. I have a few of them; *One just comes to a long point, great for making a large impact on a small area and digging rocks out of the ground. *Another has a flat, prybar type of end to it and it's great for, well, prying at layers of rocks to separate them to reveal large portions of the tops of layers where you can find fossils and pockets of minerals and for prying up on and lifting larger rocks up to be able to see underneath them and it's great for digging out around rocks, but not so much for digging straight down or into a hillside or roadcut. *The last, that I use anyways, is the basic claw hammer. Now, you don't want a rinky dink cheap hammer you bought at Walmart. You want a framing type claw hammer. The claw is not as curved, so you can use it for larger things instead of just nails. The claws can also be placed around an object that you're trying to pry at/out and be placed on both sides of it for equal leverage to keep from breaking a sample vs just one large flat-bar type end as with some of the pry-bar type hammers. Now for the handles. I generally like the type that have shock absorption in mind. Now, you're not going to get badass handles like with higher end things, but some hammers do have great handles that make working with them much easier. But, everyone is different and what I think sucks may be the bees knees for yourself. I can suggest a hammer that doesn't have hard plastic as a handle. Soft plastic or rubberized plastic handles are better, but pure rubber handles suck and never stay on right, though you may like them. If you can get a handle made from something similar to leather then you're going to be able to grip better, especially when wet and it handles shock absorption quite nicely and tend to stay on better than most rubberized handles. Though many many disagree with me on this. I am talking about these after having a few decades of experience swinging hammers. But I am me and you are you. What I do and like doing and what feels right to me may differ from your preferences and what jives for you may not be my cup of tea. So go out there, start fiddling around with the hammers at you local stores and see what feels right for you and go out and experiment with them and see which works best for your type of exploration and keep the others around for friends and associates to use if they decide to go out looking for stuff with you but don't have their own hammer or don't have the preferred type. Good luck with your finds and if you want, you can share what you find here for use all to see and for us to see what types of hammers you got for yourself! I'd love to hear back from anyone who reads this and decides to take any of my advice at all and I'd be more than willing to help you through the choices of picking a new hammer and hearing about what you find! I tend to find tons of marine fossils, like Trilobites, Brachiopods, Crynoids, Corals, Bryzoans, Arthropods and other invertebrates. I even find fossilized wood in the sandstone around here in central and eastern Kentucky! Also, tons up on tons of quartz and calcite geodes here in central Kentucky, some up to or over 50lbs+! You never know what you'll find, so go see and find out!!!? 😃🤘

[@shawnwillsey]

They have hammers and chisels for you to use at quarry.

[@loslaynes]

Bug rocks!

[@ncooper8438]

The host material is shale, but what material are the fossils made of? Are the fossils made of the same shale or something different? Thanks.

[@shawnwillsey]

Fossils are usually replaced with other mineral material. Sometimes aragonite, sometimes silica. Replacement material makes them a bit harder and more resistant than surrounding rock.

[@3xHermes]

👍

[@oldgeezerproductions]

On my way from the Central Coast of California to Greybull, Wyoming, I stopped there for a couple of hours. I liked it so much, I stopped for another two hours on the way home. This was the fulfillment of a lifetime wish to unearth creatures at the dawn of metazoan life when our own ancestors were primitive chordates swimming in the same seas with these creatures. To think, these creatures died and were entombed over 520,000,000 years ago and lay in these sediments undisturbed while chordates evolved into fish, a line of fish into amphibians, then reptiles and mammal like reptiles, then the dinosaurs flourished and evolved in marvelous creatures including birds, then all died out except the birds. the line of mammals, included the first primates, then they went on to evolve a creature that could understand and appreciate all of this (me). These marvelous arthropods lay entombed and undisturbed while the Egyptian and Roman Empires rose and fell and then I came along one day, disturbed their long rest and exposed them once again to the sunlight they hadn't seen in over half a billion years. It is (for me) strange to think that these marvelous, early and highly successful creatures were so advanced so long ago with complex eyes, internal organs and biramous appendages, being one of the major branches of the arthropods along with the crustaceans, the insects and the chelicerates and yet they went extinct after about a 300,000,000 year run. I found the "shale" to be rather hard, but easily split and it is my guess that the dark color indicates that these sediments were formed in an environment that was rich in organic material, organics that the trilobites thrived on. I subjected the "shale" to drops of HCL and found that it is really a thinly bedded limestone which accounts for the rock's hardness. My guess is that the calcium carbonate precipitated directly from a warm, organic rich, tropical sea of probably less than 100 feet deep, such as today found in the seas South of Florida.

[@mencken8]

Trilobites were so abundant once upon a time that if one can locate strata of a sea before the end of the Permian, it’s hard NOT to find trilobites.

[@Shrinkingviolett2]

Yah, lake Bonneville’s gift to us Utahns. And it always feels like you are sayin my name when you start talking time frames…❤

[@davisswanson6264]

These guys are from way way way way way before Lake Bonneville.

[@donharris1923]

Perhaps obtaining a helmet mounted Go-Pro camera might make these interesting and informative videos easier to produce while in the field.

[@johnfox9169]

20000-plus species of trilobites!!

[@stephenwhitaker4491]

why isn't your theme song something from hard rock?

[@shawnwillsey]

It is me beating on a very hard gneiss (high grade metamorphic rock). That's about as hard as they come.

[@stephenwhitaker4491]

gneiss comeback

[@runninonempty820]

Wisconsin state fossil!

[@cbhirsch]

I've enjoyed enough of your videos for free I decided to add you to my Paypal list : )

[@shawnwillsey]

Awesome, thank you! Your kind contribution will help me make more videos.

[@Nrc3neallyo]

FASCINATING! Margaretia / Oesia !!! Im on my way! 🛴