Fieldtrip Reports

 2007 is off and running!

Field Trip Report for 28 January 2007.
   By Wm. Terry Nesbit

On the 28th of January the Central Penn Rock and Mineral Club had their first Field Trip of 2007.  For those who did not come out, the weather was partly cloudy with temperatures between 38 and 40 degrees.  There was not any snow on the ground or covering any of the fossil collecting sites.  We had 8 individuals on this fossil hunt.

We visited two sites in the Middle Ordovician time period, about 450 million years old.  The first site, is 2.2 miles west of Kaufman, PA, along the roadbed of the former Pennsylvania Railroad's Richmond Furnace Branch, on the North side of the county road.  There is a rock cut, which runs for about 750 feet.  This rock cut is filled with posion oak and ivy, has a deer trail running up the center of the old roadbed, has many places for snakes to come out and greet the unwary fossil hunter, and is only suitable to hunt for fossils during the winter months.  This property is now owned by the Wind Swept Acres Farm, who gave us permission to collect fossils on this Sunday afternoon.  For those of you who have a copy of Pennsylvania's General Geology Report 40, from 1964, this is listed as site 28.  The fossils found here are in the Mercersburg and Shippensburg formations of limestone.  We found examples of the Brachiopod Dalmanella and Leptaena, two incomplete Trilobites Calyptaulax one which was over 2 inches in size, as well as many examples of Rhombotrypa.  Mixed in this limestone are some fine single terminated clear quartz crystals, filling vugs. 

The second site is a posted commercial shale pit in the Martinsburg Formation located just south of Chambersburg and west of RT 11.  Here we found many examples of the Graptholithina Climacograptus.  Don Kauffman found a fossil here,  measuring well over 16 inches in length, which I have never seen before.  Don, says he will bring it to a future club meeting, perhaps someone can identify his fossil find.