St. Leon - Trilobites Bite Back

July 10

Hello all, I am back with another St. Leon hunt. This took place the next day after my previous post.

All started well, I took the roughly 2 hour trip to St. Leon and arrived right around noon. The sun was already beating down and I was bound and determined to find a trilobite after looking at @Newbie_1971's finds from the same day. What I didn't except though, was the battle it would take to find one. Once I arrived, I gathered my stuff and tracked up the side of the readout to reach the Liberty formation. Once I was up there, I wanted to go to the very end of the shelf and work my way down, so I had to navigate around a few trees. No sooner than I get up there, I lose my footing and take a hit to my knee. Afterwards I decided to put on my knee pads in case I tripped on air again. Attached is also a picture of the surroundings.

So, it was off to a rough start. But, no sooner than I sat down, I found this fella. I sat down, looked to my left, and lo and behold, he was sitting there waiting to be found. Now, I could have SWORE me and my wife checked this exact spot yesterday. He might have just been a little shy is all. At the very end of my trip, I found a teeny one as well, affectionally named Timmy.

Beyond the two trilobites I found, which were definitely the highlights of my trip, I found some other goodies as well. Plenty of Zygospira were found. There was several spots you couldn't look down and not seem them littered about. Other notable brachiopods included Plaesiomys Subquadratus and Strophomena. All specimens were in pretty good condition, although there were some that looked like they had went through it, including half of the fossil being nearly flat, and others being curled over themselves. P.S. if the names I am using are incorrect, please let me know. I am still learning! Beyond the brachiopods were plenty of various bryozoans of various sizes, some may be corals, I am really not sure of the difference between the two yet. What I do know is there were fragments of them everywhere you looked. All specimens were very well preserved on this front.

Other than the brachiopods and bryozoans, were the gastropods. I am not even going to attempt to identify any of them, but if anyone wants to drop names feel free to! Although my knowledge is limited, the fossils I found were not. Some crinoid fragments were also found, but not as many as other places I have searched.

A few other cool finds I am across was a brachiopod on the tip of a bryozoan and another brachiopod attached to the side of a horn coral, and a brachiopod covered in bryozoan. always enjoy finding fossils that show interactions between each other.