Centralia Pa ferns

[Adam86cucv]

Back in late September my oldest and I got the opportunity to go up to Centralia Pennsylvania with the Maryland Natural History Society to do some fossil hunting.  The weather was cool and damp, having rained for what seemed to be an eternity...roughly a week by that point and continuing for a few more days the lack of rain for the time being was pleasant.  The exposure is pretty steep and slippery when wet. 

 

To be continued...

[Adam86cucv]

Now for the exciting part picks of the finds.

Pyrophyllite on a few fern leaves

A few stems and fern leaves

 

Some stems and if you zoom in tiny fern leaves

 

A freshly split piece with a fern.  Chisel blade is 4" wide for scale. 

 

My son splitting a slab open.

A post hunt picture of my son near one of the vents for the underground coal fire.  From what we're told it has moved to the other side of town from where we were.

 

Modern lycophytes in the woods in the area...the are a lot smaller than the Lepidodendrons that grew here 300 million years ago.

 

I have a lot of pieces and slabs that I need to get the shale dust rinsed off before I post more photos.

[bockryan]

Great pictures, hopefully some good finds. Centralia is one of my favorite spots, lots to be found there.

[Adam86cucv]

I know we found a couple pieces of Lepidodendron root and bark besides a lot of ferns. With soccer seasons winding down hopefully I will start cleaning up what we brought home...and hopefully we didn't break too many.