How Addicted Are We?

[Ridgehiker]

Imacfadden.

True about the rain. The colder and yuckier the winter, the more erosion and exposure of new material. I sit back with my hot cocoa and imagine rocks cracking, scree slopes sliding, new exposures...fossils that I might have walked by now being more visible.

Actually best to think like this in January while sipping on a cold drink in Maui or Mexico.

[siteseer]

Trevor,

I'm less obsessed than I used to be. Back in the late 80's and early 90's I used to write at least 10 letters a week to other collectors. Yes, they were letters (that was before email and when you had to write "West Germany" if you were writing to someone in Hamburg). I had joined MAPS and traded with a lot of people then. I used to go to every local rock and gem show within 50 miles as well as the Denver and Tucson shows (went to MAPS EXPO a couple of times in the mid-90's). However, I would get burned-out part of the year and would take a break from it for a few weeks. I read more these days and hardly ever trade. A lot of stuff is a lot easier to get now. You can build a collection from Ebay alone. What you don't find on Ebay you can at least ask about on this forum.

Who else remembers sending a letter overseas in those days? it would take about a week to get there and a week for the response. I think sending a letter airmail was 35-40 cents and a small box cost was about 6-8 bucks.

I try to check the forum at least once a day so I'm still obsessed to that extent.

Hello everyone! I don't know if this title suits this question. My friends and family constantly tell me I am greatly addicted to fossils. My question to you is how much do you go out of your way for fossils and how much of your free time or work time is dedicated for the awesome hobby of fossil hunting. I, in my mind, never can go fossil hunting and I will go at any free chance I have and never seize to stop until my mother makes me. So, how obsessed are you?

[Wrangellian]

I am not very old but I do remember a time before email - when I was a member of the rockhound club we received a letter from a teacher in Germany - Bavaria I think - asking for rock/fossil samples from our area for his teaching purposes (purportedly), I guess he sent a series of these to various clubs. My mother and I agreed to handle it. A couple/few years later we finally got around to getting some things together (just rocks, I wanted to keep the few fossils i had at the time!)... so yes, I remember those days. I wonder how many other people got the same letter and how many sent him stuff.

Further to my earlier response, I guess a measure of how addicted we are is how often we bungle and extraction or a glue/prep job and get thoroughly frustrated and disgusted but still go back later for more! (Did it again today!) Reminds me of Einstein's definition of 'insane'...

[scmense]

I am addicted enough to live in this camper for the next two months, leaving sometime this week.

[lmacfadden]

I am addicted enough to live in this camper for the next two months, leaving sometime this week. image.jpg

WOW that's a serious fossil digger right there! You might need paleontology rehab after this. Hope you find some great stuff!!

[Chadillac1967]

I filled my garage with large Rubbermaid bins of giant pieces of sea floor and hash just so I could still go fossil hunting here in Illinois during the off season. This winter I'm changing the décor of our dining room to include framed and matted sketches from the ISGS fossil book and a few 11x17 shadow boxes with samples of those framed sketches. Thank God my 3 year old gets me. The rest think I'm nuts.

[cowsharks]

I guess I'll join in the round table meeting here...

1) I check the weather forecast daily for at least one week out to help plan where and when I'm going collecting

2) I check tide schedules daily for several places

3) My Van smells of boots, waders, damp clothes, shovels, screens, bones/verts

4) I check TFF daily

5) Most of my browser bookmarks/favorites are fossil related - this drives my wife nuts when she's trying to find something

6) You will find fossil shark teeth almost anywhere in my house; washing machine, dryer, kitchen counter, end tables, on the floor in the corners, outside, top of my dresser, ...this also drives my wife crazy

7) Like many others, I also try to plan vacations where I know I can also do some fossil collecting; Caution, you must build up lots of brownie points to be able to execute this option!

8) I have bribed my sons into going fossil collecting (ie. McDonald's afterwards) so I could spend time with them and get them out of the house to give my wife some peace and quiet.

9) I go fossil collecting at least once per week, sometimes twice. THis is actually down from 3 times per week several years ago.

10) I have more filled 5-gallon buckets of fossil material than most hardware stores have empty buckets for sale.

11) I have built probably close to 40 box-screens in 18 years of collecting

12) I have probbaly owned more than 30 pair of waders in the same period

13) Don't have a clue how much money I have spent/invested in this hobby

14) I'm more than willing to drive 60 miles each way to go fossil collecting, but will complain if I have to drive 5 blocks to go the grocery store, and when I get there my back hurts already (yet, my wife says I never complain about back pain after a whole day of fossil collecting)

15) I own lots of books; the Bible, engineering books, and then the rest are almost all fossil collecting related

16) Most weekends I only get a few hours sleep before getting up really really early to go collecting. This doesn't bother me one iota. However, if it's for almost anything else, I want to sleep in a little.

17) I've explained to my family that although my hobby seems like an obsession, at least I don't have any really bad habits like drinking, smoking, golf, etc.

18) I can't drive by a pile of rocks or dirt without wondering if there are any fossils in it. Same goes for dirt/gravel parking lots. I'm always looking down. Lately I've been looking at the stones used in buildings.

19) I have a card table set up with micro fossil material; while my wife watches her "shows" at night, I sit there "with her" and search through the micro material.

20) When I first started collecting I told a fellow collector/friend that all I wanted was to find one of each type of shark tooth - what a joke ... I have hundreds of thousands now. I may not be able to find all of them, but I'm sure gonna try.

21) gotta run, I forgot to check the tide schedule for tomorrow

Daryl.

[Regg Cato]

Well given that I'm probably younger than many of the forum members, and was labeled by my parents as having a somewhat obsessive personality to begin with, you can measure my "obsession" by what I've done over the years.

I got started when I was six years old; the first fossil I found was a partial brachiopod shell. As with most kids that age, dinosaurs were the big fascination (and as with most parents of kids that age, mine figured I'd grow out of it). My original area of interest was paleobiology (though I don't know at what point I began calling it that), and I still have my notes about a wide variety of theoretical dinosaur behaviors. I always viewed dinosaurs as living animals, and found reconstructing their lives to be quite fascinating. I got out every dinosaur book at the library and made suggestions for ones they didn't have...I think at least a third of the books on dinosaurs my local library has they have because of me. Taxonomy started interesting me at an early age too; I think I started having The Dinosauria out from the library on an almost continuous basis when I was 8, and was regularly using skeletal terminology shortly thereafter. It was also around that time I bought a Latin-English dictionary, for etymological purposes. I wrote my first "paper" when I was 9, a three-page treatise on Ceratopsian taxonomy (focusing on Chasmosaurus, Centrosaurus and Triceratops). I recognized that Chasmosaurus mariscalensis did not belong in that genus, and created the new name Agujaceratops for it. (In 2006, Spencer Lucas, Robert Sullivan, and Adrian Hunt made it official...I thought it was a pretty neat coincidence at the time). I spent a lot of time working with heterodontosaurids as well, and coincidentally accurately predicted what a hatchling Heterodontosaurus would look like (it would be several more years before an immature specimen would be found).

Unfortunately, living in an area with no dinosaur-rich rocks (or dinosaur anything rocks for that matter lol ), I've had to confine my local collecting to what was out there. As a result, over the years I've learned how to pick out fossils in urban environments, and I'm still somewhat amazed how many there are around us (at least where I'm from). A lot of places have large limestone blocks used for landscaping purposes; I can't pass one by without checking to see what's there (found some corals and a bunch of crinoid rings at an amusement park yesterday). I have also been able to collect at some good localities around the province, and typically shell out a couple hundred dollars at the local university's rock and mineral show each year. I currently have a number of buckets of unprepared material, as well as a good sampling of local specimens from parking lots, construction sites, etc. There are currently about half a dozen fossils on my desk as I write this...plus some more in my dresser...I've probably spent a couple thousand on collecting and storage over the time I've been doing this. Growing up, I managed to tie in most family vacations to areas that had something to do with fossils (museums, collecting sites, etc.), and as a result I've been able to examine hundreds of specimens from museums all across the continent. At present, I have a paper in the final stages of review renaming and briefly redescribing the oviraptorosaur "Ingenia" yanshini, providing a review of the species assignment of all material referred to that taxon over the years.

So that's me lol.

[Beach Boy]

Sorry i can't beat Cowsharks , i thought about it but i can't, so i have decided that the bags under my eyes from long and early drives and the broken thumb and tennis elbow and goodness only knows all the other scars which festoon my poor body are all part of the ageing process and nothing whatsoever to do with fossil collecting IT'S JUST A COINCIDENCE OK.

Dave

[Wrangellian]

I wrote my first "paper" when I was 9, a three-page treatise on Ceratopsian taxonomy (focusing on Chasmosaurus, Centrosaurus and Triceratops). I recognized that Chasmosaurus mariscalensis did not belong in that genus, and created the new name Agujaceratops for it. (In 2006, Spencer Lucas, Robert Sullivan, and Adrian Hunt made it official...I thought it was a pretty neat coincidence at the time).

NERD (just kidding)

So let me get this straight.. you renamed something you thought belonged in a different genus.. What did you name it after, and did the 2006 writers give it the same name, with or without knowing you or the name you had given it.. or did they know you/it? Or did they name it something different, and the coincidence is that you and they independently recognized that it belonged in a different genus?

[Wrangellian]

Having other interests besides fossils, I guess I can't hold a candle to those of you who don't!

[sixgill pete]

I guess I'll join in the round table meeting here...

1) I check the weather forecast daily for at least one week out to help plan where and when I'm going collecting

2) I check tide schedules daily for several places

3) My Van smells of boots, waders, damp clothes, shovels, screens, bones/verts

4) I check TFF daily

5) Most of my browser bookmarks/favorites are fossil related - this drives my wife nuts when she's trying to find something

6) You will find fossil shark teeth almost anywhere in my house; washing machine, dryer, kitchen counter, end tables, on the floor in the corners, outside, top of my dresser, ...this also drives my wife crazy

7) Like many others, I also try to plan vacations where I know I can also do some fossil collecting; Caution, you must build up lots of brownie points to be able to execute this option!

8) I have bribed my sons into going fossil collecting (ie. McDonald's afterwards) so I could spend time with them and get them out of the house to give my wife some peace and quiet.

9) I go fossil collecting at least once per week, sometimes twice. THis is actually down from 3 times per week several years ago.

10) I have more filled 5-gallon buckets of fossil material than most hardware stores have empty buckets for sale.

11) I have built probably close to 40 box-screens in 18 years of collecting

12) I have probbaly owned more than 30 pair of waders in the same period

13) Don't have a clue how much money I have spent/invested in this hobby

14) I'm more than willing to drive 60 miles each way to go fossil collecting, but will complain if I have to drive 5 blocks to go the grocery store, and when I get there my back hurts already (yet, my wife says I never complain about back pain after a whole day of fossil collecting)

15) I own lots of books; the Bible, engineering books, and then the rest are almost all fossil collecting related

16) Most weekends I only get a few hours sleep before getting up really really early to go collecting. This doesn't bother me one iota. However, if it's for almost anything else, I want to sleep in a little.

17) I've explained to my family that although my hobby seems like an obsession, at least I don't have any really bad habits like drinking, smoking, golf, etc.

18) I can't drive by a pile of rocks or dirt without wondering if there are any fossils in it. Same goes for dirt/gravel parking lots. I'm always looking down. Lately I've been looking at the stones used in buildings.

19) I have a card table set up with micro fossil material; while my wife watches her "shows" at night, I sit there "with her" and search through the micro material.

20) When I first started collecting I told a fellow collector/friend that all I wanted was to find one of each type of shark tooth - what a joke ... I have hundreds of thousands now. I may not be able to find all of them, but I'm sure gonna try.

21) gotta run, I forgot to check the tide schedule for tomorrow

Daryl.

Daryl,

I hear-by vote you The Fossil Forum 2013 "Most Addicted Fossiler of the Year". Congratulations.

[Regg Cato]

NERD (just kidding)

So let me get this straight.. you renamed something you thought belonged in a different genus.. What did you name it after, and did the 2006 writers give it the same name, with or without knowing you or the name you had given it.. or did they know you/it? Or did they name it something different, and the coincidence is that you and they independently recognized that it belonged in a different genus?

lol!

So I recognized Chasmosaurus mariscalensis didn't belong in Chasmosaurus, so I renamed it Agujaceratops after the Aguja Formation where it was found. Coincidentally (without knowledge of my "renaming"), the same name was chosen when it was formally recognized to be a distinct genus. In all fairness, it wasn't a very un-obvious choice.

[donckey]

I guess I'll join in the round table meeting here...

1) I check the weather forecast daily for at least one week out to help plan where and when I'm going collecting

2) I check tide schedules daily for several places

3) My Van smells of boots, waders, damp clothes, shovels, screens, bones/verts

4) I check TFF daily

5) Most of my browser bookmarks/favorites are fossil related - this drives my wife nuts when she's trying to find something

6) You will find fossil shark teeth almost anywhere in my house; washing machine, dryer, kitchen counter, end tables, on the floor in the corners, outside, top of my dresser, ...this also drives my wife crazy

7) Like many others, I also try to plan vacations where I know I can also do some fossil collecting; Caution, you must build up lots of brownie points to be able to execute this option!

8) I have bribed my sons into going fossil collecting (ie. McDonald's afterwards) so I could spend time with them and get them out of the house to give my wife some peace and quiet.

9) I go fossil collecting at least once per week, sometimes twice. THis is actually down from 3 times per week several years ago.

10) I have more filled 5-gallon buckets of fossil material than most hardware stores have empty buckets for sale.

11) I have built probably close to 40 box-screens in 18 years of collecting

12) I have probbaly owned more than 30 pair of waders in the same period

13) Don't have a clue how much money I have spent/invested in this hobby

14) I'm more than willing to drive 60 miles each way to go fossil collecting, but will complain if I have to drive 5 blocks to go the grocery store, and when I get there my back hurts already (yet, my wife says I never complain about back pain after a whole day of fossil collecting)

15) I own lots of books; the Bible, engineering books, and then the rest are almost all fossil collecting related

16) Most weekends I only get a few hours sleep before getting up really really early to go collecting. This doesn't bother me one iota. However, if it's for almost anything else, I want to sleep in a little.

17) I've explained to my family that although my hobby seems like an obsession, at least I don't have any really bad habits like drinking, smoking, golf, etc.

18) I can't drive by a pile of rocks or dirt without wondering if there are any fossils in it. Same goes for dirt/gravel parking lots. I'm always looking down. Lately I've been looking at the stones used in buildings.

19) I have a card table set up with micro fossil material; while my wife watches her "shows" at night, I sit there "with her" and search through the micro material.

20) When I first started collecting I told a fellow collector/friend that all I wanted was to find one of each type of shark tooth - what a joke ... I have hundreds of thousands now. I may not be able to find all of them, but I'm sure gonna try.

21) gotta run, I forgot to check the tide schedule for tomorrow

Daryl.

Congrats!!!!!!

This is the HOLOTYPE of the Sharkteeth collector addictiveiii.

[Suvi]

...and I thought I was the only one crazy with fossil addiction.

I was doing yard work and got little sidetracked. Do you think there is any hope finding fossils in the river rocks in the front yard...? I don't think the husband would be very happy if I took my rock hammer out to the yard... but it is tempting!!

[Missourian]

Do you think there is any hope finding fossils in the river rocks in the front yard...?

Sure there is. I've found fusulinids, petrified wood, and even dinosaur bone in the gravel under the deck.

[Wrangellian]

lol!

So I recognized Chasmosaurus mariscalensis didn't belong in Chasmosaurus, so I renamed it Agujaceratops after the Aguja Formation where it was found. Coincidentally (without knowledge of my "renaming"), the same name was chosen when it was formally recognized to be a distinct genus. In all fairness, it wasn't a very un-obvious choice.

That makes sense. Glad you didn't name it Reggosaurus or something, like some kids that age might have.....

[Bev]

I am Bev, and I am a fossil addict...

Yes, I dream about fossils. I even get taunted by them in my dreams.

Yes, TFF is the site I open first in the morning and close last at night.

I started making jewelry out of my fossils - no fossil harmed - just to keep them close to me.

The attached garage is now dedicated to fossils, fossil prepping, etc.

Formation maps live on my dining table.

Fossilized rock rings the cement pad on my driveway, waiting to be cleaned and examined.

Fossilized rock covers nearly every flat surface on my deck.

I have stacked 5 gallon pails labeled "gastropods", "hash plates", "trilobites", etc. stacked in my garage because I can't bear to take them to the barn - too far away from me.

Besides my rock hammers, fly fishing vest, hat, extra water shoes and two backpacks that I always carry in my truck, just in case, I have now added a maul and pick axe.

My dog knows what I mean when I say, "Want to go fossil hunting?" And after the third stop she sometimes refuses to get out of the truck anymore.

Yes, I examine rocks in parking lots and on buildings.

I am blogging about fossils, when I should be doing other things.

My gardening addition has waned since I started fossil hunting, substituting one addiction for another?

I volunteer at Mystery Cave just to be near their fossils.

Sometimes I wake up at night shaking and sweating from a nightmare where my fossils have disappeared or been stolen, and I go out ot the garage just to check on them.

My library of fossil books is exceeding my shelf space.

I am now reading almost exclusively on fossils.

I have accepted my addiction and even make excuses for it.

Yes, I am Bev, and I am a fossil addict! :-D

Edited September 6, 2013 by Bev

[Regg Cato]

I am Bev, and I am a fossil addict...

Yes, I dream about fossils. I even get taunted by them in my dreams.

Yes, TFF is the site I open first in the morning and close last at night.

I started making jewelry out of my fossils - no fossil harmed - just to keep them close to me.

The attached garage is now dedicated to fossils, fossil prepping, etc.

Formation maps live on my dining table.

Fossilized rock rings the cement pad on my driveway, waiting to be cleaned and examined.

Fossilized rock covers nearly every flat surface on my deck.

I have stacked 5 gallon pails labeled "gastropods", "hash plates", "trilobites", etc. stacked in my garage because I can't bear to take them to the barn - too far away from me.

Besides my rock hammers, fly fishing vest, hat, extra water shoes and two backpacks that I always carry in my truck, just in case, I have now added a maul and pick axe.

My dog knows what I mean when I say, "Want to go fossil hunting?" And after the third stop she sometimes refuses to get out of the truck anymore.

Yes, I examine rocks in parking lots and on buildings.

I am blogging about fossils, when I should be doing other things.

My gardening addition has waned since I started fossil hunting, substituting one addiction for another?

I volunteer at Mystery Cave just to be near their fossils.

Sometimes I wake up at night shaking and sweating from a nightmare where my fossils have disappeared or been stolen, and I go out ot the garage just to check on them.

My library of fossil books is exceeding my shelf space.

I am now reading almost exclusively on fossils.

I have accepted my addiction and even make excuses for it.

Yes, I am Bev, and I am a fossil addict! :-D

*applause*