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Growing up in the Mid-Atlantic Region I never knew that their were places that you could go to collect fossils. It turns out however, that West Virginia is where it’s at. We invited Justin’s parents along so we could all make a day of it out in the country.

Terry (Justin’s Dad) drove, and before we knew it we were at our first location.

We found a pull off and walked to where we saw the shale.

The key is to use a rock hammer or screw driver to pry up the shale, making sure to examine every piece for fossils.

In just a few moments Louise (Justin’s Mom) found a neat one.

Soon we were all finding fossil plates.

I even found some terminated quartz.

After putzing around for a while it was time to head out to some trilobite locations. The first one was on a steep shale slide on the side of the road.

While there were many trilobite impressions to be found, the shale was very fine, making the specimens hard to extract.

Of course that didn’t stop Justin from finding a realy great trilobite head.

However, the next location was my favorite. It was a large shale pile, at a country cross roads.

For a change of pace, Terry decided to film Justin collecting for a little while.

Here’s the best piece I found.

Every place we went turned out to be a lot of fun, and it was nice to see picturesque West Virgina.

The 4th location was a darker gray shale slide, around a curve on a back country road.

By combing through the loose shale we turned up a few random fossils.

Our final stop of the day was for massive fossil rough. This material is disirable for a lapidary material.

Large chunks were removed from this closed quarry. We didn’t go in there,

but instead collected fine chunks from the drainage ditch and road cuts nearby.