Marc Behrendt |
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Canada or Bust The Canada collecting trip had been planned for over a month. My daughter, who already caused two trip cancellations due to the chicken pox and flu, would not thwart this endeavor. However, on Tuesday she woke up with the flu again. Thursday's morning departure looked shaky, but I was resolved to go collecting one last time before winter. To further complicate matters, Hurricane Opal was descending upon Ohio and headed for Ontario, due - Thursday!
The big day came, the baby sitter cancelled, the hurricane hit, and I finally started out at 4:30 p.m. when my wife came home from work, instead of the 8 am departure time I’d hoped for. I drove into 30 mph sustained northeast winds with much higher gusts; torrential rain fell the entire trip. I thought I'd seen the worst of the storm but as I entered Ontario, the sustained winds increased! I crossed 2 major causeway bridges, questioning my sanity and wondering how things could get worse. As if to answer my thoughts, my stomach began to growl. By the time I entered Toronto I knew I was in serious trouble. I never noticed before now - 401 (the major east-west highway through Toronto) has no exits with restroom facilities, especially at 1 a.m.!
This story is actually about trilobite collecting. After a sleepless night, I ventured to the first of several quarries I planned to collect. All the quarries were preparing for winter and had fresh material everywhere. The previous night's rain and wind combined to leave a legacy of pristine hydraulically cleaned dust free rocks to check out. Even from a distance I could see pieces of trilobites everywhere. If only I could bend over without stimulating last night's symptoms. Although I found several beautiful Isotelus, the negatives were needed to fill in all the missing pieces. Also found were several probably partial Ceraurus and Ceraurinus, a cystoid, and a big conularid. The trilobite negatives were nowhere to be found. I sure wish I were healthy, because I covered only half the exposed new material by dark.
The next day I visited 2 more quarries. The first quarry's material was not rich in trilobites; the second stop showed more promise. The fresh rock was predominantly shale, much like the Cincinnati "butter shale". The 4" of rain literally dissolved the shale into mud. Wherever I looked, I found complete Isotelus that had broken up due to no supporting matrix. I hoped to find some enrolled Flexicalymene, but none were evident in this layer. My last day sent me to Bowmanville. I began the day by finding 3 single Pseudogygites and a multiple piece with 7 Pseudo's- all within 15 minutes! As I searched other layers I found many pieces, but no complete bugs. Most incredible was a perfect negative from a fresh blast site. Side by side were a Ceraurus and an Isotelus. I searched for the positive for over 2 hours with no success. In the end, I found many partial trilobites, but nothing complete except for the Pseudogygites. Or so I thought.
My trip home was uneventful. I began preparing the specimens right away, checking the partials to see if they might possibly be complete. After checking several Isotelus bodies with no cephalons, I started on the Ceraurinus. The only exposed portion was the right genal region and part of the glabella, with several unsightly thoracic segments lying on top of and anterior to the cephalon. I dusted off the cephalon seeking to expose the border. As I traveled around, there were no fractures or breaks. All the overlying fragments seemed to come from another trilobite! I began to remove the matrix covering the specimen. Debris layered the entire trilobite – crinoid stems, brachiopods both intact and broken, and multitudes of trilobite shell fragments. The removal process was tedious, but slowly the trilobite became exposed. I had an intact Ceraurinus 8 cm long and 5 cm wide.
One spot troubled me. The hidden left genal region had a dime sized complete bryozoa colony type I'd never seen before. I labored to expose the bryozoa without burning its delicate shell. It is fortunate I chose to salvage the bryozoa. As I carefully removed matrix under very low air pressure with the air abrasive, I exposed an odd spine leading underneath the bryozoa, then 2 spines, all connected to a larger piece of shell. I worked around this and before long, I exposed a pygidium to a tiny inverted spiny trilobite! My attention now focused on this new development, I worked through the evening into the late night, fully exposing and finishing the big Ceraurinus marginatus and the 6 mm inverted spiny (now complete) Primaspis trilobite on the left cheek.
I am sure several morals can be exhumed from this story - I shall leave that up to you, the reader. What I have learned is never assume a trilobite is partial when it is covered by matrix, and always be alert for hidden treasures when prepping out any specimen.
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 Ceraurinus marginatus with Primaspsis sp.  Closeup of the Primaspis |