ESCONI recently held a field trip to the St. Paul Quarry in St. Paul, Indiana.  As part of that trip, a few of us paid a visit to the famous St. Leon roadcut on Indiana Route 1 just off Interstate 74 at exit 164 for St. Leon.  The road cut is huge and loaded in fossils.  Head on over to The Fossil Forum for many trip reports.

As part of that visit, we went looking for trilobites.  Here you can see ESCONI President Keith Robitschek with Phil Anderson looking for interesting fossils.  The ground is littered with brachiopods, bryozoans, and other bits.

To have the best chance of finding a trilobite, you’ll need to crawl on your hands and knees along the first bench in the “butter shale”.  It was fairly wet when we were there, but with a little effort we all found a few complete trilobites – of the genus Flexicalymene.  You’ll also see many pieces of a large trilobite called Isotelus.  Whole Isotelus have been found, but are rare.

Here is a few photos of trilobites in situ for a game we like to call “Find the Trilobite”.  The first is a little easier and was found by Phil Anderson.

This one is more challenging.  It was found by Keith Robitschek.