Mazon Monday #162: Field Trip Report for Danville Spoil Pile

This is Mazon Monday post #162. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com.

This was our fifth field trip to the Danville spoil pile. It’s been a very productive locality over the last couple years. The trips have been very popular, with every trip filling up quickly, even though the site is a 3 hour drive from the Chicago area. Not much information is available about the Herrin coal fossils, but thankfully Jack Wittry compiled a handy “Herrin Coal Fossil Guide, which we posted for Mazon Monday #86.

Here is a list of prior trips.

Saturday, April 15th was a very nice day. The weather was summer-like with highs in the 80’s. Quite a few nice fossils were found, look for some specimens in upcoming Fossil Fridays. Some of the following photos are from Ralph Jewell and Andrew Young, Check out Ralph’s report on the Fossil Forum for some extra photos and comments by the great group of people on that site. Membership on the Fossil Forum is free… take advantage of it too learn more about fossils.

Of course, we took a group selfie…