Location:
Roadside Quarry near the Lost River by Wardensville, WV
A Devonian Reef
~390? Million Years Old
Early - Middle Devonian
Needmore Formation
"Amy searching for a Trilobite head after it rolled down the cliff"
Don't drop your Trilobites, they're fast little critters!
During this time period, this place looked very similar to
18-Mile Creek in New York, as it was perched at the edge of the Kaskaskia Sea.
The Acadian Oregony was beginning.
This mountain building occured when
when a landmass called Avalon collided
into, what is today, eastern North America. This collision was the first step in the
assembly of the supercontinent Laurussia. The collision of Avalon began to create a large
mountain range called
the Acadian Mountains along eastern North America.
Rivers running down the Acadian mountains
picked up sediments and
carried them into the Castskill basin, a basin just west of the Acadian mountains, running
parallel to it. This basin was flooded by the Kaskaskia Sea. The Kaskaskia epicontinental sea,
was just west of the Acadian mountains. It covered
most of West Virginia (including this site), as well as many other states down to, what is
today, the gulf of mexico.
These sediments eventually made their way into
the Kaskaskia Sea. The sediments flowing into the sea created sedimentary deposits
that formed the sedimentary
rock layers seen today at this site.
This site was also near the equator during the middle Devonian, and the earth
was much warmer than it is today. As a result, this warm shallow
sea was the home of a large array of animals, including coral reefs, trilobites, cephalopods,
and brachiopods.
Location:
This roadside quarry is just west of Wardensville, WV. About 4 miles west of
Wardensville on rt. 55, you will cross a small bridge. A little less than a half mile past
the bridge, going up a steep hill, you will see the roadside quarry.
It's kind of easy to spot if you start looking after you cross the
bridge and start up the hill.
Recomended Equipment:
You'll be splitting shell, so the standard shell splitting gear is recommended:
A rock hammer
Chissel
Safety Goggles
Newspaper or aluminum to wrap the very fragile fossils
Recomended Books:
Fossil Collecting in the Mid-Atlantic States
by Jasper Burns
Copyright 1991
The Johns Hpokins University Press
Baltimore
ISBN 0-8018-4145-3
This is site # 17 in his book
Other Recomendations:
There are two types of shell here. A grayish shell that has well preserved fossils, and
an orange colored shell, that is incredibly fragile and has poorly preserved fossils.
We only collected in the orange colored shell.
The fossils in the orange shell need protected after you prepare them. I soaked all of mine
in the good old Elmers glue solution (1/2 glue & 1/2 water), soak for a half hour, and
carefully wipe off the white excess with a cotton swab.
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