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| Two Species of Trilobites at the Same Time! |
My son, Evan, and I went out past Delta yesterday to go dig fossils at the
U Dig Fossil quarry near Swazey Peak in the House Range. The quarry is located where a very rich vein of the
Wheeler Shale is exposed and one can find very well preserved trilobite and other fossils from the Cambrian era (half a billion years ago). It costs $28 per adult for two hours and you get a 20% discount if you can show them a Utah driver's license. They give you a rock hammer and a bucket and you are allowed to cart off as much rock as you want during your stay. The quarry is dug out periodically with power equipment so there are fairly fresh shards of shale to work with. You try to split the rock along a seam layer and hopefully expose a fossil when you do so. Most of the fossils are trilobites and are very small and often just pieces. Sometimes you find only an impression because the fossil itself is fragile and breaks up when you split the rock. The biggest ones we got were an inch or two long.
There were several dozen people out there while we were. Many were with a group of Utah teachers. We met a family from North Carolina that were digging near us. It was a fun way to spend a couple of hours. Beware, you will get very dusty!
The staff at the quarry are great. They will help you clean up your samples when you are done. If you get fossils that pop out of the stone, they will bag them with a explanatory card for you. They'll help identify the species. If you get big chunk of stone with fossils they have a rock saw and will cut it down to a convenient size and shape for display.
After the quarry we headed west along the road through Death Canyon to the west side of the
House Range. There is a dry lake bed there in the Tule Valley. We drove south along the valley road and at the southern end of the range I stopped every half mile or so and took a series of photos of the mountains. When I got home I put these into my trial copy of
Agisoft Photoscan and used it to contruct a 3D model of the area around
Notch Peak. I learned about this software at the
Utah Rock Art Research Association symposium a couple of weeks ago. It works great for rock art and not too bad for visualizing the mountains. I needed a couple of good airplane shots to get the information to make a really good model. But the results are not too bad as you can see below.
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| Death Canyon |
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| Death Canyon |
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| Middle Part of the House Range from the Northwest |
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| Middle Part of the House Range from the West |
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| Notch Peak from the North |
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| Notch Peak from the Northwest |
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| Notch Peak from the West |
UPDATE:
3D model of two trilobites
3D model of a dual trilobites
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