Fossil Hunting
On Thursday, April 9 (1998), I took my eight year old son and a friend of his to the Marble Mountains and the "Trilobite Wilderness Area" north of Cadiz, California, in search of the ancient trilobite. We left at around 8:00 AM from our home about three hours away. We had lunch when we got to the base of the mountain and then hiked the mile or so from where we parked to the layer of Latham slate in which these ancient crustaceans have been turned to rock. We dug and chipped open layers of slate until around 4:00 PM when we packed up our dig equipment and headed back to camp. We found a shallow wash with a smooth sand bottom in which to pitch our tent. We spent a beautiful moonlit night in the desert seranaded by crikets, fighter jets, and bombing practice (in the distance, pressumably at Twenty-nine Palms Marine Corps Base).
Displayed on this page is our take for the day. As you can see, we did not do too well at getting good whole specimin. We hope some day to go back, but that will have to wait for late fall or winter as we really don't want to dig in the hot Mojave Desert summer.
This trip was our second to the site. We came away empty handed on our first trip because we failed to follow directions properly. Go to page 2 for a philosophical discussion on following directions. Directions to the site and other California fossil sites are also included on page 2.
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