Bill Heimbrock

This is now resolved. See you all at GSA 2018 in Indy!

You’re welcome, Hunter @hunter-thurmond. But I must point out that I’m a fellow amateur fossil collector by hobby and a computer systems analyst by trade.

I wonder if it would be good to have the myfossil.org avatars show the amateur or professional designation under the user type “participant”? In this way we would be able to know when we are conferring with peers or collaborating with a professional. I wonder if anyone else would find that useful.

Thoughts, @bmacfadden, @llundgren, @jkallmeyer, @lmccall, @lcone, @kcrippen?

Bill
Amateur Everything 🙂

Hi Hunter @hunter-thurmond –

You’ve asked a good question. You’ll get a wide variety of answers, most with common points.

Generally, when you get more experienced, you’ll know what you want to keep. Until then, here are some of my thoughts.

First a disclaimer, I’m a bit different than most collectors. I don’t have a room to display fossils, so I don’t keep fossils for that purpose. No fossil is wasted for me. I help run the classroom fossil kit distribution and sales for the Dry Dredgers. So I screen for museum-worthy fossils and bring those to the attention of the Cincinnati Geier Collections and Research Center. I’m also aware of what research our local professionals are conducting and keep an eye open for what they need. So I collaborate and donate fossils for educational purposes.

Given that, here are my thoughts. The greatest value of fossils to you at this stage in your collecting is what you learn from them. If a fossil looks interesting to you, pick it up and examine it. If you are still interested in it, bag it and make note of where you found it. Without info on where it was found, the fossil is useless to you and everyone else.

When you get home, examine your finds while you are still excited about them. Look up the fossil online and learn about the fossil. When you revisit the site or similar sites, you may find better specimens of the same fossil. Take them home, compare to what you found previously and perhaps even act as a scientist in your approach. If you just want to have the best fossils for an exhibit and nothing else, then consider giving the lesser specimens to others who want to learn or give them to educational institutions. NEVER put the lesser fossil back on the site or on other sites. It will corrupt the stratigraphic information.

I do much of my fossil selection while I’m still on the site. I surface collect and the surface is just as important to me and Paleontology as the fossils on it. Put on your thinking cap while out there. Study photos of fossils in books so when you see a fossil like what you read about, you can know to pick it up and compare to the photos.

I strongly urge you to join your local fossil club or volunteer at your local museum. This will help you get the greatest knowledge the fastest and make your time in the field much more enriching.

After a few years, you’ll understand better what is common and what is rare and sought-after. Fragments of fossils can be just as interesting and important as whole body fossils. Trace fossils also show the behavior of the ancient animal and are at least as important as the body fossil.

I could go on forever. Thanks for the great question, Hunter. I’ll be interested in how other people respond to this question as well.

Bill Heimbrock
Fossil Kit Chair and Webmaster
Dry Dredgers
[email protected]

Since my name is being bantered about I thought I would be “social” and chime in on my methods of labeling.

George, I agree with Jack and Lisa. (@george-powell, @egardner, @jkallmeyer) You have a very thorough method of cataloging. I also tip my hat to Jack’s excellent data collection tips.

I must say that there is no single method or software used by the Dry Dredgers as a group. Everyone has their preferences. As long as all parties understand the needs, the solutions can be diverse. Here are a few details about mine.

My specimen catalogue number is 8 alphanumeric characters – a 4-character site ID and a 4 digit specimen number.

A trilobite from my Colerain Ave site is numbered like this.

CA2R2560
CA – Location Identifier (Colerain Avenue) Multiple sites on one street is no problem. Get creative. It’s just 2 characters AA BB whatever.
2 – Level/layer 2 for that site. The higher the number the lower in the strata. Right or wrong, be consistent.
R – Richmondian Stage. This can also be a formation or member name.
4 digit specimen number left justified. This number is only unique within the 4-character site code.

Of course somewhere on paper and in a computer file I have a list of these site codes and specimen codes along with extensive, extensive, extensive site data.

Jack in his post mentioned my tiny fossil labeling method. I think I should talk about this. I used to have to label everything. I’m better now, but here’s what I did back in the 90’s.

The idea is to print and affix specimen labels that are so small, I can label tiny trilobites with unique ID’s. I needed to do this in order to sequence all the trilobites by volume to make a growth sequence. When I was done I could see that volume is not the same thing as apparent size, but that’s what learning and science is about, right?

See http://drydredgers.org/tiny/labeled_group_02.jpg  for what my trilobites looked like. See also http://drydredgers.org/tiny/One_Flexi_with_label.jpg for a close-up where you can read the label on the trilobite.

I did it with a 600 DPI (dots-per-inch) laser printer. I made the page size as big as I could and the font size as small as I could. I was able to fit 10,000 labels on one sheet by printing multiple pages on one side of a sheet. I used Avery full-sheet adhesive label stock so I could cut it the way I wanted and printed the numbers in blocks of 250.

Here’s what the sheet looks like – http://drydredgers.org/tiny/whole_sheet.jpg.

First I cut out a block of 250 labels with a scissors and peeled the adhesive backing. Then I prep the specimen and cut out one TINY label with the scissors. This is where the self-stick adhesive comes in handy. It doesn’t hurt the fossil because it’s too weak but it keeps the tiny flake from flying away while you affix it to the fossil.

Here’s what one block of 250 labels looks like compared to my hand which I used to cut the individual labels. – http://drydredgers.org/tiny/one_block_of_sheet_compared_to_index_finger.jpg

As soon as your label is where you want it on the specimen, brush clear nail polish over it and along the edges so it sticks. The nail polish is easy to remove so it won’t hurt your specimen. It also protects the printer ink from rubbing off with time. But it’s possible for the printer ink to smudge while applying the nail polish. It depends on the ink you are using. The dry ink from a laser printer I used did smudge the print if I fussed with it too much.

I did 400 trilobites this way. They were all from one horizon in the Ft. Ancient member of the Waynesville Formation. In addition to a growth sequence exhibit for our Geofair, the trilobites were used by Greg Schumacher and Marcus Key for the JP paper “Paleoecology of commensal epizoans fouling Flexicalymene (Trilobita) from the Upper Ordovician, Cincinnati Arch region, USA” in which I was named co-author. Hard work does pay off!

Thanks for reading. – – Bill Heimbrock, Dry Dredgers