The Florissant Fossil Quarry is a fun place to take friends when you definitely want to find a fossil and if your friends don’t always like to hike far. I like it because I made a friend who works there, and she has a dog named Jack. I’ve been there two times, and each trip I also went to the Florissant National Monument just down the street.
To get on the site they quarry needs to be open. All the information is on their website (florissantfossils.tripod.com). Unlike most collecting trips you also have to pay by the hour, $10 for kids, because the owners mine the quarry and bring the shale to you. They also have all the tools you need. Mostly you will find parts of leafs but we also found a fern and some lucky people found insects and even one bird.
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CSMS Pebble Pup Jack Shimon is busy splitting shales at the Florissant Quarry. This commercial operations provides all the tool needed to recover the delicate plant and insect fossils from the Florissant Formation. All fossils found can be kept by the collector. |
On a hot summer day like this one was make sure you have water to drink.
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Jack proudly displays his box of fossils. There is nothing quite so exciting as collecting fossils in the field. This field trip was done in partial fulfillment of earning a merit badge under the American Federation of Mineralogical Societies. |
The nice people who work at the quarry will show you how to carefully break the shale apart. They will give you all the tools you need. I’m not allowed to use a razor blade, so I used a metal tool like a scraper to get in between shale layers and a paint brush to clean off samples. When I took a bag of shale home to share with my friends we soaked the shale in water and then it broke apart very easily.
Note: Jack is among the youngest of our pebble pups. He is in kindergarten. He is a prolific writer and dictates his stories to his mother so that the Colorado Springs and other rock clubs can publish his stories.
