Nevada - Utah Mega Trip 2016 Day One: Crittenden Springs and Immigrant Canyon

July 7, 2016 - First things first, we all got ourselves to West Wendover, NV.  If you travel via I80, you pass through Salt Lake City then through territory that vies with Kansas for flatness.


Bonneville Salt Flats - home of the world land-speed records race track

July 8, 2016

This day we visited two sites, Crittenden Springs and Immigrant Canyon.

This is normally a dark blue car...

This morning, we met at the Nevada Welcome Center in West Wendover to form a caravan for our first fossil site of this mega-trip, Crittenden Springs.  This meant "drive to Montello, then be prepared for a dusty car as we will drive for another 23 miles, including 8 miles on a road that tracks a part of the old California Trail.  (On this trail, we startled a large, beautiful family of partridges.)









We were to search for Triassic ammonoids - mostly ceratite cephalopods.  Here is a beautiful find by Michael Graham (remember, you can click on the images in this blog to see a larger version):

Our second site of the day was Immigrant Canyon, where we were looking for Permian brachiopods.  It took two tries to find the right spot.  Deep into a canyon west of Montello, NV, we looked for limestone outcrops.  The first stop had limited exposure so Joe's nephew, Taylor, scoped the exact spot.  Thank you Taylor!  We found lots of brachiopods, and they had SPINES!

Slab of small brachiopods with many spines

We also found something we still need to identify - it could by bryozoan, it could be sponge:

What are these? Bryozoan or sponge?

Check in tomorrow for Garnets!