Nevada - Utah Mega Trip 2016 Day Six: Skull Pass, Fossil Mountain, and the Great Basin Get Together

July 13, 2016

I only got one photo in this morning of yesterday's finds:


5 kinds of brachiopod, colonial coral, and horn coral.



Highway closed while these passed

Trouble comes in threes... we had two vehicles with problems yesterday.  This morning one car had a flat that had to be changed right at the beginning of our trip.  The timing was serendipitous, though.  We had all pulled over and the task was nearly complete when the local authorities closed the highway for some very large vehicles to pass.  I have no idea what these things were.




Our first fossil stop, then, was the Ordovician site called Skull Pass.  Here we looked for graphtolites and eldonia.  Now that's an odd creature!  Eldonia pictures make me think of a jelly fish with a gastropod inside.

Atop Skull Pass



Graptolites





That spiral is eldonia

 



Fossil Mountain

Next stop, Fossil Mountain.  This site is Lower Ordovician in age.  It is also a famous site because of the diversity of fossils that may be found there.  We found many of the different invertebrate fossils, some of which we can't yet even place into phyla!   It was amazing!  The next photos show a few of the species that are easy to see in a picture.



Gastropod

 

Eldonia

Ostracods

Brachiopods

Brachiopods

Other finds included trilobites, orthocone cephalopods, bryozoans, and coral.

It was hard to leave this place except that it was rather hot.  Even sitting on the ground was occasionally uncomfortable because the rocks were so hot.  I think we'd do anything to be able to sit and find fossils, though.  Still, the itinerary next included the Great Basin Get Together.  At this picnic in a nice park in Delta, we shared some of our finds.

The Egg Game

Then Joe had a game prepared for us, one where we were to try to end up with the most eggs in a very short time.  Once the time was up, we opened the eggs to found our numbers.  These numbers corresponded to some delightful prizes.




A prize-winner

Tomorrow - Trilobites!